Maragogype - the elephant beans

in #coffee5 years ago

If you see a very big coffee bean, two or three times the normal size with a kind of oblong shape, it is likely to be Maragogype, commonly known as “The Elephant Beans”. I like to put a medium toast Maragogype bean in my Sambuca (Italian liquor), put my lighter to it so it starts flaming and serve it to my guests. I enjoy the look on their face when I do that.

Flaming Sambuca Coffee is one of the easiest Italian coffee drinks to make and very popular in southern Italy. Just put 3 beans in your Sambuca, put a flame to it, wait a bit to warm the beans, eat a bean and wash it away with a gulp of the liquor.

Maragogype, (Maragogipe or Maragojipe), is a genetic mutation of the Typica variety of Arabica coffee. The name Maragogype comes from the town of Maragogipe, in the state of Bahia, in the northeast region of Brazil where it was first found. Nowadays Maragoype beans are grown in several Central/South American countries but are still quite hard to come by. Mexico is the biggest producer, however, if you are looking for quality: the best Maragogype probably comes from Nicaragua. Now, why are they so hard to find?

First of all, farmers don’t favor cultivating it. At first look this might look strange because one would think bigger beans, more weight, and thus more money. This plant has huge leaves, large cherries and most interesting to us huge beans.

maragogype bean.jpg
Maragogype coffee: note its typical oblong form

However, proportional to the size of the beans, the coffee plants and leaves themselves are distinctively larger too. The size of the plant limits its ability to have a large yield so for the farmer it’s not as big an earner as some other varieties could be. This means that a lot of effort of the plant goes to other parts and thus they have lower production. The plants being bigger also means you can plant less in a certain area: less plants, less production.

Furthermore, if the farmer grows other varieties as well, it disrupts the wet-milling process because the machine has to be recalibrated to fit the size of the beans. The fermenting process is different as well, so the Maragogype has to be treated apart. This has to be done several times because the harvest can take place in about 5 stages in a timeframe of 2 to 3 months.

And most importantly, it is mostly paid the same price by the buyers or middlemen as normal coffee beans and (the same as other special coffees) the farmers has to go and find an interested buyer willing to pay more.

So we come to the buyers and dry-millers. Why don’t they pay more and/or promote this bean? Well, the whole production process is centered on “normal-sized” beans. This goes for the processing after farm level as well, so a lot of them don’t favor it either. As for the toasters, the toasting and grounding profile is of course totally different from other, average sized coffees. And as production and supply levels of this kind of beans are not very high, … ?!

As we have seen, Maragogype is a genetic mutation of the Typica variety of Arabica coffee. This is one part of the parents of a more common variety Pacamara, the other part of course being Pacas, (remember the chart):

CoffeeVarieties-full.jpg

So in spite of being in the center of the coffee chart, it actually is quite rare, hard to come by and often quite expensive to the consumer. But is it worth it?

Maragogype is Arabica coffee so you should look for and expect the typical things and flavors. As it is said that its acidity is a bit low, you should look for altitude (at least 12 to 15 hundred meters I would say) and it should be washed coffee. Sometimes it is called a coffee with not much flavor, but that depends on the soil and altitude and is not totally true. The lesser types of Maragogype are dried naturally (within the fruit) to enhance the flavor, which is ok if you like it, but you should just look for washed coffee from high altitudes. And remember, the biggest feature of course is its size. For those aficionados who have trouble finding a Maragogype, or who want a really big bean (with a more consistent cup quality), you might try the pacamara variety, a large-bean Maragogype hybrid.

Maragogype is a rarity in the coffee world and it is appreciated by many coffee aficionados and it is a must try.


Previous article from coffee series you can find under tag #cafescope.
You can see them all here.

Article was also published on Cafescope

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