We know we can grow coffee plants indoors. That becomes a bunch of work trying to maintain temperature and humidity and lighting as well. If you want to that route you can. Here is a great place to start.
" Product Description
The original home of the coffee plant is Africa. The first coffee plant of economic importance was Coffea Arabica. It grows to the height of 2-3 feet but the cultivated plants are cut to the height of 1-2 feet to get more width. The leaves of the coffee are lustrous dark green with lighter underside. The flowers emerge from the branches together with the leaves. The white coffee flower has five petals and a scent resembling that of jasmine. The coffee berries are cherry-sized and green at first, turning dark red later on. The ripening takes eight months. The coffee plant can simultaneously have flowers and berries in all stages of development. The coffee tree requires temperature of 65-80 degrees F. Thus, the coffee tree is a tropical plant.
Homegrown by Hirt’s Gardens
Easy to grow houseplant
The white coffee flower has five petals and a scent resembling that of jasmine
The coffee tree requires temperature of 65-80 degrees F
Immediate shipping 2 plants in 3" pots
Product Reviews
5
Coffee Plants
Posted by Jennifer Caruthers on May 22nd 2022
Arrived looking great!
5
Coffee Plants
Posted by Jennifer Caruthers on May 22nd 2022
Arrived looking great!
5
Excellent Shape… Healthy Plants
Posted by janet kemp on May 19th 2022
Showed up in excellent health. The soil was dry (from shipping) but the leaves and plant were super healthy and currently doing fine. I’m sure it’ll be years before see coffee beans…but they’re pretty plants and hoping to enjoy the process.
5
Coffee Bush Seedlings
Posted by Denise on May 3rd 2022
I ordered 4 of the very small coffee bush seedlings. I was a little concerned about how they would travel but that concern was unfounded. They were beautifully packaged and arrived in great condition. They are just gorgeous!
Ok lets talk.about what i learned and what i did and i.will let others discuss growing it.
I placed my order from this website
It was delivered about a week later with no extra shipping charges or problems.
Detail Status: Delivered - Left at gated driveway. Signature Service not requested. Delivery Date: September 10, 2024 09:49 Signed By: Courier: FedEx® - tel: 18004633339 (United States)
This is a summary of what you need from seeds to plants, to cherries, to beans , to bag , to roaster, to grinder , to french press or other coffee maker. I did use a french press and coarse grind this time.
If you like fruity sweet coffee they are great. Right up there with Ugandan beans I buy from co-op markets. Ugandan beans have a more vinous note but are very similar.
But my heart belongs to green beans from Pitalito, Colombia. The best creamy caramel, vanilla , Cocoa and almond notes.
IMHO the cheapest way to enjoy coffee is to simply buy a good Arabica from a grocery store. I get the Colombian from Trader Joe’s - 2lbs for about $15.
A double shot of espresso consumes 18g of coffee - that is 50 double shots for $15. Or $0.30 per cup of excellent coffee.
You could spend less by buying cheaper coffee. Or you could splurge and get specialty coffee like Gesha at 4x the price. As an occasional treat, even that won’t break the bank.
I dunno. I get my single farm Pitalito about $4.75 a pound for green beans. With Genuine Origin you can shop a lot of farms and pick from options sometimes.
When you roast coffee beans which takes 10 minutes they smoke as well. You can do it outside if you want. It is very easy if you want a fresh cup of coffee to roast your own. The flavor is totally different.
A very important fact is that when the coffee beans are hot do not fill your bullet grinder to full. It is best not to grind hot coffee beans at all. The seeds when ground hot build up gas quickly in the sealed grinder. It blows coffee all over you when you open the grinder. When you hear coffee make that pop when you open it that is the same thing. Very hot beans can really blow.
Coffee, even nice coffee from specialty areas, is a commodity product. For us in non coffee growing zones, there no way we’re going to beat prices or quality growing ourselves, especially with a plant as picky as Arabica.
Buying green and roasting at home is going to be by far the cheapest and best quality, regardless of initial costs.
I can’t be bothered to do that (yet), so I buy from a local roster, in bulk to get a better price.
Honestly, unless you’re already spending a lot of time and effort to making good coffee, most people will get more bang for their buck spending money on a better grinder and brew set up than on beans anyway. Even great Gesha beans will be basically taste the same as Folgers if bought pre-ground, stored for two months on a countertop, and brewed in a Mr Coffee.
Coffee is a lot like chocolate. Yeah, you could grow your own, but that’s not at all the best way to get better chocolate for cheaper. Most commodities are like that–the market has already figured out the best way to maximize savings and quantity, it’s just your job to find the section of the market they serves your quality/price balance, and it’s your job to actually use those commodities correctly.
I smell too much like coffee now, I roasted 25 lbs today. I have a drum that goes in my BBQ grill outside. It makes a lot of smoke and after 25 pounds your clothes are going to smell like coffee until they are washed.
Roasting your own saves money but it is also fun to do.
I tried growing plants but realized I could never grow enough to make more than a cup or two of coffee in my small greenhouse, so I gave up. The plants got scale really badly as well.
Glad to see you’ve tried roasting beans @clarkinks. One thing to mention, beans can change color very quickly. I typically take my beans out of the popcorn popper one stage before they are as dark as I want them. The difference in roasting time between City and City+ or Full City can be as little as 30sec to a minute sometimes. They will get darker sitting in the cooling bowl by about a shade. It will vary by the beans and your roaster and temp settings and how you cool them. Sweet Maria’s sells a card with pics of the different roasting levels; I find it quite useful.
Also, beans will give off CO2 after roasting for a day or two. If one is picky one does not use the beans until they have had a chance to off gas. Certainly using them right away can lead to some excitement, as you’ve mentioned. Espresso snobs will try to use beans about 5 days to two weeks from roasting.
Play around with different roasts and beans, there is a whole world of coffee to explore.
If you like super strong coffee: the lighter the roast = the more caffeine.
Also if you’re in/around Washington state, Caffe Darte will give you free coffee tours in their factory. Not sure if you have to be a business customer or not but they showed me how they did it once upon a time
if you’re local to western Washington state, they have the freshest coffee beans.
Also after roasting them, at least with espresso, you should let the coffee sit after being roasted for either 1-2 weeks or 3-4 days, don’t remember which. But grinding them right after does something to them. Can’t remember what since this was over 6 years ago, but if it let it sit in a paper bag for a little bit, from my experience, they taste and do better when it comes to flavor and pulling espresso.
Also, according to the places in Italy I’ve checked and a few places in south America, a properly pulled espresso shouldn’t have any black at bottom during a 15-20 second pull. The black is oxidation or so I’ve been taught and having it full Caramel during the pull and pour seems to keep it tasting best according to my old customers and the people who’ve trained me.
I hate coffee; I’m a fan of creamer. I just like the business and people in it.
“You guide people to the treasure that you can not possess.”
Arabica Coffee plants are extremely picky, they are worse than trying to grow wine grapes. For starters if they are grown at elevations below 4500 feet, the result is a very mediocre coffee with no body. And I mean, even commercial plantations at lower elevations produce mediocre beans.
Robusta is a low elevation variety. Sadly the coffee from it tastes like burned rubber. It is used as a filler in cheap blends.
The easiest way to roast is with the traditional home budget version, an air popcorn popper. The trick is to dial the amount of beans until you hit first crack around 4 1/2 minutes. That can produce a reasonable cup.
The pictures with the stove top? It looks less than ideal… A good roast does an even number on the beans. What you see there is some charred beans and some still green ones, not a good thing. The problem with a stovetop is that early on you have to carefully provide enough heat without charring the beans, and because of the high humidity the beans will not be able to soak up temperature. Then once the humidity goes down (after first crack) you have to lower the heat because at that point the beans can soak up temperature faster.
I have used all sorts of rosters over the years, from expensive home units to repurposed appliances to my own. Currently I use a cast iron stovetop I made. I preheat to 400f at which point I can control the thermal mass and external heat to roast a pound at a time to perfection. Trying to do more or less than a pound ends up screwing my calibration in ways you can taste.
Honestly, i don’t think the growth elevation matters as much as how well a farm takes care of their plants. I’ve been told i couldn’t do a ton of things that i have done in Colorado at 6500 ft in elevation but i did it and succeeded. The same people telling me i couldn’t were the ones who couldn’t themselves.
The happier the tree, the better tasting the fruit typically.
How the beans are processed afterwards and how the coffee is pulled is really the BIG determining factor on how robust it tastes or how it tastes in general.
You can have 2 people working the exact same beans on the same machine and it can still come out tasting like apples and oranges.
Drip coffee wise, processing matters as well as water temperature and even water purity but not so much how high or low the trees came from. More so, how well was the tree taken care of during the fruiting stages.
This is speaking from a full business/commercial perspective and not just as a regular coffee connoisseur though. I can’t speak of it as a home user because I’m not, but i can tell you a lot about coffee in a commercial setting though. How they’re stored, processed, stored, when they’re shipped, and how the barista makes it all go hand in hand.
As a bonus like citrus, coffee beans have nice smelling blooms. Living in an orchard is wonderful whatever your growing. Imagine the smell of jasmine in a little columbian coffee orchard.
Migardener.com sells like, 5 coffee beans for a dollar or two throughout the year. I bought 2 packs but i haven’t started them yet. I too, love the smell of all things coffee. Just not the taste unless it’s coffee candy i love a little coffee with my creamer
Like all improvised home roasting methods, there are a few tricks to stove top. If the heat is too high and/or you don’t crank the popper enough that tends to uneven roasts. Same if you are overloading the popper. It’s all a dance with roasting. Unless of course you buy a fancy roasting machine with programmed times and temps; and even then you need to “dial in” the settings for each type of bean.
I think you are right, one needs to adjust the roasting temp (flame or burner when using a stove top roaster) during the different roasting stages. But it is possible to get a fairly even roast with one when you learn how to use your equipment. I do.
I bought two coffee plants about 4 or 5 years ago as a lark. they are now about knee-high, and have never flowered or anything. they are pretty plants, I’m planning to put them in ground in the greenhouse with a Meyer lemon for company.
roasting your own coffee seems like a good idea if you want a specific flavor and are willing to try things out to get it! I’ve never done it, this thread is pretty informative
pour seems to keep it tasting best according to my old customers and the people who’ve trained me.
i love a little coffee with my creamer