Peaberry Coffee:
Throughout the world, the coffee fruit occasionally produces a single, rather than a double, bean. It grows to be small and round, with a tiny crevice that splits it halfway down the middle. Called peaberry in English and caracol in Spanish, these beans are often separated from normal-shaped beans and sold as a separate grade of the same coffee.
According to coffee folklore, peaberry grades are considered superior to normal grades from the same crop, apparently on the basis that, in peaberries, the good stuff that ordinarily goes into a double bean goes into only one bean. I am not sure peaberry tastes better than normal beans from the same crop, but it does taste different. Typically, peaberry is more buoyant and more brightly acidy, more complex in the upper aromatic ranges of the profile but somewhat lighter in body, than comparable normally shaped beans.
Peaberry coffee should be sold by country and market or estate name like any other coffee. If you read a notice that simply says peaberry, you should inquire about the origin of the coffee.
Maragogipe (also called elephant bean) is a variety of arabica that produces an extremely large, rather porous bean. It is a mutant that spontaneously appeared in Brazil, almost as though the giant of Latin-America thought regular beans were too puny and produced something in its own image. It was first discovered growing near the town of Maragogipe, in the northeastern state of Bahia. Subsequently it has been carried elsewhere in Latin America and generally adopts the flavor characteristics of the soil to which it has been transplanted.
Most Maragogipes sold in North America are grown in Mexico, Nicaragua, or Guatemala. Those from Chiapas, Mexico, and the Coban district of Guatemala have the best reputation.
Aged Coffee:
As green coffee ages, its flavor characteristics change. If it is stored in cool darkness it may change very little over the course of years, at most losing some acidity. However, coffees stored in warehouses located in hot, humid tropical port cities can change in flavor dramatically and rapidly.
Coffee delivered for roasting soon after harvest and processing is called new crop. Coffee that has been held in warehouses for a period before delivery is called old crop. The differences between new and old crop may be minor. Sometimes the old crop is better because it displays more depth and less immature grassiness. In other cases new crop may be better because it is brighter and fresher tasting, whereas old crop may taste dull or woody. At times roasters combine old and new crop of the same coffee, aiming at a more complete version of the same flavor profile.
Aged or vintage coffees, however, are a different matter. Traditionally aged coffees, which are rare, may have been held in warehouses for anywhere from three to ten years, and can be superb: sweet, full almost to a fault, syrupy but clean-tasting.
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