Regular (left) and Peaberry (right) beans
While on our honeymoon this past summer we toured the Kona Joe coffee company and brought back some of their award winning trellis-grown coffee. One of the more interesting things we learned was the story behind oddly shaped peaberry coffee beans. It turns out that inside each fruit of the coffee plant (the cherry) there are two embryos. Normally, both are fertilized and grow inside that confined space resulting in the typical hemispherical shape of coffee beans. Peaberries occur when only a single embryo is fertilized inside the coffee cherry. Historically, the 5% of the crop that developed as peaberries was discarded but recently coffee-heads have realized that, when roasted, these beans produce a unique, somewhat sweeter coffee. Tomorrow (Monday) at 3:30 in the Grad Student Lounge well brew a pot of both Peaberry and regular Kona coffees accompanied by mango-macadamia-coconut cookies.