What is coffee?

Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from roasted coffee beans, the seeds of berries from certain coffea species.

Coffee trees are pruned short to conserve their energy and aid in harvesting, but can grow to more than 30 feet (9 meters) high. Each tree is covered with green, waxy leaves growing opposite each other in pairs. Coffee cherries grow along the branches. Because it grows in a continuous cycle, it’s not unusual to see flowers, green fruit and ripe fruit simultaneously on a single tree.

It takes nearly a year for a cherry to mature after first flowering, and about 5 years of growth to reach full fruit production. While coffee plants can live up to 100 years, they are generally the most productive between the ages of 7 and 20. Proper care can maintain and even increase their output over the years, depending on the variety. The average coffee tree produces 10 pounds of coffee cherry per year, or 2 pounds of green beans.

All commercially grown coffee is from a region of the world called the Coffee Belt. The trees grow best in rich soil, with mild temperatures, frequent rain and shaded sun.

We consume over 2.25 billion cups of coffee all around the globe, every single day. An estimated two-thirds of U.S. Americans drink a cup of coffee every day, and those that do total up 18.5 gallons of the brew a year – but that’s nothing compared to Finland, where people drank on average three times as much.

This is brief information about coffee. I will share more about coffee with you in the future blogs.