Mr. Peaberry, a Series of Unfortunate Events?

One day, Mr. Coffee, a well to do coffee bean, was walking home from his highly sophisticated job on Wall Street when he came across a charming dervish of a coffee bean.  This odd coffee bean was smaller and round, unlike Mr. Coffee who was a little bigger with a flat side.  Being a generous and benevolent  bean, asked this odd bean if he was OK.  The round bean introduced himself as Mr. Peaberry.  Mr. Peaberry began to talk with Mr. Coffee about his work on Wall Street.  Mr. Coffee was obliged to share his love of work with his new acquaintance.  However, Mr. Peaberry was not impressed and began to show an air of superiority about all things of which Mr. Coffee spoke.  This began to offend Mr. Coffee and he eagerly looked for a way out of the conversation.  Mr. Peaberry, either through malice or indifference, began to talk louder and faster leaving Mr. Coffee no exit from the conversation.  Finally, Mr. Coffee could take no more of the insolent Mr. Peaberry and struck him while loudly shouting, “Shut up, shut up!”

Some of you may be thinking, wow, what a jerk Mr. Peaberry is to act in such a manner.  You may also be confused about why Mr. Peaberry would go on and on about himself.  Thus is the mystery surrounding the (Mr. P)eaberry.

Firstly, I should state something you may already know.  Coffee beans are not really beans.  They are the seed contained in the pit of a fruit that is very similar to a cherry.  In fact, it is called a cherry.  If you already knew this, I apologize.  If you didn’t, well, you are now smarter, which is usually a good thing, right?

You may have heard of peaberry coffee before.  Tanzania peaberry is a common one, although in the past few years I have heard of more and more peaberry coffees.  Most of these are from Africa, such as Kenya and Rwanda but I have also seen Papua New Guinea Peaberry.

So what exactly is the big deal about peaberry, because it is a big deal to some people. (Take the example above where Mr. Peaberry just went on and on about how awesome he was compared to Mr. Coffee.)  Well, to some people peaberry is just a misconception perpetuated by some elite coffee geeks.  To others it is the epitome of the very essence of coffee.  Ultimately, like most things, it is purely a matter of opinion.

Peaberry coffee is just as much a defect of the plant as it is a pristine example of that plant.  What happens is when a coffee cherry grows, the inside of the pit is separated into two twin seeds.  These seeds are crammed into one small space.  As they grow they are sort of smashed together creating a flat side on each ‘bean’ where they touch in the middle.  This is what we will call normal coffee progress.  In normal coffee progress, the plant sends nutrients evenly to each of the seeds.  Each of the two seeds ends up pretty much the same with half of what the coffee plant has to offer.

Occasionally in the development of a coffee cherry there will be some screw-up.  It may be a genetic issue where the cherry only has one seed develop and the other is defective or simply missing.  It could be from some sort of physical issue where one side is damaged.  Whatever the reason, only one seed will develop in the cherry.  This one, lonely seed would be like the only child of affluent parents.  This seed would get every scrap of nutrient that the parent cherry had to give.  Thus, it is said, the single cherry would be more flavorful.  All the sugars and flavors and nutrients that would normally be split between two seeds would be all in this one lonely, some might say holy, bean.  And since there is only one seed growing in this now spacious luxury condo, the bean has all the room it needs to grow nice and round.  But since this is not its normal growing parameters it doesn’t just grow double the size, it still has its genetic code that determines such things.  Think of it like a mother with twins.  The twins are usually a little smaller at birth than a single baby would be, but the single baby is not twice the size of one of the twins just because it is the only one there.

Historically, this was a preferred bean.  Back in the early days of coffee roasting you would roast your coffee in a skillet on your stove or campfire.  If you had a bunch of the more common beans with a flat side in a flat skillet you can imagine how it might be difficult to stir these evenly.  The flat side would want to be down against the flat surface of the skillet and you would end up with scorching.  If all of your beans were round then they would roll and stir more evenly and you would get a more even roast.  With modern drum roasters this is not nearly as odd a problem but there are still issues with flat sides of beans and flat sides of roasters.  It is also noteworthy that some people thought that a peaberry was a defect and they were intentionally picked out and discarded.

Now if you remember back to the beginning I had said this is all subjective. (I actually said objective but that was so long ago that we don’t really remember who said what now do we?)  So some of you with super tasters and above average tasters will probably be able to taste a difference.  Some of you may not.  Taste is the most important thing when it comes to the consumer of coffee and everyone has different likes and dislikes leading to difference of opinion about peaberry coffee.

To make matters even worse for the convolution of the mystery of the peaberry greatness, this is something that only happens about 2-5% of the time depending on the varietal.  There is not a specific plant that grows only peaberry as far as I know.  The peaberry has to be manually removed from the general population of coffee beans.  This takes time.  Time is money.  Peaberry is money would be the logical conclusion.  And this is the fuel of the mystery fire.  Some people like to believe that just because it costs more it is better.  In coffee this is generally true.  But if you don’t have a highly developed pallet, and this is a genetic thing not a sophistication thing, you may never be able to determine the difference.

Now you know that the peaberry is a sort of super coffee bean.  It has all this extra goodness and flavor and love and hope and dreams that is normally split between two beans.  But, despite all this, some people think that this is all a bunch of hooey. Some people think that the only reason that peaberry is better than other coffee beans is that it has been hand picked.  Extra special care has gone into picking out the peaberry from the regular beans and therefore the defect beans are discarded.  They think that if this particular attention was paid to normal coffee then the end result would be just the same. 

So what does this mean?  It means that if you have never tried peaberry coffee, you should.  You may be missing out on the best coffee you have ever had.  But then again, it just may taste like any other coffee you have ever had in your life.  Who knows. 

How do you feel about peaberry?  Let me know in the comments below.