Coffee Trivia

1. The first decaf coffee process was patented by German Ludwig Roselius in 1906. he used steamed benzol to remove caffeine from the beans.

2. C.W. Post and John Harvey Kellogg started their cereal empires in the 1890’s by making “healthy” grain-based coffee substitutes.

3. In the late 1890’s some believe coffee to be a “drug drink” with the poisonous drug caffeine. At the time, coffee was considered as bad as cocaine.

4. Arabica coffee is of higher quality and contains less caffeine than the inferior Robusta variety, which is often used as a filler in cheaper coffees (like Folgers).

5. The first drip-brewed coffee machine was invented in 1908 by German Housewife Melitta Bentz when she punched holes on the bottom of a can and lined it with paper.

6. Coffee can only be grown between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn.

7. Coffee provides a living, in one way or another, to over 20,000,000 people around the world.

8. Since coffee berries do not ripen uniformly, it must be harvested by hand, picking only the ripe berries one at a time. This makes it a very labor-intensive process.

9. Laborers at coffee plantations around the world earn an average of $3.00 a day.

10. Coffee is a very delicate commodity, whose quality is succecptible to soil conditions, growing altitude, and weather conditions.

11. Coffee that is not roasted long enough produces an underdeveloped, bitter drink. While over-roasted coffee tastes like charcoal.

12. Once coffee is roasted, it should ideally be consumed within one to two weeks since it will quickly stale.

13. The four basic components used to judge coffee are aroma, acidity, body, and flavor. Coffee tasting is knows as cupping.

14. Legend tells us that coffee was first discovered in Ethiopia by a goat herder named Kaldi when he discovered his goats became frisky after eating the berries.

15. Coffee was first mentioned in print in the tenth century by Rhazes, an Arabian physician.

16. In ancient Ethiopia, coffee berries and its leaves were called bunn.

17. Ethiopians sometimes serve coffee in an elaborate ceremony that lasts almost an hour.

18. In the early years of coffee, ethiopians ground the coffee beans and mixed them with animal fat for a quick, energy-boosting snack.

19. Before coffee was brewed, Ethiopians made a sweet beverage made from the roasted coffee husks called qishr. That drink is now knows as kisher.

20. After Ethiopians discovered coffee, it eventually spread to the Arab countries through trade.

21. Coffee became popular with Arab Sufi monks who adopted the drink because it helped them stay awake for midnight prayers.

22. The name coffee is thought to be derived from qahwa, the Arab word for wine.

23. The first coffee houses in the Arab countries were called kaveh kanes.

24. Coffee produced and exported from Mocha, Yemen was extremely sought after for its chocolaty taste. That is why today, coffee-chocolate drinks are called mocha.

25. In the 1500’s, the Ottoman Turks steeped their green coffee beans in boiling water to make them infertile. This way they made sure nobody else could grow the crop.

26. In the 1600’s a Moslem pilgrim named Baba Budan smuggle several fertile coffee seeds from the Turks and cultivated them in the Indian mountains of Mysore.

27. During the 1700’s, Mocha and Java were the two most important coffee trading ports. And the names became synonymous with coffee.

28. In the late 1500’s Pope Clement VIII was asked by his priests to ban coffee, an evil drink. After tasting it, he instead baptized coffee as a Christian drink.

29. The first coffee house in Venice opened in 1683.

30. The first French coffee house, Café de Procope, was opened in 1689 by François Procope, an Italian immigrant.

31. LLoyd’s of London had its humble beginnings when Edward Lloyd started a coffee shop that catered to seafarers and merchants.

32. In the 1680’s Franz George Kolschitzky opened the first Viennese cafe, Blue Bottle. Within a few years, coffee fueled the intellectual life of the city.

33. The first American coffee house opened in Boston in 1689.

34. After the Boston Tea Party of 1773, it was a patriotic duty to avoid tea. Instead, coffee was adopted as the drink of choice.

35. In 1723, French naval officer Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu brought coffee to the Americas when he introduced coffee to the French colony of Marthinique.

36. Milk as an additive to coffee became popular in the 1680’s, when a French physician recommended that cafe au lait be used for medicinal purposes.

37. Bach wrote a coffee cantata in 1732.

38. In early America, coffee was usually taken between meals and after dinner.

39. In the year 1790, there were two firsts in the United States; the first wholesale coffee roasting company, and the first newspaper advertisement featuring coffee.

40. The prototype of the first espresso machine was created in France in 1822.

41. The average age of an Italian barista is 48 years old. A barista is a respected job title in Italy.

42. Coffee, as a world commodity, is second only to oil.

43. Only about 20% of harvested coffee beans are considered to be a premium bean of the highest quality.

44. Coffee sacks are usually made of hemp and weigh approximately 132 pounds when they are full of green coffee beans. It takes over 600,000 beans to fill a coffee sack.

45. It was the early 1400’s, and with alcohol forbidden by the Koran, coffee soon became the replacement beverage.

46. In 1670, Dorothy Jones of Boston was granted a license to sell coffee, and so became the first American coffee trader.

47. Coffee trees are evergreen and grow to heights above 15 feet but are normally pruned to around 8 feet in order to facilitate harvesting.

48. Coffee trees produce highly aromatic, short-lived flowers producing a scent between jasmine and orange. These blossoms produce cranberry-sized coffee cherries. It takes four to five years to yield a commercial harvest.

49. Coffee beans are similar to grapes that produce wine in that they are affected by the temperature, soil conditions, altitude, rainfall, drainage and degree of ripeness when picked.

50. Brazil accounts for almost 1/3 of the world’s coffee production, producing over 3-1/3 billion pounds of coffee each year.

51. Hawaii is the only state of the United States in which coffee is commercially grown.

52. Before roasting, some green coffee beans are stored for years, and experts believe that certain beans improve with age, when stored properly.

53. The vast majority of coffee available to consumers are blends of different beans.

54. After they are roasted, and when the beans begin to cool, they release about 700 chemical substances that make up the vaporizing aromas.

55. After the decaffeinating process, processing companies no longer throw the caffeine away; they sell it to pharmaceutical companies.

56. Studies tell us the human body will absorb only 300 milligrams of caffeine at a given time. Additional amounts are cast off and will provide no additional stimulation. The human body dissipates 20% of the caffeine in the system each hour.

57. Latte’ is the Italian word for milk. So if you request a latte’ in Italy, you’ll be served a glass of milk.

58. Regular coffee drinkers have about one-third less asthma symptoms than those non-coffee drinkers. So says a Harvard researcher who studied 20,000 people.

59. Caffeine is on the International Olympic Committee list of prohibited substances. Athletes who test positive for more than 12 micrograms of caffeine per milliliter of urine may be banned from the Olympic Games. This level may be reached after drinking about 5 cups of coffee.

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