Coffee beans are divided into male beans and female beans

I don't know when coffee beans started to have the term "male bean". Male beans refer to a whole oval coffee bean that looks like a pea. Its scientific name is "Peaberry". Pea means pea, and Berry refers to general berries or berries, such as grapes, tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries, dried nuts, dried seeds, etc. So Peaberry is a berry that looks like a pea.

There is a saying that Peaberry grows at the end of branches, where the nutrient supply is insufficient, the fruit is lacking in nutrition, and the fruit is poorly developed. This is not true, because on a fruit-bearing coffee tree, beans like Peaberry are not only seen on the branches, but all over the tree, in the fruit clusters, but in small quantities, accounting for only about 5% of the total production.

Another theory is that during the growth of coffee beans, the kernel matures and grows larger over time. When it grows to a certain size, the seed will naturally split into two halves, turning into the coffee beans that look like peanuts with two sides. Peaberry beans are beans that only have a crack and cannot split into two kernels. In fact, this explanation is not entirely true. It is of course a misunderstanding of coffee beans caused by a lack of understanding.

In fact, Peaberry is the result of incomplete pollination. This kind of bean is called dwarf bean abroad, which is an incompletely developed coffee bean.

Observe the coffee berries on the branches. Usually one berry contains two seeds, but there are always a few that grow in the shape of a single seed. We call it Peaberry (Figure 1), which is translated into Chinese as "round bean". Of course, it is very likely that there are more than two seeds in one coffee berry. As long as there are more than two seeds, the appearance will be triangular, so it is called triangular bean.

From a botanical perspective, a pair of kernels must grow at the same time, but only one pea-shaped kernel grows. Foreign coffee botanists call them dwarf beans. They are the product of incomplete pollination, so they are abnormal beans.

A fruit with two seeds is called Regular (Figure 2), which means normal beans.

If there is only one seed in a fruit, it is a Peaberry. The seed on the other side, unless it has shriveled and cannot be seen, is usually an empty shell (Figure 3) called shell bean. It also has another interesting name called [elephant ear bean] (Figure 4).

If there are three seeds in one fruit (Figure 5), most of them will appear in the shape of three triangular beans hugging each other. Occasionally, there will be an elephant ear bean on one side and two triangular beans on the other side (Figure 6). The combination of these two beans is just the size of a normal bean. There have been four triangular beans squeezed into one fruit at the same time, but the probability of occurrence is relatively rare.

The most pressing issue for everyone - Will Peaberry taste better?

Many people have misunderstandings about Peaberry beans, thinking that Peaberry beans perform better in the cup than regular beans, but this is not true. Regardless of which country Peaberry coffee beans are produced in, they usually have thinner colloids than regular beans, and their acidity is relatively stronger and more direct. The complexity and level of flavor changes are also slightly inferior to regular beans. Some people particularly praise Peaberry, saying that its flavor is more prominent and more obvious than ordinary beans from the same production area. In fact, there are differences in flavor, but the difference in the same production area cannot be that big of a difference. Don't let "scarcity makes things more expensive" mess up your thinking.

For roasting, there are certain benefits to screening out these 5% of Peaberry beans separately. Because after screening, the size of the beans in a batch becomes uniform, which helps to evenly control the roasting fire. Imagine that in the same batch of beans, smaller beans will "cook" faster than large beans. This uniform size may be a factor in the claim of superior flavor. Like all coffee flavor issues, don't listen to hearsay, use your own taste to distinguish!

Why can't all Peaberries be bought from all places of origin? This is related to processing equipment and business decisions. Not all places of origin will specially select and separate them for sale. What we can buy now is mainly selected by machine. Many online materials describe the selection process as "manual", which is a bit "watered down".