There’s more to drinking coffee than just walking into a shop and asking for a small, medium, or large cup of whatever the house blend is. The amount of time and effort it takes to grow and harvest coffee beans around the world deserves a little more respect from the average consumer, especially since the delicate taste you get has nothing to do with the barista at Starbucks, and more to do with faraway volcanic slopes and mountain ridges.
Yes, what really makes coffee taste great are the beans themselves, or the special regions in countries around the world where the weather gets together to create the perfect growing environment. To learn a little bit more about the world’s different coffee producing regions, as well as the most popular beans, you needn’t look any further than this handy guide, which will teach you how to make the best possible pot of coffee around just by learning which brands to select.
Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee Ever enjoyed a drink at a bar that included Tia Maria? Then you know the secret of Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee, which is known for its surprisingly mild flavor and serious lack of bitter aftertaste. In addition to flavoring one of the tastiest coffee liqueurs around, Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee also is brewed as regular coffee. The coffee beans grow between Kingston and Port Maria in the Blue Mountains, where a cool and misty climate with a huge annual rainfall ensures the soil is just right to grow these special beans.
Kape Barako One of the types of coffee grown in The Philippines, not many people are familiar with Kape Barako, because of an infestation of Coffee Rust in the 1990s that almost wiped out the plants forever. A type of Liberica species, the coffee, when available, is popular with gourmets, who enjoy a blend where it’s mixed with Arabica to get the best tasting coffee with a distinct aroma.
Costa Rican coffee Not as well known as Columbian coffee by any means, Costa Rica has long been a country where coffee was a hugely important cash crop. The most popular varieties of beans are West Valley, Tres Rios, and Tarrazu, which are known worldwide for their very good body and aroma, as well as a level of acidity that’s rather manageable. These coffee beans are used in blends frequently.
Kopi Luwak Always wanted to try a coffee made from beans that have already been eaten and digested? Well, you might have done that inadvertently, with Kopi Luwak coffee beans. Grown in Java, the coffee is some of the most popular around, all thanks to Asian Palm Civits, which love the coffee beans, eat them, and then digest them in a remarkable process that adds more flavor for us humans later. Apologies in advance if coffee was just ruined for you forever.
In recent years, a growing movement for fair-trade coffee has made regular consumers aware that the beans they enjoy don’t always come from people who are being fairly compensated for their hours toiling in the fields. In fact, harvesting coffee beans, whether you’re on a hillside in Kenya or the jungle in Columbia, is extremely hard work, and it definitely deserves a fair wage. The best way, therefore, to buy coffee a lot of the time is by going through these fair-trade groups.
For socially-conscious consumers, one of the best things you can do, before deciding you absolutely must try a type of coffee bean, is to see if there’s an organization that produces and imports said beans in a fair-trade way. Harvesting coffee is tough work, and it’s a shame how unfairly paid a number of these production countries are, especially considering how much the beans draw around the world.
For a sizable Saturday BBQ, Damian Papworth’s 8 cup coffee maker comes in real useful. On any other standard day though, one cup coffee makers are more convenient.
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