Do Coffee Beans Have Male and Female Varieties? Is the Taste Difference Between Peaberry and Regular Beans Bold vs Gentle?

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FrontStreet Coffee - Introduction to Male and Female Coffee Beans

PB stands for Peaberry, also known as caracoli. This is what we commonly call round beans. Typically, a coffee cherry contains two seeds, which are the common coffee beans we see - one side is curved and the other is flat, shaped like peanuts, which we call flat beans. Round beans, however, occur when there is only one coffee bean inside a coffee cherry. The bean shape is elliptical, and it accounts for a very small proportion of the entire coffee tree's fruit.

In botanical terms, round beans can be considered a defect. The reasons for this type of defect usually include damage by insects before the coffee fruit forms, the coffee tree being affected by prolonged drought or nutritional imbalance, or coffee beans growing at the ends of coffee tree branches.

The industry has not reached a clear conclusion on the quality of round beans. Some people believe that round beans don't taste as good as flat beans, while others think that round beans concentrate the nutrients of two beans into one, containing richer substances, thus tasting better. I personally haven't conducted any analysis or comparison on this, but it's conceivable that round beans can be selected one by one manually, ensuring overall quality, so it's not surprising that they taste better.

In fact, the coffee flower is a plant that possesses both male and female organs simultaneously, belonging to the Rubiaceae family of the Gentianales order. Coffee beans themselves are the core seeds of coffee cherries before roasting. They can grow on their own when fallen into soil, and even a single tree can produce coffee cherries.

Coffee Trees Don't Have Male and Female Distinctions

Since coffee plants are hermaphroditic, there are no so-called male and female tree distinctions, and naturally, there shouldn't be differences between male and female beans. Furthermore, the English term for "male bean" is "Peaberry" or the abbreviation "PB" - it's not called "Male Beans." The term "male bean" is just a Chinese colloquialism; in fact, it has another name called "round bean."

Knowledge Point: Coffee roasting is the process that triggers Maillard reactions and caramelization reactions inside green beans, producing more wonderful flavors.

In Summary

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