Since the Boston Tea Party, Americans have been crazy for coffee, choosing it as their caffeine fix. But obviously that’s not the origin of java. Naturally, the history of coffee goes back much earlier.
A video clip that goes back to the very first mug of coffee ever prepared and sipped, and after that it traces the expansion of coffee all over the world. All of us know the Ethiopian tale which says the goat herder Kaldi discovered the potential of the coffee beans. However what happened afterwards?
So get out your Chemex, grind some beans, boil some water, and sit down to watch this history of coffee with a cup of your own.
Full story - interesting coffee facts
According to the tale, the energizing effects of the coffee bean were first found by a goat herder called Kaldi, who lived on the Ethiopian plateau back during the 9th century.
One day Kaldi saw that after his heard had foraged on the cherry of the coffee plant they appeared to have boundless power, certainly more than the rest of his animals. As the story goes, this left them too energized to drop off to sleep in the evening, as their bundles of power had them bounding all over the place.
A brief history
After Kaldi saw how " playful" his goats became after consuming the coffee berries, he went to the local monastery to let the monks know. A monk produced a brew from the berries and was able to keep up much later praying.News of this new brew spread into Egypt and into the Arabian peninsula, where coffee traveled east and west, finally ending up in southeast Asia and the Americas. And it's been popular since.
But if we are to follow facts only, and not tales, the oldest substantiated evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree is from the early 15th century, in the Sufi abbeys of Yemen, spreading out quickly to Mecca and Medina. By the 16th century, it had actually gotten to the rest of the Middle East, South India (Karnataka), Persia, Turkey, the Horn of Africa, and northern Africa. Coffee after that spread to the Balkans, Italy, and to the rest of Europe, in addition to Southeast Asia and in spite of the restrictions enforced during the 15th century by religious leaders in Mecca and Cairo, and later by the Catholic Church.
Etymology
It turns out the word "coffee" originate from Arabic. The word got in the English language in 1582 via the Dutch koffie, borrowed from the Turkish kahve, consequently borrowed from the Arabic qahwah.There is an even more intriguing hypothesis of the origin of the word, which you can check out on Wikipedia here.
Modern Coffee History
The modern times race for comfort and productivity recognized that individuals are "wasting" too much time making coffee. This is how instant coffee was created. David Strang, a New Zealander developed it in 1889. Freeze-dried coffee was invented in 1938.Decaffeinated coffee was created by Ludwig Roselius in 1903, filling a requirement for people who are hypersensitive to caffeine.
The coffee filter, the basis of one of the most preferred coffee brewing method, the drip coffee, was invented by Melitta Bentz in 1908.
Achille Gaggia invented the modern-day espresso machine in 1946. The first pump-driven coffee equipment was made in 1960.
Today coffee is still among the world's most preferred beverages. Brazil is still the world's biggest producer of coffee.