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 The origin of coffee remains shrouded in myths
of the Middle East. One legend tells of Kalidi, an Abyssinian
(Ethiopian) goatherd who one day found his herd frolicking
around a cluster of shiny, dark-leaved shrubs bearing red
berries. When Kalidi tasted the berries himself, he realized
what had prompted the goats’ uncharacteristic behavior. Kalidi
shared his discovery with the inhabitants of a nearby monastery
who developed a fondness fort he fruit and its seeds. By
drinking the beverage that resulted from boiling the berries,
the monks found they could stay awake through evening prayers.
Another legend attributes the discovery of
coffee to Omar, an Arabian dervish (a Moslem mystic). Exiled by
his enemies to the wilderness-where he faced certain
starvation-Omar survived by making a broth from water and the
berries plucked from coffee trees.
Characteristics of the Plant
Coffee grows in tropical and subtropical
climates, predominately between the Tropics of Cancer and
Capricorn, at altitudes ranging from sea-level to 6,000feet.
Although technically an evergreen shrub, the coffee plant is
generally referred to as a tree because it grows more than 20
feet in height if not pruned.
 The coffee tree carries white blossoms scented
like Jasmine. The delicate blossoms last only about three days,
and six to nine months later the tree’s fruit, called cherries,
appears. The cherries begin as berries, which ripen from green
to yellow to red.
Ripe cherries have several layers: the outer
red skin, a sweet pulp, a membrane called parchment, a then
membrane called silver skin, and two coffee seeds (beans) that
have a round or oval shape and are flat on one side. Nature
occasionally provides only one bean per cherry instead of two;
this single bean, smaller and more rounded than a normal bean,
is refereed to as a peaberry. With arabica coffee, peaberries
normally occur about 10 percent of the time. The flavor of
peaberry beans is not different from regular beans
Harvesting
Provided a coffee seedling does
not meet with climatic disturbances or disease, three to five
years will pass before it begins to produce a crop. Generally,
the growing area’s rainfall and temperature determine the number
of annual harvests and the method of harvesting used.
Green Coffee
Processing
Once the harvest concludes processing must
take place to remove the coffee beans inside each cherry. Two
processing methods exist: the wet (washed) method, used
primarily for arabicas, and the dry (unwashed) method, used
primarily for robustas. Although there are fine arabica coffees
that are dry processed.
The processing method helps determine the
ultimate flavor of the brewed coffee. For example, wet-processed
coffees tend to have a cleaner flavor, while dry processed
coffees often exhibit a heavier body.
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