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 mug of coffee ever prepared and sipped, and after that it traces the spread of coffee all over the world. We all heard the Ethiopian legend which says the goat herder Kaldi discovered the power of the coffee beans. However what happened afterwards?
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 - the history of coffee
According to the legend, the energizing benefits of the coffee bean were first uncovered by a goat herdsman called Kaldi, who lived on the Ethiopian plateau during the 9th century.
Kaldi noticed that after some of his heard had grazed on the cherry of the coffee plant they appeared to possess boundless power, certainly more than the rest of his animals. As the story goes, this left them as well energized to fall asleep in the evening, as their bundles of power had them bounding everywhere.
A brief history
After Kaldi noticed how "spirited" his goats became after eating the coffee berries, he ran to the regional monastery to let the monks know. A monk produced a mixture from the berries and managed to keep up a lot later praying.News of this brand-new brew spread into Egypt and right into the Arabian peninsula, where coffee traveled east and west, finally ending up in southeast Asia and the Americas. And it's been preferred ever since.
However if we are to consider facts only, and not legends, the earliest substantiated evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree is from the early 15th century, in the Sufi abbeys of Yemen, spreading soon 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 rest of Europe, in addition to Southeast Asia and regardless of the bans enforced during the 15th century by spiritual leaders in Mecca and Cairo, and later 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 Ottoman 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 contemporary times race for convenience and productivity realized that individuals are "wasting" too much time preparing coffee. This is how instant coffee was developed. David Strang, a New Zealander created it in 1889. Freeze-dried coffee was developed in 1938.Decaffeinated coffee was developed by Ludwig Roselius in 1903, filling a requirement for people that are sensitive to caffeine.
The coffee filter, the base of the most popular coffee developing method, the drip coffee, was developed by Melitta Bentz in 1908.
Achille Gaggia developed the modern-day coffee machine in 1946. The initial pump-driven espresso maker was made in 1960.
Today coffee is still among the world's most popular drinks. Brazil is still the globe's largest producer of coffee.