Speaker: Lewis Perkins
Coffee is the first sine qua non for many people’s day. What will global warming/climate change do to our elixir? The Economist April 24, 2021 edition reveals a rediscovered Coffea Stenophylla, from the lowland hills of Sierra Leone (also Guinea & Ivory Coast) and written in the 1834 papers of Scottish botanist George Don, which tolerates a higher temperature range of 24-26 C.
Lewis and Tera actually have had coffee made from 3.5 pounds of wet beans grown from a Kona and Java plant in the shade of a reed fence in Santa Monica. Groundwork Coffee Company was kind enough to use an antique sample roaster to make them enough for one pot of light and medium roast brew. Lewis notes that there is a lot of manual labor to remove the cascara by hand and teeth! He also says that good coffee is underpriced by a lot!
Less work and quite tasty is eating the ripe red anti-oxidant fruit before the birds get them. Even if you don’t like brewed coffee, you would likely like the berries.
If you love coffee, this is your chance to learn how to grow your own!
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Photos by Pablo Merchán Montes and Rodrigo Flores on Unsplash