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 clip that goes back to the very initial cup of coffee ever prepared and sipped, and then it traces the spread of coffee around the world. All of us know the Ethiopian legend which says the goat herder Kaldi discovered the power of the coffee beans. But 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.
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According to the legend, the invigorating effects of the coffee bean were first uncovered by a goat herder called Kaldi, that lived on the Ethiopian plateau during the 9th century.
Kaldi noticed that after some of his heard had foraged on the bright red cherry of the coffee plant they seemed to have boundless power, certainly more than the rest of his animals. As the tale goes, this left them as well invigorated to drop off to sleep during the night, as their packages of power had them bounding everywhere.
A quick history
After Kaldi saw how " alert" his goats became after consuming the coffee berries, he ran to the regional monastery to let the monks know. A monk created a mixture from the berries and managed to keep up a lot later praying.News of this brand-new brew spread right into Egypt and into the Arabian peninsula, where coffee traveled east and west, ultimately ending up in southeast Asia and the Americas. And it's been prominent ever since.
However if we are to follow facts only, and not legends, the oldest 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 out quickly to Mecca and Medina. By the 16th century, it had reached the rest of the Middle East, South India (Karnataka), Persia, Turkey, the Horn of Africa, and north Africa. Coffee after that spread to the Balkans, Italy, and to the rest of Europe, as well as Southeast Asia and in spite of the restrictions imposed throughout the 15th century by religious leaders in Mecca and Cairo, and later by the Catholic Church.
Etymology
It turns out the term "coffee" originate from Arabic. The word went into the English language in 1582 via the Dutch koffie, borrowed from the Turkish kahve, consequently borrowed from the Arabic qahwah.There is an even more intriguing theory of the beginning of the word, which you can check out on Wikipedia here.
Modern Coffee History
The contemporary times race for comfort and efficiency understood that people are "losing" too much time making coffee. This is how instant coffee was developed. David Strang, a New Zealander created it in 1889. Freeze-dried coffee was created in 1938.Decaffeinated coffee was created by Ludwig Roselius in 1903, filling a requirement for people who are hypersensitive to high levels of caffeine.
The coffee filter, the foundation of the most prominent coffee brewing approach, the drip coffee, was invented by Melitta Bentz in 1908.
Achille Gaggia developed the modern espresso device in 1946. The very first pump-driven coffee machine was made in 1960.
Today coffee is still one of the world's most popular beverages. Brazil is still the globe's largest producer of coffee.