Did you know that coffee that is too fresh is a thing? Here are some coffee facts that will challenge what you think you know about coffee.

Interesting Coffee Facts: Did You Know:

The best-tasting coffee is brewed 1-2 weeks after it’s roasted?

• Contrary to what you might think, coffee does not taste best immediately after roasting. Carbon dioxide is created inside the coffee beans during the roasting process. After roasting, coffee beans need time to degas and fully develop their flavors. If you brew a freshly roasted bag of beans, you’ll end up with a weak-tasting coffee. While every bag of beans needs a different amount of time to degas after roasting, three days to a week is a broad range of how long you should wait before brewing a new bag. Learn more about coffee degassing and why it’s important here.
• At Bean and Bean, we roast our coffee in-house, meaning you get freshly roasted beans straight from the source. Once you buy a bag, let it sit for a couple days, then enjoy!

Did you know that there are more sustainable ways to grow coffee?

• Shade-grown coffee is coffee grown underneath a canopy of taller trees that provide shade from the sun.  Coffee is traditionally grown in this manner – underneath a natural forest canopy–and this approach is more environmentally friendly. 
• A demand for more crop yield has led to sun-grown coffee. Although the yield is higher with this method, it’s damaging to the environment. It leads to a loss in biodiversity and disrupts a previously balanced ecosystem by making growth dependent on fertilizers and pesticides.

Fair trade and direct trade coffee help farmers earn a living wage in different ways.

• Fair trade is an organization that determines the living wage in a specific country or region and uses that standard to signal that a consumer good has been made with fair wages. While maintaining checks and balances on producer payment is difficult, fair trade serves an important purpose in achieving a minimum baseline for producers conditions and wages.
• Direct trade is another transparent and ethical way to purchase coffee. Buyers buy coffee directly from the coffee farmer, without using an intermediary. This is a more transparent approach to pricing in every step of the coffee buying process. When buying directly from a farm, buyers know exactly how much the farmers and exporters/importers make.
• At Bean and Bean, we sell a variety of coffee beans directly traded with coffee producers. Some of our options include the award-winning Santa Felisa farm, Janson farm, and Cafelumbus farm.

You can make coffee taste less bitter with a pinch of salt?

• Adding a small amount of salt to your coffee helps reduce the bitterness and revive stale-tasting coffee. Research has shown that salt is a better compound than sugar to reduce bitterness.

Coffee gets its flavor from a fruit?

• Coffee is a seed! Coffee comes from the coffee cherry and looks like a small red berry. Different methods of processing the coffee cherry impact the resulting flavor. The resulting coffee tastes differently depending on how long and how much of the cherry pulp remains on the coffee bean during processing. Learn more about coffee processing here. 

Female coffee farmers produce less than their male counterparts because they have less access to resources. 

• Unfortunately, female coffee farmers earn less than their male counterparts. Social and economic barriers prevent women from accessing essential resources in coffee production. For example, a 2018 International Coffee Organization report shows that despite women contributing up to 70% of labor in coffee production, they have systematically lower access to resources, such as land, credit, and information, than men. The result is a “measurable gender gap in economic outcomes, including yields, productivity, and farm income.” 
• As a women-owned coffee business, we at Bean and Bean prioritize supporting women coffee producers by sourcing some of our most popular coffee beans from them. Check out the award-winning Santa Felisa Gesha Washed coffee or Guatemala Orange Honey for delicious women-powered coffee. 

Coffee farmers profit very little from the coffee they sell. 

• Many coffee farmers receive very little profit from the coffee they sell even though coffee is one of the top exported goods in the world! A large portion of the money goes to intermediaries that process and sell the coffee. Many coffee farmers cannot survive in this economy. Direct trade is an immense help for coffee farmers and helps them to earn sustainable wages. 

Conclusion 

After reading these coffee facts, you know more about coffee sustainability, ethical sourcing, and coffee tasting. Were there any that surprised you? Here at Bean and Bean, we prioritize buying ethically sourced beans and promoting sustainable purchasing and coffee consumption practices. 

Sip and read more:

• How to Drink Coffee More Sustainably
• How Do Coffee Beans Get Their Flavor?
• 10 Ways to Make Coffee Less Bitter