History of Coffee
Its hard to believe that at one time you could not wake yourself up with a strong cup of stimulating caffeine filled coffee. So where does coffee come from?
Dating back to the 15th century in the far east are legends that say coffee was first discovered by a goat herder in the Yemen. He noticed that after eating the red fruit of the coffee bush his goats stayed awake all night.
In 1822, the first espresso machine was made in France. In 1933, Dr. Ernest Illy invented the first automatic espresso machine. However, the modern-day espresso machine was created by Italian Achilles Gaggia in 1946. Gaggia invented a high pressure espresso machine by using a spring powered lever system. The first pump driven espresso machine was produced in 1960 by the Faema company.
Melitta Bentz a housewife from Dresden, Germany invented the first coffee filter. She wanted to brew the perfect cup of coffee without the bitterness caused by overbrewing. She decided to invent a way to make a filtered coffee, pouring boiling water over ground coffee and having the liquid be filtered, removing any grinds. Melitta Bentz experimented with different materials, then used her sons blotter paper from school worked best. She cut a round piece of blotting paper and put it in a metal cup.
On June 20th, 1908, the coffee filter and filter paper were patented. On December 15th, 1908, Melitta Bentz and her husband Hugo started the Melitta Bentz Company. The next year they sold 1200 coffee filters at the Leipziger fair in Germany. The Mellitta Bentz Company also patented the filter bag in 1937 and vacuum packing in 1962.
James Mason invented the coffee percolator on December 26, 1865.
Probably best known around the world is instant coffee which is easier to dissolve in hot water. This was invented in 1901, by Japanese American chemist Satori Kato of Chicago. In 1906, English chemist George Constant Washington, invented the first mass-produced instant coffee. Washington was living in Guatemala and at the time when he observed dried coffee on his coffee carafe, after experimenting he created “Red E Coffee” – the brand name for his instant coffee first marketed in 1909. In 1938, Nescafe or ‘freeze dried’ coffee was invented.
Some wonder what the point is of taking the caffeine away but decaffeinated coffee was invented in 1903 by German coffee importer, Ludwig Roselius, who turned a batch of ruined coffee beans over to researchers. Although not the first to remove caffeine, they perfected the process of removing caffeine from the beans without destroying any flavour. He marketed the coffee under the brand name ‘Sanka’ (a contraction of ‘sans caffeine’). Sanka was introduced into the US in 1923.
Coffee is the second most traded product in the world after petroleum. World wide coffee production tips the scales at about 6 million metric tonnes.
It takes five years for a coffee tree to reach maturity. The average yield from one tree is the equivalent of one roasted pound of coffee.
People who buy coffee primarily at drive through windows on their way to work will spend as much as 45 hours a year waiting in line.
Of the various botanical species of coffee trees in the world, only two are extensively cultivated commercially; Arabica and Robusta.
The first coffee house in Europe opened in Venice in 1683, while coffee was available in Europe as early as 1608, mostly for the rich.
The largest coffee producing nation is Brazil, responsible for 30 to 40 % of total world output.
The history of coffee video