Peaberry Coffee - why all the fuss?

A lot of fuss is generated about "peaberry coffee".  Some baristas won't touch anything else.  Some swear that its the new "frontier" in coffee drinking.  Others can't see what the fuss is about.  So, firstly, let's talk about what "peaberry" coffee is. 

Coffee beans grow on the coffee bush as a "cherry" which when ripe looks like a red, fruity-looking .. cherry!  Inside this "cherry" is where we find the coffee "beans".  They are actually seeds but we call them beans. In a normal "cherry" there are 2 beans.  One each side of the cherry growing together in perfect harmony as 2 halves of a rugby ball shape.

In the image below you can see these cherries.  

 

However, sometimes only one of the "beans" is fertilised, which means that only one bean develops inside the cherry.  In this case, the harmony is broken and the single bean is able to grow and develop without its buddy .. and so grows into a pea shaped bean rather than half a rugby ball.  

Below are 2 images - the first image is of "normal coffee beans" - you can see they have a flat side and a round side.  So they do indeed look a bit like a rugby ball that's been cut in half along the length of the ball.  You can now see how 2 of these develop together in a round coffee "cherry".  

This second image is of roasted peaberry beans - notice how much rounder they all are having developed as one bean within the "cherry". These guys ARE rugby balls in their own right!  In the photo below you can literally see where the bean has grown without it's twin to create a single, round "pea-shaped" bean.

 

Got all that?  Good.  Because this next bit is the important bit.  There are as number of theories offered up to explain why peaberry coffee tastes "better" and more complex.  Our favourite and probably truest version is that when we roast normal beans which are individually shaped like one half of a rugby ball - we have a curved side and a flat side. Because there is a flat side - then within the roasting drum, the flat side roasts slightly differently to the curved side.  There is an inbuilt inconsistent roast across all the beans because the flat side sometimes roasts darker than the round side because the flat side of the bean doesn't roll .. and so gets "stuck" for longer within the sides of the drum and so roasts slightly darker.  This theory makes sense to us.

When we roast "peaberry beans" - i.e. with all beans pea-shaped, they roll much better and so never get "stuck" on the side of the drum.  They therefore roast much more evenly and consistently across the roast as a whole. 

This difference may be marginal but it IS important.  With a more consistent roast across all the beans there is a cleaner, brighter taste.  Peaberry coffee is more complex in the upper ends of the aromatic scale.  There is less carbonisation (bitterness) on the beans as a whole and this allows the natural tastes and aromas shine through. Some baristas refuse to serve anything else than peaberry due to its superior quality.

However, so that we can enjoy this cleaner, more complex, peaberry coffee - those peaberry beans need to be separated out from the normal beans.  This is done in several ways - but primarily by hand-picking coffee and then a series of graded sieves.  Peaberry beans tend to be smaller than normal beans and so size is one way of removing them setting the sieve grade small enough to allow them through whilst retaining the normal beans.  Even with this method some normal beans will get through - and that is where, again, hand sorting is used.

This highly manual separation process is one reason why peaberry coffee is more expensive. The other reason is that there is just not much of it.  Only around 5-10% of ALL beans are peaberry beans.  Another reason is that not many farms are set up, or can be bothered, to separate out the peaberry beans.  Which is kind of understandable. 

This leaves us with a situation where peaberry coffee is not common, it is expensive and it is sometimes difficult to get hold of.  It tends to be available on a harvest by harvest basis.  We have been offering Brazilian Peaberry Coffee in our shop for this season.  We were lucky that our supplier offered us the whole of their last peaberry harvest and we could not say no.  This year's harvest (2024) has yet to be announced and so we wait to see if peaberry coffee will be available for our Brazilian offering.  We hope so.

So, there you have it.  Peaberry coffee is uncommon, variable in its availability, and it comes and it goes.  However, it is worthwhile hunting it down - it has a cleaner, less bitter taste due to the reduction in carbonisation we sometimes get on all normal beans and it has much brighter, more obvious aromatics when brewed.  When you see peaberry coffee, we recommend grabbing it! 

Get your Brazilian Peaberry Coffee here!