The History Of Coffee - Video

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 very initial cup of coffee brewed and drunk, and afterwards it tracks the spread of coffee worldwide. All of us know the Ethiopian legend which says the goat herdsman Kaldi discovered 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 effects of the coffee bean were first uncovered by a goat herdsman called Kaldi, that lived on the Ethiopian plateau during the 9th century.

Kaldi discovered that after some of his heard had grazed on the bright red cherry of the coffee plant they appeared to have boundless energy, definitely more than the remainder of his animals. As the tale goes, this left them as well energized to go to sleep at night, as their packages of power had them bounding everywhere.

A short history

After Kaldi observed how " playful" his goats became after eating the coffee berries, he went to the regional monastery to let the monks know. A monk produced a brew from the berries and was able to keep up much later praying.

News of this new brew spread into Egypt and into the Arabian peninsula, where coffee traveled east and west, lastly ending up in southeast Asia and the Americas. And it's been popular ever 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 quickly to Mecca and Medina. By the 16th century, it had gotten to the rest of the Middle East, South India (Karnataka), Persia, Turkey, the Horn of Africa, and northern Africa. Coffee after that spread to the Balkans, Italy, and to the rest of Europe, as well as Southeast Asia and regardless of the bans enforced during the 15th century by religious leaders in Mecca and Cairo, and later on by the Catholic Church.

Etymology

It turns out the word "coffee" originate from Arabic. The word entered the English language in 1582 via the Dutch koffie, borrowed from the Turkish kahve, subsequently borrowed from the Arabic qahwah.

There is an even more interesting hypothesis of the origin of the word, which you can read on Wikipedia here.

Modern Coffee History

The modern times race for convenience and productivity realized that people are "losing" too much time brewing coffee. This is how instant coffee was created. David Strang, a New Zealander developed it in 1889. Freeze-dried coffee was created in 1938.

Decaffeinated coffee was developed by Ludwig Roselius in 1903, filling a requirement for individuals that are sensitive to high levels of caffeine.

The coffee filter, the basis of the most prominent coffee brewing technique, the drip coffee, was invented by Melitta Bentz in 1908.

Achille Gaggia invented the modern-day espresso machine in 1946. The very first pump-driven espresso device was made in 1960.

Today coffee is still among the world's most common drinks. Brazil is still the world's biggest producer of coffee.