March 2, 2016
Bill Skinner told the story on coffee. Really good coffee.
Do you want to know why coffee is so expensive? It takes 6 1/2 pounds of the red coffee cherries to get 1 pound of coffee. That translates into approximately 40 cups of coffee.
The best growing conditions are on higher altitude mountainsides where the plants grow in the shade under and with other crops. Harvesting is slow because the growers only harvest the ripe cherries, by hand. That means repeated harvests until the crop is finished.
The cherries are de-husked, which is a slow process, de-skinned, dried and then sold to the market where the buyers finish by roasting. Freshness makes a huge difference in the quality of the brewed coffee.
Apparently, coffee originated in Ethiopia. The growers brought it to Arabia, then to India and it has really caught on around the world. Of the two types grown, Arabica and Robusta, the most common is Robusta. It is grown as a mono-crop on the flat, open land in the direct sun. All the coffee cherries are harvested by machine all at once so the quality is very mixed. Everything from unripe to overripe gets mixed together. The end product is the crap we grew up with. Sorry, my roots are showing.