Ok so coffee is made from coffee beans. And beans are *also* made from beans. Why is nobody making, like, black bean coffee?
Why doesn't this exist?
Take dried beans, roast 'em, grind 'em, and brew some bean juice?
I have no idea if it would taste good or not, but we don't know if we don't try.
Edit: I need to see what dried beans I have and maybe go shopping. I will give this a try with a couple different types of beans and report back if I fart or not.
Instructions unclear, made chili
A lot of things in botany have similar names, but are totally different things. A "strawberry" is a berry only by names (it's closest relative is the hazelnut, IIRC), a "peanut" is no nut, either.
So it should not surprize when one learns that the Cofea plant is a Rubiaceae family plant, not a Fabaceae/Leguminosae family plant, i.e. what we commonly call "beans" like green beans, peas, or, amazingly, peanuts. It is just called a "coffee bean" because it reminded someone back in time of a bean, shapewise.
Ignoring the fact that coffee beans aren't beans, for the same reason we don't make tea with just any leaf. Someone braver than you tried it and it was disgusting.
We do make tea with a lot more plants than people realize though.
No, tea is the name of the plant. If its not made from tea leaves its not bloody tea!!
Oh apologies Commissar, I didn't realize! I'm just a poor American coffee drinker.
Hope you have some alpha-galactosidase at your disposal.
The simplified explanation: A reason beans give some people gas is due to certain types of sugars and carbohydrates they contain. Those sugars are water soluble. Seems like brewing beans would concentrate those sugars and lead to epic tootage.
Also, one method for reducing how much gas that beans cause is to soak them in lots of water. Basically, soak them for up to 8 hours, drain, rinse, and repeat a couple more times. It works on the same principal, that the soaking process will remove at least some of the problematic, water soluble sugars. Supposedly adding a small amount of baking soda helps, too. I'm less certain about that.
I think Alton discusses this on Good Eats, and a long soak doesn't really make a difference (according to him).
He did have a solution, I just don't recall. May have been baking soda.
Oh, if Alton said that then it must be true. Who's Alton?
I told you, Good Eats. I wasn't ambiguous. And he gives chemistry reasons why.
He has a food chemist that explains things.
So stick it where the sun doesn't shine.
Coffee isn’t a true bean—it’s more closely related to gardenias.
Just to piggyback on this. The simple truth is that lot of things are just called things because they resemble other things, either in form or function.
Coffee is not a bean; beans come from legumes, coffee fruit seeds are roughly bean sized and shaped.
Cacao and vanilla are also not legumes.
The peanut is a legume like beans and peas, but the it’s fruit treated like a culinary nut.
Cashews are not true nuts. They Grow outside the actual fruit.
Nut milk and butter do not come from mammary glands.
Tea is made for the leaves of the tea plant (Camellia sinensis), which is a shrub or small tree, but many infusions of dried plant matter are often referred to as teas. The Tea Tree (Melaleuca) of oil fame is a different plant entirely. It got its name because some sailors made a ‘tea’ from its leaves after they ran out of real tea leaves.
Currants (genus Ribes) are actually named after raisins. Raisins of Corinth were small raisins that were produced and exported from… well… Corinth. Over time ‘Corinth’ morphed into ‘currant’, they dropped the ‘raisins of’, and the local small dryable fruit started being referred to as a currants too. Eventually, production of the tiny raisins migrated to other parts of Greece and some smart guy thought “Hey! Let’s market these fancy tiny raisins that we are importing from Zante (the greek island Zakynthos) by calling them Zante Currants to distinguish them from the common local currants.