Presumably, when everyone is learning coffee knowledge on the Internet, they have more or less brushed up on the article that "coffee beans are divided into male and female". We all know that a regular coffee cherry will contain two green coffee beans in the kernel, is there anything different about these two coffee cherries?
Today, Hanasaki Coffee will tell you about the male and female differences between coffee beans!
Where does the "male and female difference" of coffee beans come from?
Let's take a look at the difference between the two beans in the picture below!
The oval-shaped bean on the left in the picture is the bean called the "male bean".The flat beans on the right in the picture are called "mother beans". But in fact, there is no such thing as a male and a female!The "male beans and female beans" that are rumored on the Internet are actually found in a pile of coffee beans, and two kinds of beans with different appearances are found, not two different ones in one fruit.
The original origin of this statement came from merchants in Southeast Asia, in order to sell the "male bean" higher, so they made up this lie, so that it can bring out the sentence "male beans are very rare, accounting for only 5% of the total bean volume", in order to raise the ** of coffee "male beans".
Although, there is no male or female coffee beans, and these two different beans do not come from the same fruit, they come from the same tree, and the rarity of 5% is also true!
Normally, a coffee cherry will produce two green beans, which are flat green beans nestled against each other, but sometimes, coffee trees will also produce fruit with only one green bean. The main reason for this is that due to the influence of the environment or the genes contained in the fruit, one ovule in the fruit cannot be pollinated, so the other fruit has a full space to grow, and can grow rounder than two embryos growing together.
And this green bean is an oval shape and does not have a flat plane. To distinguish them, people call the individual oval beans peaberry (round beans) and the beans with flat planes called flat beans.
In general, round beans will be smaller than flat beans. In the same variety, if the size of the flat bean is 16 18 mesh, then the particle size of the round bean will be about 14 15 mesh. Coffee beans will be evaluated before they are sold, and the higher the grade, the higher the ** sold. The way the grade is evaluated will vary depending on the production area, and the requirements will change. Then the question arises: why mention the grade of coffee beans here?
The reason is that there are many countries that distinguish grades by mesh (size), and the larger the grain of the coffee bean, the more expensive it will be sold, while the round beans do not need to be based on this statement!
What does that mean?Take Kenya as an example, beans reaching 16 17 mesh are their AA grade, and they sell ** high;The second is the AB grade, the number of coffee beans is 15 16, ** slightly lower than AA;Then down is the C grade, the number of coffee beans is 14 15, and the selling ** is lower than AB. The particles of round beans are about 14 15 mesh, and if you follow the regulations, its ** should be at the price of C grade, but it is round beans!
In other words, although the round bean is far from reaching the number of meshes specified by the high grade, because of its unique and rare characteristics, it can be sold as well as AA grade beans!
It is precisely because people have made special treatment of round beans that consumers will think that the flavor of round beans will inevitably be much better than those "mediocre" (flat beans)!
But in fact, there is not much difference between beans (flat beans and round beans) of the same origin, variety, and cultivation method, simply because it is relatively rare. Therefore, most of the producing areas will ignore the round beans and will not specifically pick them out.