The Types of Gourmet Coffee

Whether you are a coffee connoisseur or just need your morning pick me up, there's nothing to tempt the palate quite like a hot mug of smooth gourmet coffee! These improvements allow gourmet coffee drinkers the chance to choose between many different grades and flavors of the coffee. Since it's first induction as the world's most popular beverage, coffee has gone through many changes and upgrades.

Each process will bring about the shared result of removing all of the fruit from the seed. There are a couple of different ways to extract the seed; wet process and dry process. The coffee bean is not really a bean; they are actually the seeds of a cherry that are found on a coffee tree. To fully appreciate a cup of hot gourmet flavored coffee, you should take a minute to inform yourself with the basics of gourmet coffee.

Those that enjoy this type of coffee will also tell you that gourmet coffee has a much better smell and more desirable flavors than Robusta. It has50% of the caffeine of Robusta and has the best taste. gourmet) coffee is the best grade of coffee. Arabica (a.k.a. Robusta coffee makes up the coffee that has the most caffeine, at the cheapest price. There are two types of coffee: Arabica and Robusta.

Basically, if there is any flavor that you are partial to, you will be able to find. Gourmet coffee is available in many of your favorite flavors, including: almond, amaretto, Irish crème, French vanilla, Swiss mocha, vanilla, chocolate, mint, peppermint, pumpkin spice and just about anything else you can imagine!

Arabica coffee ranks very high among the Specialty Coffee Association of America, which pretty much sets the standards applied to all gourmet coffee drinks. If you have a sensitive stomach, you can even find gourmet coffee that is low in acid, making it a little more gentle. There are gourmet flavored coffees that are caffeinated and those that are decaffeinated.

Though this type of coffee may be a bit more pricey than the Robusta, it's the only choice for true coffee lovers! They are also offered at many different prices, depending on your personal preference. The gourmet coffee beans are offered in a variety of different serving sizes. Many coffee making companies offer a gourmet style drink, including: Gevalia, Green Mountain, San Giorgio, San Francisco Bay, Kona and Javalution.

what is it that interests us so much in the variety of coffee brands

Do coffee brands tell us about coffee quality? How do they manage to enter the market and satisfy customers' needs? The true battle between different coffee brands is fought at the level of business history, special flavors, manufacturing techniques and the relationship price-quality. In time, ever since the introduction of coffee to the Western world, the richness of coffee brands was indisputable, but at the moment, a company needs an incredibly solid name to survive in the business and to gain recognition at the international level.

For instance, one of the most famous coffee brands in the 30s was Eight O'Clock Coffee, but now it faces most serious competition from Nestle for instance. Is the name the only element that differs among coffee brands? Market studies show that there is even a significant caffeine level difference between the products we purchase; right within the same company, two production lines may differ.

Furthermore, laboratory analyses performed for some coffee brands show that even decaffeinated products contain a low level of caffeine in their composition, since a high degree of purity is very difficult to achieve. If some people only use certain coffee brands because they are pleased with the level of quality, there are plenty others who haven't made up their minds yet, and keep changing coffee types.

Little do people know that the very drink that wakes them up in the morning has made a huge journey sometimes twice around the world before getting in their cup. Though we usually associate flavors with coffee brands and the finite product, it would be quite interesting to know that it takes four thousand manually harvested coffee beans to produce one single pound of coffee.

Throughout an entire season, a coffee tree can only give enough beans to make two pounds of roasted coffee; this should tell us something about the complexity of the processes that make coffee brands fight for supremacy on the market.

From the cheapest to the most refined and expensive coffee brands, most companies use primary matter supplied by Brazil, which is the largest coffee producer of the world. The manufacturing processes vary from case to case, however, the most common coffee type made in Brazil uses beans that have been dried in the fruit; moreover the coffee varieties produced here are much sweeter and less acidic than other kinds of coffee cultivated in Africa or Asia.

a look at the major difference between arabica and robusta coffee plant

Though generally referred to as a coffee tree due to the huge dimensions it can get to, the coffee plant is an evergreen specific to the warm subtropical areas all over the world. Though there are quite many species varieties, there are only two types of coffee plant that global economy exploits on a large scale: they are Arabica and Robusta, the two coffee kinds on which international commerce depends.

Though these two varieties of the coffee plant are used, Arabica leads beyond any trace of a doubt as it is responsible for 75% of the world coffee production, whereas Robusta only gives 20%. This huge difference comes from the coffee plant specificity of each of these subspecies. The beans produced by Robusta coffee plant are inferior in what the quality is concerned due to the higher level of caffeine that also influences taste.

Thus, Robusta coffee is a little bitter than Arabica and darker too; nevertheless, certain communities also depend on this coffee variety for economic survival. To make harvesting pretty easy or comfortable, the height of the coffee plant is kept under control on plantations, and it doesn't get to grow as high as ten meters as it would normally do, if left wild.

Another major difference between Arabica and Robusta coffee plant lies in pollination specificity: Arabica for instance is self fertilizing whereas Robusta depends on cross pollination. The full development of the coffee fruit, the delicious bean we depend on for our morning coffee, takes about thirty to thirty-five weeks after which it's time to harvest. As for the growth period of the coffee plant until it becomes fertile it ranges between four and five years.

For proper development, the coffee plant depends on a pretty high level of rainfall every year; it is sensitive to cold, however, it will not die because of accidentally cooler weather. The dependence on warm temperature makes it impossible to cultivate the coffee plant in Europe or in other similar parts of the world, where a temperate climate provides incompatible environments.

One great surprise came when a naturally decaffeinated type of coffee plant was discovered in Brazil, with a lot better flavor than the no-caffeine coffee brands manufactured at present. Flavor is usually lost because caffeine is extracted with the help of solvents, while if it be completely absent from the chemical composition of the plant, the flavor would remain untouched. Cultivating this type of coffee plant would mean a true revolution in the business, and things are not far from moving in that direction.

curious coffee facts coffee is the second most traded product after oil

Coffee is part of our daily lives and we definitely love it, but were things always like that? How popular was coffee during its first days in the Western world? Among the first coffee facts that have been preserved over the centuries it is impressive to know how it was banned from the Christian world as the devil's drink.

Coffee actually reached Europe as a result of the flourishing commerce the Venetians had with the Eastern countries, and they brought it from Constantinople where it was kept very high in esteem as being an incredibly tasty drink. Christian priests at the time argued against any positive coffee facts that it was a drink given to the infidels by Satan as a substitute for wine which had been forbidden to them.

Historic coffee facts indicate that it wasn't until the 16th century that this now so popular drink was blessed by the pope and commerce started to develop. At the end of the 1500s, Europe actually saw the creation of the first coffee houses, and the former banishing of this drink remained in the past and the subject of popular anecdotes.

Coffee facts show that presently this drink has gained such a great prominence that people are actually celebrating a special coffee day; moreover in terms of commercial importance we need to say that coffee is the second most traded product after oil. Among the many curious coffee facts we need to mention that there are hundreds of coffee varieties growing all over the world, nevertheless, only two are largely cultivated for economic purposes: Arabica and Robusta.

A fully-grown coffee tree will remain in production for up to forty years once it starts to produce coffee beans, not to mention that it only takes five years to become fertile. Though, Brazil is the largest coffee producer in the world, there are plenty other geographical areas suitable for the cultivation of this very important tree: Java, Mexico, some Caribbean islands, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Tanzania, Kenya or Cameroon.

Among the most surprising coffee facts we should mention here, one is related to the increased flavor of the coffee beans that results from the roasting process. The secret behind the exquisite taste lies in the presence of sugar within the internal structure of coffee beans; during the roasting process, this sugar gets caramelized which intensifies the overall flavor and delights every coffee lover.