When we say coffee, the first thought that comes to mind is the drink you make for breakfast or the complicated mixture you dictate to your favorite coffee shop’s barista. You don’t think of whole coffee plants and how much variety can from it.
Coffee coming from beans is already pretty common knowledge. You get the beans, roast them, then add water and voila: ENERGY. What most people might not know however, is that the coffee beans are not the only useful bits of coffee plants. Today let’s talk about how you can benefit from the other parts of this very versatile plant.
Coffee Leaves: Coffee to Tea?
While the beans of coffee plants are what’s used to make… well… coffee, the leaves can also be used to make a nice tea! The leaves can be boiled in water with some salt and sugar, or dried in the sun (depending on which country they’re being prepared in), and then they can be steeped like any other tea leaves. Coffee leaf tea has antioxidant properties and can reduce inflammation. Coffee leaf tea also possesses compounds that can help with diabetes, immune system regulation, and analgesic effects. As with most teas, it can also provide a relaxing feeling, bringing down stress and anxiety. Compared to normal coffee made from roasted coffee beans, tea made from coffee leaves is way less caffeinated.
On a more economical note, coffee leaves also provide a good source of extra income for farmers since they can be harvested even when it’s not the growing season. Everyone gets a drink, the farmers still get income, and we all go home happy.
Coffee Cherries: Fruits of Hard Labor
You can’t have coffee beans without a coffee fruit. In this case, we have the coffee cherry. Oftentimes, the cherry’s skin and flesh are discarded since it’s the seeds that are the most sought after part of coffee plants. Much like the leaves being an extra source of income, the same can be said for the discarded cherries of the coffee plant.
After the coffee cherries’ flesh and skin is dried out, it is turned into cascara, a kind of tea. Cascara is not exactly a tea or a kind of coffee, but somewhere in between, like the aunt or uncle who’s not really blood related but is your mom or dad’s best buddy growing up. The reason that it’s not really a tea is that it’s made from fruits (like dried apples, blackcurrants, strawberries, etc.), not herbs. The reason that cascara is not coffee is that it’s not made from the beans. It’s a fairly sweet tasting drink; caffeinated, but less than coffee.
In terms of health benefits, aside from the aforementioned minor caffeine kick, cascara has also been used as a laxative to combat constipation. Cascara has also been used to help with certain gastrointestinal and endocrine problems.
Coffee Honey: To Bee or Not to Bee
Unlike Nicholas Cage, who was terrified of bees, we should be fairly happy with having bees, especially if they’re pollinating coffee plants. As we know, bees take in nectar when they get to a plant and through some bee magic, spit it back out as honey when they return to the hive.
Now, you might be thinking “Yeah, honey’s pretty good. So what?” Well, dear reader, in addition to the usual health benefits of honey, coffee blossom honey smells like jasmine with a fruity flavor. Not only do you get healthier by consuming it, you’ll have a hard time stopping because of how good it tastes!
Coffee Plants: Living Pesticide
While we’ve pretty much accepted that too much caffeine is dangerous for anyone, this tidbit of knowledge is obviously unknown to bugs and animals. While it would take around a hundred cups of coffee in a day to remove a person from the national census, it’s only because humans are big enough to tank all the caffeine in those cups. For a smaller animal like a mouse, taking in the same amount of caffeine in their system would be a VERY lethal dose.
On average, it would take around 200mg of caffeine per kilogram of bodyweight to make the intake fatal. As mentioned above, that’s probably around 100 cups of coffee for your average human. For a small insect or mouse though, that number significantly drops due to their small size. What could be a cup of goodness for you could be the last chapter of some unfortunate grasshopper or shrew, keeping your other plants safe in the process. Some coffee plants have more caffeine in them than others. This is what makes Robusta plants hardier than their Arabica sisters. Arabica plants have less caffeine in them and therefore are more susceptible to being consumed by all sorts of pests. Meanwhile, Robusta plants chose to ignore the Geneva Convention and decided to fight with (internal) chemical warfare.
The Caffeinated Conclusion
Now that you know about the usefulness of the entire coffee plant, let’s circle around to what we really love about the coffee plant: COFFEE BEANS. Where else would you get the best roasted coffee beans, but from Equipoise Coffee? You might even find other ways of making a nice drink from our wide variety of beans.
We’re just a click away if you want some top class beans (and merch) to help keep you going through the day. Happy brewing!
