various different types of coffee beans and these determine the flavours that the
blend presents for the coffee connoisseur.
Many coffee makers blend a combination of the lower cost Robusta beans with the
more expensive Arabica gourmet beans. The Arabica beans have a finer aroma, a
richer flavour and more body than the less expensive beans.
The quality of the coffee is dependant on the proportions of the mix of these
beans. Quite often a coffee might be advertised as a blend of gourmet beans and
lower grade beans when in fact there are only small traces of the gourmet beans
in the blend.
The gourmet beans gain much of their flavour from the soils they are grown in,
with the best beans coming from the volcanic regions where the rich soils
produce the best tasting beans.
Coffee should always be made from fresh beans as the quality diminishes rapidly
with age. This is quite noticeable when comparing a supermarket grade coffee
with a coffee made from freshly ground beans at a coffee shop. Bear in mind that
the supermarket coffees generally have a lower blend quality and in many cases
the blends also have a proportion of older beans to reduce the production costs.
The only way you can be assured of quality and taste is to buy fresh gourmet
quality. Once you have acquired the taste for gourmet coffee you might never
want to drink commercial grade coffee again.
You can buy coffee from many different regions throughout the world and each one
has it's own unique flavour.
Coffee aficionados can pick the region where the coffee bean was grown just by
tasting it. The method of processing the beans also has an effect on the final
flavour so you can't always assume that a coffee will be good just because it
came from a particular region.
Coffee is one of the world's most popular beverages and more suppliers are
catering to the needs of an ever-growing demand.