The history of coffee

Did you know coffee is the most consumed beverage in the world. How did coffee get this ranking? What country first figured out coffee was safe for consumption? When was the first drink of coffee prepared? Where did the first coffee shop come in being? There are many questions about the starting point of drinking coffee. It has been so long ago no one really knows all the facts. But, one thing is for sure, coffee is the most consumed beverage on the planet.

The Beginning of Coffee

It seems like the first trace came out of Abyssinia and was also sporadically in the area of the Red Sea around 700 AD.

With these folks, other Africans of the same period also have a record of using the coffee berry pulp for over one occasion like rituals and even for health. Coffee started to get more attention when the Arabs commenced cultivating it in their peninsulas around eleven hundred AD. It is reasoned that trade ships brought the coffee their way. The Arabs started making a drink that became quite preferred called gahwa--- meaning to stop sleep. Roasting and boiling the bean was how they made this drink. It became so popular among the Arabs that they made it their signature Arabian wine and it was employed a lot during rituals. After the coffee bean was found to be a great wine and a drugs, somebody discovered in Arabia that you might also make a different dark, tasty drink out of the beans, this occurred somewhere around twelve hundred AD. After that it did not take long and everybody in Arabia was drinking coffee. Everywhere these folks traveled the coffee went with them. It made its way around to India, North Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, and was then cultivated to a great extent in Yemen around 14 hundred AD.

Other nations would have gladly welcomed these beans if only the Arabs had let them.

The Arabs snuffed out the seed-germ making sure no-one else could grow the coffee if taken some place else. Heavily guarding their plants, Yemen is where the main source of coffee stayed for many hundred years. Even with their efforts, the beans were at last smuggled out by travellers and travelers.

Coffee Shops Appear

Around 1475 the 1st coffee shop opens in Constantinople called Kiv Han 2 years after coffee was introduced to Turkey, in 1554 2 coffee houses open there.

Folk came pouring in to socialise, listen to music, play games and naturally drink coffee. Some regularly called these places in Turkey the "school of the wise", as you could learn so much by just visiting the coffee house and listening to conversations. In the sixteen hundreds coffee enters Europe thru the port of Venice. The Turkish soldiers also brought the drink to Balkans, Spain, and North Africa. Not so much later the 1st coffee house opens in Italy. There were lots of folks also attempting to ban coffee. Like Khair Beg a governor of Mecca who was executed and Grand Vizir of the Ottoman Empire who successfully closed down several coffee homes in Turkey. Thankfully not everybody thought this way.

Coffee Tips Arrive

In the early sixteen hundreds coffee is presented to the New World by man named John Smith. Later in that century, the 1st coffee house opens in Britain . 

Coffee homes or "penny universities" charged a penny for admission and for a cup of coffee. The word "TIPS" ( for service ) has it's origin from a British coffee house. Early in the 17th century, Edward Lloyd's coffee house opens in Britain . The Dutch became first to commercially transport coffee. The 1st Parisian caf opens in 1713 and King Louis XIV is presented with a nice coffee tree.

Sugar is first used as an addition to coffee in his court. The America's Have Coffee Coffee plants were introduced in the Americas for development. By near to the end of the seventeen hundreds, 1,920 million plants are grown on the island. Allegedly the eighteen hundreds were spent making an attempt to find better strategies to make coffee. .

The Coffee "Brew" in the 20th Century

New methods to help brewing coffee start popping up everywhere. The first commercial espresso machine is developed in Italy. Melitta Bentz makes a filter using blotting paper. Dr. Ernest Lily manufactures the first automatic espresso machine. The Nestle Company invents Nescafe instant coffee. Achilles Gaggia perfects the espresso machine. Hills Bros. begins packing roasted coffee in vacuum tins eventually ending local roasting shops and coffee mills. A Japanese-American chemist named Satori Kato from Chicago invents the first soluble "instant" coffee.

German coffee importer Ludwig Roselius turns some ruined coffee beans over to researchers, who perfected the process of removing caffeine from the beans without destroying the flavor. He sells it under the name Sanka. Sanka is introduced in the United States in 1923.

George Constant Washington an English chemist living in Guatemala, is interested in a powdery condensation forming on the spout of his silver coffee flask. After checking into it, he creates the first mass-produced instant coffee which is his brand name called Red E Coffee.

Prohibition goes into effect in United States. Coffee sales suddenly increase. Brazil asked Nestle to help find a solution to their coffee surpluses so the Nestle Company comes up with freeze-dried coffee. Nestle also made Nescafe and introduced it to Switzerland.

Other Interesting Coffee Tidbits

Today the US imports 70 percent of the world's coffee crop. During W.W.II, American soldiers were issued instant Maxwell House coffee in their ration kits.

In Italy, Achilles Gaggia perfects his espresso machine. The name Cappuccino comes from the resemblance of its color to the robes of the monks of the Capuchin order.

One week before Woodstock, the Manson family murders coffee heiress Abigail Folger as she visits with her friend Sharon Tate in the home of filmmaker Roman Polanski.

Starbuck's Hits the Coffee World

Starbucks opens its first store in Seattle's Pike Place public market in 1971. This creates madness over fresh-roasted whole bean coffee. Coffee finally becomes the world's most popular beverage. More than 450 billion cups are sold each year by 1995.

The Current Coffee Trends

Now in the 21st century we've several different styles, grinds, and flavours of coffee. We've actually come a ways even with our coffee making machines.

There is no sign of coffee consumption decreasing. Analysts are even finding several health advantages to drinking coffee. Drink and enjoy!

Making of so called gourmet coffee