Coffee: A
Historic Beverage And a Great Holiday Gift
Ah, coffee... a
fantastic dark beverage that wakes us up in the morning.
For some of us, it keeps us up during the day, or for
late night study sessions. We drink it out of habit, we
drink it for pleasure, we drink it for flavor; whatever
the reason, it is surely a popular beverage. So where did
this famed drink come from?
Coffee, for Americans, is three hundred years old. In the
East it was widespread at every level of society, since
the earlier era. The most notable dates point to around
800b.c. However, Homer, and according to Arabian tales
speak of a mysterious bitter black beverage with powers
of stimulation that could have been this drink.
About the year 1000, coffee was being used for medicinal
purposes. In 1400 a Yemeni goat herder observed his flock
eating reddish berries, then becoming excited and
restless. After relating his observations to a monk, they
boiled the berries and made a beverage that could
disperse sleep and weariness. No matter how it actually
was created, the fact remains that the coffee plant
started in Africa, in an Ethiopian region known as Kaffa.
From there it spread to Egypt, Yemen, and Arabia, where
it became a part of daily life.
In the late 1500s coffee was a commodity, being sold in
Europe. However, due to an increasing demand for the new
beverage, and high taxes on shipping, there was
experimentation with growing the crops in various other
countries. Much later, around 1727 coffee growing started
in Northern Brazil. By the 20th century, various forms of
coffee were developed for the public.
Decaffeinated coffee was first founded in 1903 when
Ludwig Roselius, a German coffee importer, gave a batch
of damaged coffee beans to researchers. They developed
the process of taking the caffeine out of the beans
without losing any flavor. This was marketed in the
1920s.
Instant coffee was first mass produced from the invention
of George Constant Washington, an English chemist living
in Guatemala. While waiting for his wife one day to join
him outside for coffee, he observed on the spout of the
silver coffee urn, a fine powder, which looked to be the
condensation of the coffee vapors. This excited him and
led to his founding of soluble coffee.
In 1906 he started experiments and put his invention, Red
E Coffee, in the markets in 1909. Nestle', in 1938,
trying to aid Brazil with their coffee surpluses created
freeze-dried coffee. Nescafe was started and first
introduced into Switzerland. Instant coffee became a fad
after 1956 when commercial television was the new craze.
And now in the US alone, 400 billion cups of coffee a
year are consumed. Coffee is one of the world's largest
commodities, second only to oil. From a remote area in
Africa, to millions of shelves and homes worldwide,
coffee has became a fixture everywhere.
About The Author
Irene D. Hope is the webmaster of All Special Coffee, a
wonderful coffes resource site.
http://ascoffee.com
Irene D. Hope