Sandy here again to take you behind the scenes of Parisi Coffee to show you all that we do to ensure the cup of coffee you're enjoying at home and in our cafés is one of the best you can get anywhere in the world.
You may already know the difference between the two main species of coffee: Coffea canephora aka "Robusta" and Coffea arabica.
Coffee has been a heavily traded commodity for centuries. Like a lot of things, the industrial revolution, and specifically transportation changes, made mass-market coffee possible. We call the first mass-market coffee brands "First wave" coffee. There are three common coffee "waves":
First Wave Coffee: very bitter, darkly-roasted coffee with a focus on drinking coffee for the "caffeine kick" without considering the quality, origin, or taste.
Second Wave Coffee: experience-based coffee with some focus on taste and green coffee origin, but little emphasis on the qualities of its specific coffee beans.
Third Wave Coffee: mostly medium and lightly-roasted coffees centered around achieving exceptional quality and taste. Are usually transparent about the farms where the coffee is grown and the processes that are used.
Robusta coffee is a cheaper, lower quality coffee, grown at lower altitudes and was used in many of the first wave brands of coffee. It tastes rather bitter and rubbery, like a melted tire on hot pavement.
A lot of coffees our grandparents grew up drinking were poor quality arabica or straight-up robusta coffee, or even a blend of both! I never enjoyed drinking my parent's coffee when I was younger. I enjoyed the smell while it was brewing, but the taste was too much for me.
While more attention is being paid to increasing the quality of robusta on a national scale, at Parisi Coffee, we roast only arabica coffee. Arabica coffee tastes very different depending on where it's grown in the world, how high an elevation it grows, and which varietal of C. arabica is grown - the two most commonly grown arabica varietals are "Bourbon" and "Caturra," but there are many other crosses and hybrids.
How the coffee has been picked, processed, roasted, and even brewed also affects the final tastes and aromas found in your heavenly cup.
Our Los Pinos Maracaturra is a unique hybrid of the Maragogype also known as "Elephant Bean" (due to its large size) and Caturra, which is a natural mutation of the Bourbon variety. You'll immediately notice these beans are larger than average. This washed coffee is super sweet and packed full of juicy flavors such as Apple, Pear, and Honeysuckle. I hope you love it as much as I do.
Next in the series, I will jump into how different countries of origin affect coffee, so you won't want to miss it! If you missed my previous blog post, How is Coffee Processed? check it out so you can learn more about the different ways to process coffee.
Grazie!
Sip, Savor, and Enjoy a good life!