Tanzania 🇹🇿 Peaberry
Hello Sideyard Friends,
This week’s roast is a peaberry coffee from Tanzania. The Peaberry classification refers to a genetic anomaly in coffee trees that cause a small percentage of coffee cherries to only produce one seed instead of two. Normally, coffee seeds have a flat side, caused by growing back-to-back inside the coffee cherry. Here’s a nice cross section photo of a standard two-seed cherry. And here’s a photo of a peaberry cherry, where one of the seeds has failed to grow. Because only 5-10% of coffee cherries have the peaberry anomaly, the cherries have to be hand-sorted during processing in order to make a peaberry-only lot. Despite their charming appearance, there’s no hard evidence to prove that peaberries produce better-tasting coffee. That said, there’s no denying their roundy-ness, and who’s to say really that if a coffee bean looks unique, it doesn’t also taste unique. Not I. I’m tasting dark chocolate, currant, and plum, alongside a satisfying amount of acidity.
The origin track recommendation for the week comes from Frank and His Sisters. Formed in the early 1950s by Frank Humpback, Thecla Clara, and Maria Regina, the family trio recorded and toured throughout East Africa, but didn’t get a wider album release until this remastered collection was released in 2020.
We have a couple extras in stock.
On deck: Mexico and Colombia.
Cheers,
Ryan