History of Coffee
Coffee is an important part of many Americans daily routine. It has created the movement behind national chains of coffee shops and is big business with 501 billion cups consumed every year.While coffee is an important part of America’s morning energy needs, the history of coffee and where it came from isn’t completely clear.
One of the stories of how coffee was discovered is the story of Kaldi. According to the legend:
Kaldi, noticing the energizing effects when his flock nibbled on the bright red berries of a certain bush they had become (jumping goats) chewed on the fruit himself. His exhilaration prompted him to bring the berries to an Islamic holy man in a nearby monastery. But the holy man disapproved of their use and threw them into a the fire, from which an enticing aroma billowed. The roasted beans were quickly raked from the embers, ground up, and dissolved in hot water, yielding the world’s first cup of coffee.
This tale supposedly took place in the 9th century, but was not recorded until 1671 so while interesting is unlikely to tell the true story of how coffee bean became an important ingredient. What is known for sure about coffee is that the earliest credible evidence of coffee drinking appears in the middle of the fifteenth century, in the Sufi monasteries of the Yemen in southern Arabia. Coffee then began to spread across the Middle East, Persia, Turkey and northern Africa by the 16th century. Coffee eventually made its way to Italy, and to the rest of Europe, Indonesia, and the Americas.
Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, the growth of coffee drinking began in ernst during the Colonial period of American history:
When coffee reached North America during the Colonial period, it was initially not as successful as it had been in Europe. During the Revolutionary War, however, the demand for coffee increased so much that dealers had to hoard their scarce supplies and raise prices dramatically; this was also due to the reduced availability of tea from British merchants. After the War of 1812, during which Britain temporarily cut off access to tea imports, the Americans’ taste for coffee grew, and high demand during the American Civil War together with advances in brewing technology secured the position of coffee as an everyday commodity in the United States.
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Posted by The Core Editor
on Jan 21 2010. Filed under Coffee.
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