Do Coffee Beans Have Genders? Male vs Female Beans - Which is Better?

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Introduction to Male and Female Coffee Beans by FrontStreet Coffee

Coffee Beans

From cultivation to fruit production, coffee takes approximately five years. This process includes flowering, fruiting, harvesting, processing, storage, and sales, until we receive the raw coffee beans in the terminal market. Due to their similar appearance, coffee is also called coffee cherries. Removing the outer skin and pulp reveals two seeds - these are what we commonly know as coffee beans. Therefore, a normally growing coffee cherry typically contains two coffee beans, commonly known as flat beans, which professionals refer to as "female beans."

Male Beans

Another situation is when a coffee cherry contains only one seed, commonly known as a peaberry, which professionals refer to as "male beans."

Formation Reasons

During the growth process, one seed stops growing, allowing the other to fill the entire internal space of the coffee cherry. It is not considered a defective bean and is artificially believed to be of better quality compared to flat beans, although this lacks any scientific data support.

There are three forms of seeds in coffee fruits. Besides the rarely occurring triangular beans, a normal coffee fresh fruit typically contains spherical coffee seeds composed of two coffee beans joined together, with flat sides facing inward and curved sides facing outward. This common form of coffee bean is called a flat bean, also known as "female beans." A small number of seeds that do not split and present complete oval-shaped particles are called "male beans" (peaberries).

In reality, there is only a difference in growth form between these two, not gender distinction. The Chinese common names can indeed be misleading.

Among all the flat beans and peaberries I have encountered, without exception, peaberries have never shown superior performance to flat beans despite their fuller flesh.

Knowledge point: Pacamara is a hybrid variety discovered in El Salvador in 1950, crossing Pacas and Maragogype.

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