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.

  • zaph@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    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.

    • MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown@fedia.io
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      3 months ago

      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.

      • trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Do not do this with dried beans. Most dried beans are toxic and need to be soaked and boiled for about half an hour to become edible.

        From the Wikipedia page for kidney beans:

        As few as five raw beans or a single undercooked kidney bean can cause severe nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal pains.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    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.

  • Carrolade@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    We do in some cases, you’ve basically described hot coca for instance. But yeah, you might be onto something, roast up some kidney beans and see what happens.

  • Tehdastehdas@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I drank it in Taiwan among other very low sugar juices that I prefer over plain water. It’s just one of many drinks made from ingredients we never thought of, like mushroom drinks and cereal grain drinks. The bean drink must have been forgettable enough that I can’t describe the taste after four years away.

    https://www.agv.com.tw/product-category/beverages/

    • evening_push579@feddit.nu
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      3 months ago

      Just wanted to add that tea with black beans, red beans, roasted barley, roasted rice etc are common in Japan. I assume Taiwan has the same, judging from the drinks posted above (the label even says the Japanese name in roman letters).

  • 14th_cylon@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    but we don’t know if we don’t try

    Someone probably already tried. Every time you are asking yourself “am I the first one to think of x?”, the answer is usually no.

  • Heydo@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    You should know that undercooked beans can be poisonous, and it is best to soak them before cooking.

    If you do try this please prepare the beans properly first.

  • palordrolap@fedia.io
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    3 months ago

    I strongly suspect that many of these things have already, uh, been tried.

    As for those that clearly made it through at least one round of testing, a self-styled “Weird Explorer” has a YouTube series called “That’s not coffee” where he - and occasionally a friend or two - reviews some of them.

    Not sure if there’s anyone on there who has tried roasting and grinding other sorts of beans for science though. The closest I can think of is the various creators making tofu alternatives from beans that aren’t soy, which kind of turns the whole thing on its head: Could you make a tofu from coffee beans? (I’m guessing not, but that’s another for-science idea.)

  • spittingimage@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Because we’re not criminally insane.

    But since we’re on this fascinating topic, here’s a Youtube video about other things people have tried to substitute for coffee during the American civil war. (Hint: not beans.)

  • HelluvaKick@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    We have coffee. We have tea.

    I assume humans have run hot water through every conceivable plant grounds to see what it would taste like.