Which is that beverage that is universally popular and valued? If you are thinking of ‘booze’ or ‘tea’, then you are mistaken. It is the coffee which we are talking about. In almost every part of the world, coffee is served in offices, meetings, homes, dates, parties and so on.

History has it that coffee was served in Ethiopia in the ninth century as well. the popularity of coffee can easily be gauged by the fact that there are millions of coffee shops in the world today. Without a doubt it can be said of coffee that it rakes in a lot of money compared to its counterparts.

When you return home after a day’s work and rest on your couch while watching a program on the television, your desire to have a cup of coffee never seems to disappear. Talk about a base ball match or a football match, everyone needs a cup of coffee to feel the excitement.

Even while traveling, the first thing you ask an air-hostess for is the same old ‘cup of coffee’. The best thing about this beverage is that it can be consumed in every season. Be it a cold chilly night or a hot afternoon, you can always insist for a cup of coffee.

The reason behind this is that there are a number of recipes of coffee. Iced coffee, “cafe’ latte”, “cafe’ macchiato”, “cafe’ Americano”, “espresso”, “mocha” etc are some of the variants of coffee. No matter what kind of coffee you would like to brew, you can always do so with a vintage coffee maker. A vintage coffee maker simplifies things for you by making you a cup of coffee within seconds.

You can even opt for a vintage coffee maker which has two coffee makers attached together. With the usage of non-stick plates in these coffee makers, the headache of cleaning them has almost disappeared. There are a number of established consumer electronics which make coffee makers. Vintage coffee makers have a charisma that would leave your guests in awe.

Some of the advanced coffee makers have superior features like automatic shut-off, water level indicator, timer etc. Serving coffee is an art too and therefore you would definitely like to have stylish coffee mugs, coffee cups etc at your home. These days, a popular product is the two-in-one “coffee cups pottery glass”. Talk about “coffee pots collectibles” and the Internet brings you hundreds of options. Visit some online stores and check out the stylish range of coffee cups, mugs etc.

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Adding Flavor to Coffee

Thus coffee was discovered and developed. The flavored coffee bean is not as recent a development as you might think. In earlier times, adding nuts and spices to the coffee beverage was a norm in some cultures in the Middle East. Some even steeped the coffee beans in some flavored liquid to integrate the desired flavor instead of adding the flavor just before or while the coffee was brewed.

These days, people have developed many different ways of achieving flavored coffee beans. Usually, the flavored coffee bean is introduced to the flavor right after it has been roasted to the satisfaction of the roaster. The kind of coffee bean used for the flavored coffee bean is usually the Arabica. This is because it is milder and less acidic than other species of coffee. It is also not as bitter as the Robusta species of coffee which can be the fuller bodied coffee between the two.

Flavoring oils are usually what is used to add flavor to the flavored coffee bean. These can be any synthetic or organic flavoring oil that exist today. Which to use is dependent on the company that currently manufactures the flavored coffee bean. Due to the popularity of designer coffee and flavored coffee, having flavored coffee beans and grinding them on your own has become a novelty for many.

The more popular kinds of flavored coffee beans are those which are sweet and creamy. Examples of these are Amaretto, Hazelnut, Irish Crème, French Vanilla and many more. These flavored coffee beans can actually help manufacturers by masking the stronger flavors of the coffee that is used for most commercial items. Many manufacturers use Robusta coffee instead of the more expensive Arabica and the flavor them to mask the stronger, bitter taste. The flavored coffee bean has come a long way and is definitely here to stay.

But what exactly is coffee, and how is it produced? The soul of coffee is in the coffee beans. Coffee beans, botanically inaccurate, are the seeds of the coffee plants. Coffee cherries usually contain two of the flat pits positioned with their sides together. Coffee plants are harvested for the sake of the beans which contain caffeine, the essence of the coffee and the reason it is such a desirable export for many countries around the world, and the reason that coffee processing is such an important venture.

Unlocking the Secrets

The processing of coffee beans begins with picking. All coffee is harvested by one of two means: strip picking or selective picking. With strip picking, the entire coffee crop is harvested at once, either by machine or by hand. This results in a mixture of ripe and unripe cherries, meaning that the coffee beans are not always at the peak of their flavor. This method is usually employed by lower-end coffee companies. Selective picking means that workers pick only the red, ripe coffee cherries. The resulting coffee is smooth and fragrant, and also a lot more expensive. Either way, picking is one of the most important steps in coffee production, as without it, the coffee beans will never be unshelled.

The actual processing of coffee beans can be wet or dry. Wet processing required the use of specialized equipment, and results in the fruit being removed from the beans before they are dried. Wet processing helps to preserve the beans; meaning that the green coffee produced is less defective. The resulting coffee is higher-end and more costly. When the coffee beans are immersed in water, bad or unripe fruit floats and ripe fruit sinks. While some of the pulp is removed during this process, the rest has to be removed either by the ferment-and-wash method or the newer mechanical demucilaging.

Dry processing is the oldest and most natural method of processing coffee beans. After harvesting, the entire cherry is cleaned and dried in the sun on tables. Once in the sun, the cherries are turned by hand to make sure that they dry evenly and do not mildew; it can take up to four weeks before the fruit is dried completely. Dried cherries are stored in bulk until they are sent for milling where they are hulled, sorted, graded and bagged. Hulling results in the removal of all of the outer layers of the dried cherries, leaving only the coffee beans behind.

The best cup of coffee that you will have ever tasted would obviously have been made from the best coffee beans and these in turn had to be grown in the best conditions that are a combination of special climes and also fertile soil. As everybody knows, it is countries such as Brazil that supply the world with the best coffee beans because this tropical region has the best as far as regular sunshine and rain are concerned. Still, coffee beans were first discovered in Ethiopia and it is still being grown there though the production of coffee beans has since then spread to all parts of the world.

Seventy Odd Coffee Bean Growing Countries

In fact, from among the seventy odd coffee bean producing countries in the world, only a handful have the proper climate and soil in which to grow the best coffee beans. Brazil alone accounts for about a third of all coffee bean production followed by Columbia where roasts are the most popular type of coffee beans. Other top coffee bean producing countries are Indonesia (third) and Mexico where the coffee grown has a very distinctive taste and so, Mexican coffee beans can also be considered as being among the best coffee beans, though only because of the unique taste those beans provide.

Another factor that governs the quality of coffee beans is the altitude where they are grown and thus best coffee beans are usually produced in high lying areas and in Brazil, the production of coffee beans is ordered and is also a huge industry that employs a large labor force. However, Columbia that has plenty of coffee bean growing areas at higher altitudes certainly can lay claim to being the country that produces best coffee beans, though this is not always realized since the country suffers from bad economy which make it difficult to get the beans from their growing areas to processing plants in the best possible manner.

Another top contender for growing best coffee beans is Hawaii where the quantity grown may be on the small side but the growing conditions are ideal and the plants are especially known to flourish in volcanic ash and where a hot sun beats down followed by frequent showers – all of which are ideal coffee bean growing conditions. Thus, Hawaiian coffee beans are certainly among the best coffee beans grown anywhere on this planet.

Indonesia that was colonized by the Dutch too grows best coffee beans and that is because the country has a humid as well as balmy climate and the technology used in growing coffee beans is very advanced, which is why coffee beans grown in places such as Java and also Sulawesi that are being exported to the rest of the world enjoy a very enviable reputation.