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Once a coffee bean has been roasted, does it loose its ability to be planted and grow into a plant?
Asked by Anonymous
I’m sorry to say you can’t plant a roasted coffee bean and expect it to grow into a tree.
To turn into a tree, a coffee bean needs plenty of water, sun, and good soil — but in the very beginning it simply needs to stay alive.
The very core of a coffee bean is an embryo that can hang out for several months after being harvested. It’s well protected by the shell of the bean, and has the necessary sugars and moisture it requires to stay (barely) alive while it awaits the proper environment to sprout.
Roasting a bean breaks down the sugars, sucks out the moisture, and ruptures the cells inside the coffee bean — great for coffee lovers, but bad news for that embryo.
If you put a reasonably fresh and green coffee bean in a jar of water instead of a roaster, you’d kick off the germination process. Soak it for a day, put it in some loose sand and keep it damp until you see it start to sprout — viola! The beginnings of a coffee tree.
(image courtesy of gimmiecoffee.com)
