Many men and women think that a day cannot start right without coffee for breakfast. Coffee is probably the best liked of all hot drinks.

Coffee is made from coffee beans. Coffee beans are not really beans. But they are seeds just as beans are. They are formed in red cherry like berries. Each "cherry" has two seeds in it. The plant on which the coffee cherries grow is an evergreen bush from 5 to 15 feet tall.

Coffee grows only in warm lands. It cannot stand the least bit of frost. But it cannot stand great heat, either. Many coffee plantations are on mountain slopes, where the coffee plants are shaded part of the day. Coffee needs rich soil. It needs much rain while the cherries are forming and much sunshine while they are ripening. Most of our coffee comes to us from northern South America and from the countries of Central America. About half of all the coffee the world produces is coffee grown in Brazil.

A coffee plantation is a beautiful sight when the coffee bushes are in bloom. The flowers show very white against the glossy green leaves. They smell as sweet as orange blossoms. When the flowers drop their petals the fruits appear. At first they are tiny and green. As they get larger they change first to yellow, then to bright red. When they are ripe they are dark red. Some may be almost black.

The cherries are picked when they are ripe. The next step is to take all the outer part of the fruit away from the beans inside.

Before coffee beans are used, they must be roasted and ground. Coffee does not keep its flavour long after it is roasted. The beans that are to be shipped to another country are therefore shipped "green" which means "before roasting".

Not all coffee has the same flavour. Coffee in the shops is, as a rule, a mixture of two or more kinds. Mixing coffee of different kinds is called blending. Most people who like coffee very much have a favourite blend.

Drinking coffee makes a person more wide-awake. There is an old Arab story that tells how a goatherd was kept awake at night by his animals. The goats were romping about instead of sleeping. The goatherd found that the animals were eating the berries from some wild bushes. He ate a handful of the berries himself and found that he then felt very energetic. In this way, the story says, people first found out about coffee.

Sean Townes

Copyrighted material; do not reprint without permission.

 

View all articles by Sean Townes