The Coffee Bean

							Title:
The Coffee Bean

Word Count:
469

Summary:
Coffee is a beverage, served hot or
 with ice, with or without cream an
d sugar, prepared from the roasted
seeds of the coffee plant. These se
eds are almost always called the co
ffee bean. Coffee is one of the mos
t popular beverages in adults today.


Keywords:
coffee, coffee bean, coffee beans,
arabica coffee, Java, Hawaiian Kona
, Jamaican Blue Mountain, Columbian
, Ethiopian, Costa Rican Tarrazu


Article Body:
Coffee is a beverage, served hot or
 with ice, with or without cream an
d sugar, prepared from the roasted
seeds of the coffee plant. These se
eds are almost always called the co
ffee bean. Coffee is one of the mos
t popular beverages in adults today.
The coffee bean, itself, contains c
hemicals which are mind-altering (i
n a way some find pleasing) to huma
ns as a coincidental result of thei
r defense mechanism; those chemical
s are toxic in large doses, or even
 in their normal amount when consum
ed by many creatures which may othe
rwise have threatened the coffee be
ans in the wild.

A coffee bean from two different pl
aces usually have distinctive chara
cteristics such as flavor (flavor c
riteria includes terms such as "cit
rus-like" or "earthy"), caffeine co
ntent, body or mouthfeel, and acidi
ty. These are dependent on the loca
l environment where the coffee plan
ts are grown, their method of proce
ss, and the genetic subspecies or v
arietal.

Some well-known arabica coffee beans
 include:

* Colombian - Coffee was first intr
oduced to the country of Colombia i
n the early 1800's. Today Maragogyp
e, Caturra, Typica and Bourbon cult
ivars are grown. When Colombian cof
fee is freshly roasted it has a bri
ght acidity, is heavy in body and i
s intensely aromatic. Colombia prod
uces about 12% of the coffee in the
 world, second only to Brazil.

* Colombian Milds - Includes coffee
s from Colombia, Kenya, and Tanzani
a, all of which are washed arabicas
.

* Costa Rican Tarrazu - from the Ta
rrazu Valley in the highlands outsi
de of San José, archetypal estate c
offee is La Minita.

* Guatemala Huehuetenango - Grown a
t over 5000 feet in the northern re
gion, one of the most remote growin
g regions in Guatemala

* Ethiopian Harrar — from the regio
n of Harar, Ethiopia

* Ethiopian Yirgacheffe — from the
area of the town of Yirga Cheffe in
 the Sidamo (now Oromia) region of
Ethiopia

* Hawaiian Kona — grown on the slop
es of Hualalai in the Kona District
 on the Big Island of Hawaii.

* Jamaican Blue Mountain — From the
 Blue Mountain region of Jamaica. D
ue to its popularity, it fetches a
high price in the market.

*   Java — from the island of Java, i
n   Indonesia. This coffee was once s
o   widely traded that "java" became
a   slang term for coffee

... and more.

Some coffee bean varieties are so w
ell-known and so in-demand that the
y are far more expensive than other
s. Jamaican Blue Mountain and Hawai
ian Kona coffees are perhaps the mo
st prominent examples. Often these
coffee beans are blended with other
, less expensive coffee beans and t
he suffix "blend" added to the labe
lling, such as "Blue Mountain blend
" or "Kona blend" even though they
only contain a small amount of the
coffee bean mentioned.

One unusual and very expensive vari
ety of robusta is the Indonesian Ko
pi Luwak and the Philippine Kape Al
amid. The coffee bean is collected
from the droppings of the Common Pa
lm Civet, whose digestive processes
 give it a distinctive flavor.