Coffee Appreciation

I had a cup of "Elephant Ear" coffee - at my local coffee establishment (Birmingham) - so called because of the way the bean grows. The Kenyan bean appears quite deformed from what i can gather, but it delvers a "dry" chocolatey aftertaste, that was delicious....

Anyone heard more of this rather rare bean?

Sorry Pista, missed this a week ago.

You get 2 coffee beans per cherry, they sit in the middle of the flesh with the flat sides facing each other. Elephant ears, also known as shells, are a common deformity where one bean wraps itself around the other. Farms which are very dilligent with their sorting during processing will pick these out along with chipped, insect damaged and moldy beans, but they are still fit for consumption so are often collected together and sold as an elephant ear lot. This makes them rare, you would need to sort through many tons of cherry to get a full 60kg bag of ears.

The reason they are removed from the main lot is that they often do not roast evenly due to the thick main bit and the thin ear giving you a combo of under and over roasted in the same bean which gives it its distinctive flavour.

A similar freak is the peaberry, same deal as the elephant ear but what happens is you only get one bean in the cherry and it is fully round. These do roast nicely and can be quite desirable as a fully sorted peaberry lot.