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 that goes back to the first cup of coffee made and drunk, and after that it tracks the expansion of coffee all over the world. Most of us know the Ethiopian legend which claims the goat herder Kaldi discovered the potential of the coffee beans. But what happened after that?
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 - cool facts about coffee
According to the legend, the stimulating benefits of the coffee bean were first found by a goat herdsman called Kaldi, who lived on the Ethiopian plateau way back during the 9th century.
Kaldi discovered that after some of his heard had grazed on the cherry of the coffee plant they seemed to possess boundless power, definitely more than the rest of his animals. As the story goes, this left them also invigorated to fall asleep in the evening, as their packages of power had them bounding everywhere.
A quick history
After Kaldi discovered how " playful" his goats became after consuming the coffee berries, he ran to the regional monastery to let the monks know. A monk developed a brew from the berries and managed to keep up much later praying.News of this new brew spread into Egypt and right into the Arabian peninsula, where coffee traveled east and west, lastly ending up in southeast Asia and the Americas. And it's been preferred since.
However if we are to follow facts only, and not legends, the oldest confirmed proof of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree is from the early 15th century, in the Sufi abbeys of Yemen, spreading out soon to Mecca and Medina. By the 16th century, it had actually reached the remainder of the Middle East, South India (Karnataka), Persia, Turkey, the Horn of Africa, and northern Africa. Coffee then spread to the Balkans, Italy, and to the rest of Europe, as well as Southeast Asia and despite the bans enforced during the 15th century by spiritual leaders in Capital and Cairo, and later by the Catholic Church.
Etymology
It turns out the term "coffee" originate from Arabic. The word entered the English language in 1582 via the Dutch koffie, borrowed from the Turkish kahve, in turn borrowed from the Arabic qahwah.There is an even more fascinating hypothesis of the beginning of the word, which you can check out on Wikipedia here.
Modern Coffee History
The modern-day times race for convenience and efficiency understood that individuals are "losing" too much time brewing coffee. This is how instant coffee was created. David Strang, a New Zealander invented it in 1889. Freeze-dried coffee was created in 1938.Decaffeinated coffee was developed by Ludwig Roselius in 1903, filling a demand for people who are sensitive to caffeine.
The coffee filter, the basis of the most prominent coffee brewing approach, the drip coffee, was developed by Melitta Bentz in 1908.
Achille Gaggia developed the contemporary coffee equipment in 1946. The initial pump-driven coffee equipment was made in 1960.
Today coffee is still one of the world's most common drinks. Brazil is still the world's largest producer of coffee.