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Who brewed that very first steaming, aromatic, tastefully
delightful cup of good coffee -one of our favorite and most popular
beverages?
How did they do it? Can you
guess?
The history of coffee, while hard to
verify, is abundant with many legends about who first brewed
and filled their coffee goblets or vessels.
It's a fact that
Coffee has come a long way from being a little known
beverage that was said to be accidentally discovered by
a sheepherder a long, long time ago.
The origins of
coffee as a beverage can't exactly be pinpointed. What
has been accepted of its discovery was established in a
popular myth that the coffee discovery began around the
9th century.
According to this story, a young Ethiopian sheep herder
accidentally discovered that the coffee berries his goats
were eating had some very
interesting side effects.
Upon eating the berries, the
goats got rammy and jumped around more often, appearing to have sudden bursts of energy.
And as the story went, the sheepherder took the
strange berries to the village elders believing that
they (the strange berries) might have magical properties.
For some unknown reason, the thirsty elders boiled them into
a brew, stumbling upon the berries'
stimulating effects. They began to consume them on a
regular basis (probably creating the first 'coffee
breaks').
Maybe
that was the birth
of coffee as a popular beverage.
Few people realize the coffee plant originally grew only
in Ethiopia. Coffee found its way to Europe via the Venetian
trade merchants.
Rumors of the taste of coffee began to bubble up everywhere. The Arab’s kept an even tighter grip
on their coffee plants. They closely guarded them from
being exported outside the Islamic world.
Probably because they couldn't get their hands on them, Christians began claiming coffee
was the devil’s drink...
...until Pope Vincent III decided to give it a try. The Pope liked it
- very
much, and after that, talk of banishing the drink went away.
After centuries of closely guarding the spread of coffee
cultivation, the Dutch, somehow, were able to take some
coffee
beans with them on a trip to Asia where they transplanted them in the
fertile soils of Java, Indonesia, in the 1600's.
Thus began the eventual spread of coffee plant
cultivation in many more places around the world.
Soon after, coffee houses were built all over Europe.
They became a popular place to hang out and drink
coffee, smoke, write novels and paint pictures of other
coffee drinkers, artists, authors, and dancers
(popularized by impressionist artists like Toulouse
Lautrec, Degas, etc.)
It was in the 1700’s that coffee traveled to the Americas. A French infantry captain took a small
coffee plant
with him. That plant was cultivated, resulting in over
19 million coffee trees within 50 years.
 Coffee
was declared the national drink of the United States in
a protest over the excessive taxes on tea from Britain.
(They had to, their tea was in the Boston Harbor).
Today, millions of people enjoy their favorite coffee
brews wherever
they are
throughout the day.
Coffee comes in many brands and many
flavors. You can buy ground coffee or coffee beans at
most any grocery store.
There are also some fancy gourmet coffees.
Businesses such as Starbuck’s Coffee are
million dollar industries, offering the convenience
of consistently tasteful coffee any way you want it...
with or without donuts.
But you don't have to go to
these business establishments to obtain a consistently
good tasting delicious cup of coffee. You can brew it at
home and in your office or workplace and achieve the
same consistent, high quality, even gourmet
quality coffee.
Follow the advice in this website and you'll have your friends and family
eagerly responding to your next call of
Anyone for Coffee?
Watch this
COFFEE MAKER Video
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