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imagined.
    For practical purposes, we devote this chapter to bean freshness. By the end, you will know how to do the following:
• Identify and evaluate the best, freshest coffees, and choose the best one for you
• Taste coffee
• Differentiate blends and formulate your own personal blend
• Host a coffee cupping
        Coffee Characteristics
    Coffee is such a delicate fruit that almost any difference in where and how it’s grown, picked, graded, sorted, processed, packaged, and shipped—even its botanical DNA—seems to make a marked difference in how it tastes in your cup. Understanding these differences is essential for learning how to choose the best beans, whether already roasted or those you plan to roast yourself.
    Species
    Several coffee plant species fall under the Rubiaceae family, genus name Coffea . Arabica is the original cultivated plant species and the one that offers the finest potential flavor. Two others, Robusta and Liberica, are used commercially but primarily in commodity coffee. (See chapter 1 , “Knowing Your Coffee Beans,” page 11 for a complete list of species, subspecies, and descriptions.)
    Terroir
    The earth in which the coffee trees are planted makes a big difference in a bean’s flavor. As gardeners know, soil feeds the plants, so coffee grown in different soil absorbs different nutrients. (It is similar to how grain-fed chicken or grass-fed cattle produce meat with different flavors than their commercial counterparts.) Jamaica’s rich volcanic soil produces different tasting coffee than chalky or sandy Yemen soils even if the beans come from the same parent trees.
    Climate
    Rainfall, sunlight, temperature, and other environmental factors all affect how beans grow and taste. A region’s particular climate influences season length, speed of bean-ripening, and water’s role as a nutrient. For example, coffee grown in thinner mountain air ripens later. Cloudy skies, tall trees, and mountains each form a canopy that protects beans from harsh sunlight.
    Farming Standards
    A number of farming techniques nurture coffee beans into realizing their full potential. Soil fertilization, pruning, watering, and other tree care change the soil’s ability to feed the trees. For example, contoured soil ensures equal distribution of water among trees.
    Farmers must harvest beans at their peak ripeness to ensure a top-quality crop. This means picking coffee several times during the month so that beans are ripe. A single picking means some beans will be under-ripe; others will be over-ripe. Harvesting a tree’s beans en masse—ripe, under-ripe, and all—compromises the coffee’s quality. Also, coffee trees only produce quality beans through so many harvests, meaning a properly managed farm replants its trees regularly.

Beloved Sumatra cherries and green beans, side by side.
    Processing
    The fruit of the coffee tree looks much like cherries—round and fleshy with a large seed pit. To make coffee, these seeds must be removed from the trees and dried. How and how well this happens affects flavor. There are two methods of processing: dry and wet.
    Dry processing is the original method still practiced in many regions worldwide, particularly near coffee’s Ethiopian birthplace. In this process, picked cherries dry out on a sun-exposed surface, such as a flat rooftop, causing the skin and fruit to become brittle and easy to remove. Layering beans is fine, as long as they get turned regularly to avoid scorched top layers and moldy bottom layers. Skin removal requires skill and good judgment; if too much skin gets peeled, the beans lose a layer of protection, potentially allowing premature staleness or mold. Most, if not all, of the dry process happens by hand.
    The dry process likely presents the purest representation of a coffee bean and its terroir, offering nothing but the bean’s