If you’re reading this, it’s because you’ve probably heard of the two main coffee beans used commercially to satisfy our everyday coffee fix: Arabica and Robusta.
But have you ever wondered what the difference is between them? In short: a lot.
Arabica makes up 60% of all coffees in the market, compared to the 40% of Robusta. And while they both end up in your cup, their taste, price, growing environments and quality are pretty different—even if they do share some similarities.
The taste of Arabica is most likely what we come to expect when we think of coffee: nutty sweet chocolate or even a fruity floral taste. In contrast, Robusta tastes almost as they sound: more robust, earthy and woody. Even the smell and looks of unroasted bean have their differences: Unroasted robusta are smaller than arabicas and have a nutty smell where arabicas have more of a fruity grassy smell. Robustas also have more caffeine than arabicas do; Arabicas contain double the sugars—which might explain why they taste so much sweeter!
The Robusta Coffee plant ,Coffea Canephora, is a very resilient plant grown at low altitudes that has little to no problems with pest damage. Due to the ease and low maintaince farmers are able to monocrop this plant and produce more for far less cost. The Arabica plant, is quite more demanding than its counterpart. The Arabica plant is grown at much higher altitudes and demands a cooler environment, rich soil, lots of moisture, sun and shade. This is a fragile plant which is susceptible to many pest, making its production a labor intensive endeavor for less yield.
As for uses, the Arabica bean is use in many signatures blends or as single origin meaning all the beans come from the same growing region. High quality Robusta bean are used ten to fifty percent of Italian espresso blends as well as filler in mass market coffee and to make instant coffee.
Arabica is grown at higher altitudes in cooler climates, while Robusta grows happily at lower altitudes in warmer weather. Arabica also needs a lot more love and attention than Robusta does—it needs rich soil, lots of sun and shade, and regular watering. Robusta doesn’t care if it gets its roots in dry dirt or if it gets no water at all; it will just keep growing its little heart out. And because of this hardy nature, farmers can grow more Robusta plants per acre than they would be able to grow Arabica plants. That means that Arabica beans are more expensive!
That’s not to say that Robusta isn’t good for anything—it’s actually used to make in instant coffee, it accounts for about half of Italian espresso blends and almost all mass-market coffee brands use some amount of Robusta beans in their blends as fillers.
