Tag: Growing Coffee

Discover How Coffee Lovers Are Growing Coffee

Farms that have been growing coffee for years, sometimes as long as two centuries, have the growth, cultivation and processing of coffee down to a fine art. But some coffee lovers like the challenge of do-it-yourself, or their interest in coffee leads them to try their hand at growing their own coffee plants. You can grow coffee from seed or purchase small plants, if you want to give this growing hobby a try.

While it’s unlikely that you’ll grow enough to keep yourself in coffee year round, growing coffee can be a fun and rewarding hobby. Unlike fruits and vegetables, you can’t simply pick the coffee and drink it. When coffee growing, your satisfaction will come more in that you actually grew a beautiful coffee plant, than the coffee it produces. And it is a hobby that requires a great deal of patience, as it can be years before the coffee berries appear.

Growing coffee isn’t difficult once you coax the seed to germinate, so even someone who hasn’t quite developed a green thumb can probably produce a lush and beautiful coffee plant. Coffee is easy to take care of, and is quite a lovely and dramatic plant to grow. The most ideal way to start is with a freshly picked coffee cherry, but it’s unlikely that most of us will ever have to access to one. Instead, purchase green coffee beans, the freshest and most recently picked as possible.

The reason the beans need to be fresh is that coffee can only be germinated from about 4 months after picking. While it can happen after that, it’s unlikely. Fresh seeds generally take between 2 and 3 months, so it’s a lengthy process that requires patience, even if you manage to find fresh beans.

To start growing coffee, soak the seeds in water for about a day then put them in damp sand or even vermiculite which you can find anywhere you can buy seeds. Make sure it’s wet but well-drained with no standing water. After the seed has germinated you can replant it in good soil that will drain well, and fertilize it. Water it every day to make sure that the soil is moist, but beware it staying too wet. A little too much water, or too less, and the seed will die.

When you first begin growing coffee, germinate several seeds and keep track of your watering each one so you can get a feel for the right amount of waterand you’re more likely to end up with a plant instead of just a few dead seeds! Artificial indoor lighting works great for coffee plants. Once you have a plant, water about twice a week and fertilize once. In two to three years, if you care for the plant properly you can expect flowering and cherries, and if you choose, you can learn the rather detailed process required to allow you to drink the coffee your plants provide. If not, a coffee plant makes a wonderful conversation piece.

Roasted Coffee Beans Give You True Flavor

Whether you’ve considered making your own roasted coffee beans or you simply want to be able to buy truly fresh beans, some simple facts about coffee can help you choose the best beans and end up with the best coffee you’ve ever had.

Coffee beans start out green. These raw beans are then roasted and ground into the coffee that most of us are familiar with. In fact, most everyone who has ever drunk coffee has experienced both an excellent and a horrible cup of coffee. Considering that you can do everything from growing your own coffee to purchasing instant coffee that only requires hot water, it’s no wonder that the quality of coffee can vary from one extreme to another.

And price really has no bearing on quality. You can pay a lot of money for brand name instant coffee that tastes worse than the cheaper ground coffee that sits next to it on the shelf. Expensive Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee might cost more than the store-brand, but if the Jamaican coffee is old and stale, the cheaper coffee will taste better. The problem with coffee you buy in a store is that you never really know how old the roasted coffee beans were when the coffee was ground, and how long ago the beans were groundboth factors that make or break the quality and flavor of coffee.

Roasted coffee beans are considered fresh for about a month, so the coffee you buy in a store should have been ground from those beans during that time. And the moment bean are ground, the coffee is fresh, but should be used immediately. Vacuum packing does retain much of the freshness, but coffee lovers know that freshly ground from bean to brew makes a better cup of coffee than freshly ground and instantly packaged, to sit on shelf for who knows how long.

If you’re purchasing whole roasted coffee beans, then the way they’re packaged will tell you something about their age. If there’s no way for CO2 to escape the package, then the beans had to sit for several days before they were packaged. If the packaging does allow for this release, then they were probably packaged immediately and will be fresher, providing you’re able to purchase them right away.

While they’re considered fresh for 30 days, true coffee fans will tell you that 3 days is the window for the best tasting coffee. After 3 days, the fresh roasted coffee beans will start to lose their aromatic oils. So for the best coffee possible, you can buy green coffee beans and roast them yourself at home.

The whole process of roasting your own beans takes less than a half an hour. Home roasting equipment lets you roast only small batchesbatches than can be easily used within 3 daysso you’re always guaranteed a fresh cup of coffee. If you choose to purchase roasted coffee beans, choose a shop that revolves around coffee so you know you’ll get quality every time.