When you visit your favorite coffee shop, they might display roasted coffee beans as decoration. You might have already seen whole coffee beans in the grocery store aisle as well. However, the original coffee plant doesn’t look like how it's presented after roasting.
Coffee fruits or cherries come from a tree that can grow to over 30 feet tall. The tree has green and waxy leaves, and the cherries grow on the branches. You can spot coffee trees bearing flowers and cherries, some green and some ripe for picking.
After the first flower blooms, coffee cherries can take up to a few months to grow. It’ll then reach total fruit production in about five years of growth. Coffee plants can live up to 100 years but are most productive at the ages of seven to 20. Depending on the coffee variety, the trees can increase their production with proper care. One coffee tree can produce up to ten pounds of cherries yearly or two pounds of green fruits.
So, what is coffee and what is coffee intensity? Coffee is what we call the beverage of brewed roasted ground coffee beans. The bean itself is inside the cherry, which is ripe and ready to harvest. Roasted ground coffee beans brewed with hot water can give a bit of an acidic taste and bitterness. The drink is known to have several health benefits, including a mild stimulant due to the caffeine in the beans. Intensity is a very personal descriptor, some people might refer to the level of body, other might refer to the perception of flavor or bitterness.
