Blue Mountain Coffee of Jamaica has exported seventy tons of Blue Mountain Coffee’s green coffee beans for the first time ever. For anyone who has been following the westernization of China for the last several decades there is no surprise that a radical increase in the consumption of coffee follows the increase of many other items and lifestyle choices have been imported from the United States and Western Europe. China has started to import significant amounts of petroleum products driving up the cost of goods for everyone in the world. They have also for the first time in history begun to import more rice than they produce which in 2007 started inflating the price of rice which has been a staple for fighting world hunger and substantially impacted the budget of many world hunger organizations.
Green Coffee Beans and the Growing Coffee Business in China
Although there is an attraction to items from the western world, frequently the items are modified to fit with Chinese taste and culture. I am sure that the Chinese business men who are importing the coffee will find a better way to infiltrate the Chinese culture of drinking tea than has Starbucks and other outside companies from the western world. The long term picture is that no matter how much you are paying for your coffee now it is sure to increase the price at a steady rate over the next several years as China will become the world’s number one consumer of coffee beans.
Some of you may be asking what in the world are green coffee beans. If you have only ever had folgers or generic coffee grounds that come in a five pound can you might be shocked to hear that your coffee comes from something that sounds like a vegetable. How does my beautiful brown toasty coffee grounds come from something that’s a green bean. Coffee grows on small trees or bushes in pods with seeds. The seeds are what make the green coffee beans. The seeds are removed from the pod and washed and cleaned. Then the green coffee beans are sold to various buyers based on the quality of the green coffee beans they demand different prices. Then the beans are shipped to various locations around the world. The large distributors roast and package the lowest grade beans in bulk and package it as folgers or something that is bought in the grocery. The medium grade green coffee beans are bought and roasted in smaller batches so that there is less time between roasting and brewing. These are places like Starbucks and Caribou. Then there are the high end green coffee beans that are bought by the specialty coffee shops and are roasted for your order and shipped the same day so that within 60 hours of roasting you are drinking the coffee.
Why Green Coffee Beans
Roasted Green Coffee beans start to lose their flavor the second they cool off and even the best system for sealing in the flavor won’t stop them from leaking out the best of the flavor. So if you want to experience the best in an ultimate cup of coffee you need to find a place that roasts their green coffee beans on site and drink a truly freshly roasted and brewed cup of coffee.
Roasting Coffee Beans
If you are the ultimate coffee connoisseur you may want to invest in the equipment so that you can roast your own green coffee beans. It used to be only a handful of roasting machines and some of them were dangerous. Now there are countertop coffee roasting machines that will roast and brew the coffee with little of your input.
