How to make your own Green Coffee Bean Beverages

It's easy to make green coffee bean extract at home. Once you have a batch made, it will keep in the fridge for a couple days, and you can use it in lots of different ways--including, of course, delicious and refreshing beverages mixed with fruit juice, extracts or flavorings! In recent years green coffee bean extract and beverages have been purported to help people lose weight and provide many beneficial effects. We make no claims here... but for people wanting to partake of green bean goodness, the simplest, least expensive, and most natural way is simply to buy good green beans and steep them briefly, as described below.

Basic Recipe

1 cup green (unroasted) coffee beans
3 cups filtered water or spring water

Rinse the beans briefly to remove any dust or foreign particles, but try not to remove most of the loose chaff or silverskin (that's the dry, papery stuff on the outside of the bean). Recent evidence suggests that the silverskin contains anti-oxidants hundreds of times more powerful than Vitamin C. Reference: Powerful Antioxidants in Coffee Material. If possible, rinse the beans in filtered water so they don't risk picking up any chlorine odor. Don't spend more than 30 seconds rinsing, or you might start rinsing away the good stuff!

Bring the water to a boil over high heat.

Add the green coffee beans.

Let the water come to a boil again. Then, turn down the heat so the water simmers (instead of boiling vigorously).

Simmer for 12 minutes. Stir once or twice while it simmers, being gentle so you don't knock loose any bits of chaff that may be stuck in the crevices of the beans.

Pour the liquid into a bowl through a strainer to remove the beans and any large bits of floating chaff. Again, the chaff isn't anything worrisome (just unattractive), so don't stress if any bits remain in the liquid.

(It's possible to re-use the beans once more, so you can save them if you like. Set them aside to cool, then put them in a zip-lock baggie and put that in the fridge. Use within a week. Remember, they're a fruit stone, and now that they are wet, they might get moldy if you leave them sitting around a long time.)

Your green coffee bean extract is ready to use! This will stay good in the fridge for 3-4 days. It is pretty concentrated, so you may want to dilute it before using it. We have listed some ways to ways to use your fresh green coffee bean extract!

GBE Tips and Ideas

What NOT to do when making green coffee bean extract:

Don't let the beans soak in the water for long periods of time. You may find that, depending on your personal taste and the species of bean, that you might want to simmer them for a little longer than 12 minutes, but not too long! Recipes that suggest soaking the beans for 20 minutes or more will result in a very high-caffeine, very bitter extract with an unpleasant taste. Think of it like tea: steeping it too long makes the tea bitter. It also leeches too much of the caffeine (which is a bitter-tasting substance) out of the beans.

Don't use coffee beans that have been naturally dried with fruit on, or processed through the fermentaion method, or beans from untrustworthy sources. Green coffee beans haven't been roasted (obviously), which means that any mold that may have grown on the beans during processing could have left behind spores or toxins, even if the beans appear completely clean.

Always choose green coffee beans that were wet-processed and machine-hulled (removing the husk with a grater, essentially), and only from sources that vouchsafe to you that their beans are healthy for green coffee bean extract. Many green bean sellers have no idea how the beans were really processed, so they can't really recommend the best beans for extracts and beverages.

For the best Green Coffee Bean Extract, we suggest our Costa Rica Estate Arabica.

Why? Two reasons:
- They are delicious. The beans have a delicate, yet full flavor, no bitterness, and mild acidity, making them an excellent choice for green coffee bean drinks in particular. These are super-high altitude beans that are low in caffeine as a result of growing at such a high altitude.
- They are clean and safe. The farmer uses an eco-friendly process that gets the beans exceptionally clean, whereupon they are immediately carried further up the mountain to cutting-edge "sky tunnels" to dry slowly in the sun, turning constantly for mold prevention. The trays are raised off the ground, not on slabs where they can pick up debris.

Find the Costa Rica Tarrazu Arabica here.

Other good prospects for green bean beverages would be our Papua New Guinea, which is wet-hulled and sun-dried, and our Brazil Santa Izabel, which has been manually processed with great care and has exceptional flavor as green bean extract due to its volcanic soil profile.

Fun Recipes and Suggestions for using your fresh, home-made Green Coffee Bean Extract!

GBE Beverages 

Green coffee extract works well with fruit-flavored beverages, especially slightly tart ones. We suggest citrus and cranberry.

We also like to use fruit-flavored syrups, which add concentrated flavor and sweetness. When choosing a fruit syrup, always look at the ingredient list. Choose syrups made from cane sugar and real fruit or fruit juice. Avoid syrups that are made with high-fructose corn syrup, artificial flavorings, and/or artificial colorings--they don't taste as good, and some people's bodies react badly to the chemical additives.

Here are some ideas:

• Cranberry-Lime Refresher: 4oz GBE, 4oz lemon-lime soda (such as Sierra Mist) or lime-flavored seltzer, 2 tbsp cranberry syrup
• Green Coffee Fresca: 4oz GBE, 4oz lemon-lime soda or lime-flavored seltzer, 2 tbsp grapefruit syrup
• Blueberry GBE Lemonade: 4oz GBE, 4oz filtered water, juice of 1/2 lemon, 2 tbsp blueberry pancake syrup, sweetener to taste (such as agave syrup)
• Green Tea EXTREME: 3oz GBE, 3oz filtered water, 1 green teabag OR 1tsp green tea leaves. Brew the tea in the water/GBE mixture for a concentrated antioxidant shot! This is good with a bit of honey, too.
• Green Coffee Mojito: 4oz GBE, 3oz crushed ice, juice of 1/2 lime, 5 fresh mint leaves, sweetener to taste (such as cane sugar syrup)--be sure to muddle (roughly stir) the ice with the mint leaves, as bruising the leaves will release their minty deliciousness into your beverage

Unconventional Uses for GBE

Are you one of the many who use green coffee bean extract for medicinal or health purposes? You might be looking for more ways to incorporate it into your daily life. Well, here are some of our personal favorite ways to use it:

• Cook rice with it, either straight-up or mixed with broth
• Add it to soups along with broth--plain green coffee extract has a vegetable, pea-like taste, so it goes especially well in split pea soups and any soup that includes ham or sausage
• Use it in risotto
• Use instead of water when making homemade salad dressing