HOW DOES COFFEE END UP IN YOUR CUP?

Before you can enjoy roasting the coffee bean, it is first picked off the coffee tree as a round reddish coffee cherry. The coffee tree is naturally found in Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mauritius, the Comoros and the Reunion by the Indian Ocean. Nowadays the coffee tree grows in countries all over the world, predominantly in South American countries near the equator as well as Southeast Asia, India and Africa. There are more than 6,000 species of coffee plants, with at least 25 major types. The two most frequently grown coffee trees are:

Coffea Arabica: A highly regarded coffee tree that produces 70 per cent of the world’s coffee. Originating from Ethiopia, the beans that come out of the coffea Arabica tend to make a fine, mild and aromatic coffee. The Arabica coffee is expensive in the world market, because the trees are costly to foster and grow.

Coffea Robusta: A less sophisticated yet more robust coffee tree, its beans produce the remaining 30 per cent of the world’s coffee. Robusta coffee is what you normally find in blends for instant coffees. The tree mainly grows in Central and Western Africa, parts of Southeast Asia, including Indonesia and Vietnam, and in South America, specifically in Brazil. To the coffee purist, Arabica is undoubtedly the preferred bean: the flavours are far more pronounced in Arabica beans because it has 44 chromosomes and Robusta only 22.