What Is Peaberry Coffee?
Written by Bacha Coffee | 04 October 2022
|3 mins | Coffee Knowledge
How a mutated coffee bean transforms into an extraordinary pearl-of-a-coffee.
Have you heard of peaberry coffee? Peaberry is a type of coffee bean and can be found in all types of coffee varieties.
Normally, a coffee cherry develops two seeds. When a coffee plant cannot deliver sufficient nutrients to its cherries, only one bean is formed. The resulting bean is called a peaberry. It is also known as the pearl bean, due to its distinctive rounder shape.
What makes them special?
Less than 10% of all coffee cherries produce a peaberry. It cannot be replicated and it is a result of a natural mutation. Peaberries can develop anywhere in the world from any variety of coffee.
Typically, no more than 5-10% of any coffee crop consists of peaberries, and hand picking them out takes time and a practiced eye, which adds to their cost and rarity.
How are they sorted?
A peaberry is not grown separately from the rest. Currently, it is not possible to identify if a coffee cherry is a peaberry. Peaberries are only found in the last stage of processing and sorting, where dried green coffee beans are screened before the roasting process.
Peaberries are often manually hand-picked during the sorting process. They are also roasted separately from the rest. Their rounder shape requires different temperatures to ensure that the beans are roasted properly for maximum flavour. This additional labour results in peaberry beans costing more than regular coffee.
How do they taste?
While peaberries have the same caffeine level as regular counterparts, the flavour and aroma of peaberry coffees may be stronger. This flavour amplification is due to the coffee cherry devoting all its energy and resources only to a single bean.
Discover peaberry coffee at Bacha Coffee.
We recommend the Black Pearl Coffee. Due to their rarity, these Kenyan pearl beans are a specialty. The coffee yields a mild, spicy body with notes of cracked cocoa.