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 initial cup of coffee ever prepared and drunk, and then it traces the spread of coffee around the world. Most of us heard the Ethiopian legend which claims the goat herder Kaldi found the potential of the coffee beans. However 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 - coffee history
According to the legend, the energizing benefits of the coffee bean were first found by a goat herder called Kaldi, that lived on the Ethiopian plateau way back during the 9th century.
One day Kaldi discovered that after some of his heard had grazed on the bright red cherry of the coffee plant they appeared to possess boundless power, definitely more than the remainder of his animals. As the tale goes, this left them too invigorated to drop off to sleep during the night, as their bundles of power had them bounding all over the place.
A short history
After Kaldi observed how " alert" his goats became after consuming the coffee berries, he ran to the local monastery to let the monks know. A monk developed a brew from the berries and managed to stay up much later praying.News of this new mixture spread right into Egypt and right into the Arabian peninsula, where coffee traveled east and west, finally landing in southeast Asia and the Americas. And it's been preferred since.
However if we are to follow facts only, and not legends, the earliest substantiated proof of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree is from the early 15th century, in the Sufi abbeys of Yemen, spreading quickly to Mecca and Medina. By the 16th century, it had actually reached the rest of the Middle East, South India (Karnataka), Persia, Turkey, the Horn of Africa, and northern Africa. Coffee after that infected the Balkans, Italy, and to the remainder of Europe, in addition to Southeast Asia and regardless of the bans imposed throughout the 15th century by spiritual leaders in Mecca and Cairo, and later on by the Catholic Church.
Etymology
It turns out the term "coffee" originate from Arabic. The word went into the English language in 1582 via the Dutch koffie, borrowed from the Ottoman Turkish kahve, subsequently borrowed from the Arabic qahwah.There is an even more fascinating theory of the origin of the word, which you can check out on Wikipedia here.
Modern Coffee History
The modern times race for convenience and efficiency understood that people are "losing" too much time brewing coffee. This is how instant coffee was invented. David Strang, a New Zealander developed it in 1889. Freeze-dried coffee was created in 1938.Decaffeinated coffee was invented by Ludwig Roselius in 1903, filling a requirement for individuals that are hypersensitive to caffeine.
The coffee filter, the base of the most prominent coffee developing approach, the drip coffee, was developed by Melitta Bentz in 1908.
Achille Gaggia developed the modern coffee device in 1946. The very first pump-driven espresso equipment was made in 1960.
Today coffee is still one of the world's most in demand beverages. Brazil is still the world's biggest producer of coffee.