You’d think, from all the sales hype and furore surrounding Red Bull, that the company had invented the energy drink. In fact the ingredient that helps you ‘fly’ is none other than caffeine. A substance we’ve been imbibing in coffee, as well as tea of course, for centuries.
Now there is nothing more gratifying than a cup of steaming hot coffee when you want a lift. But today it’s not as simple as just buying some, as there are many different types of coffee, including Arabian – the most common- Costa Rican and even Hawaiian to choose from. And they all have something going for them. You can buy it in different forms as well – instant, ground, or the beans themselves, while at the modern coffeehouse the menu is long and interesting.
Where it all began
We’ve been taking the beans of the coffee plant, an evergreen tree that’s pruned to about 3 metres high, and converting them into a drink for hundreds of years. The coffee plant originated in Ethiopia, probably in the province of Kaffa, but is now cultivated in tropical countries across the world including Brazil, Colombia and the Ivory Coast.
Legend has it that around 850AD, an Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi noticed that his goats became decidedly more energetic after eating the red berries of a local shrub. So Kaldi decided to experiment with the berries himself and got a decided lift from the result. He’d experienced the first caffeine high.
What we know for certain, however, is that the flesh of the berry was eaten by slaves taken to Yemen and Arabia through the port of Mocha, a name well known to coffee aficionados today.
It wasn’t until around 1100AD on the Arabian Peninsula that the shrub was cultivated. It was roasted and boiled by Arabs, making a plant based drink called “gahwa”. The Arabs didn’t like the idea of anyone else cultivating the brew plant and so banned the export of trees or live beans (beans with the flesh still on). It was the Dutch who finally managed to make off with some, and from 1616 Dutch greenhouses sheltered the coffee tree. They also took the plant to India and what is now Indonesia. Today Indonesia is one of the world’s major coffee suppliers.
The worldwide spread continued and in 1723 coffee was planted in America. Just four years later the Brazilian coffee industry was started with beans allegedly smuggled out of Paris.
The first coffeehouses
Some time before this, the very first coffeehouses had appeared in the city of Mecca on the Arabian Peninsula. Each became a social centre where chess was played, gossip exchanged and business discussed. A shop opened in Constantinople, Turkey in 1495 and two more followed, but not until over 50 years later. It was not until around1600 that coffee came to Europe. It was imported through the port of Venice and the first Italian coffeehouse opened in 1654.
A short time before that, the first English coffeehouse had opened. It was known as the “penny university” as owners charged a penny to get in and receive a cup of coffee. Again the coffeehouse was more than just a place to enjoy a tasty drink. It was a place to exchange ideas. Edward Lloyd’s famous coffee house opened in 1688. It went on to become the insurance company Lloyd’s of London.
Coffee Machines
The first espresso machine was manufactured commercially in 1905, although a prototype had been made years before in France. This led to the drip coffee maker. Meanwhile a woman called Marita Bentz made a filter out of blotting paper. Presumably it wasn’t a used sheet! Next came the automatic espresso machine, invented by Dr. Ernest Illy, a name still famous today.
By the 1930s Brazil had managed to develop a surplus of coffee beans. A way out was found by the Nescafe company. It invented instant coffee and managed to get the Brazilian government out of its predicament. By 1995 coffee had become the most popular drink in the world, with consumption at a massive 400 billion cups a year. As a commodity it ranked second only to oil.
A wide variety
The coffee you drink comes in a wide variety of types from espresso to late, but it originates from one of just two types of coffee bean, Arabica and Robusta.
The Arabica bean was the first to be cultivated and grows between 1200 metres and 1800 metres above sea level. Arabica plants are sensitive to poor conditions and need looking after, so the beans are more expensive. They are low in caffeine with a high aroma and flavour. Around 75% of the beans grown are of the Arabica variety.
Robusta grows up to 760 metres above sea level. It’s grown mostly in West Africa and Southeast Asia. It’s a hardier bean but produces a coffee with less aroma and taste, although it has two times the caffeine content of Arabica.
These two beans produce the wide variety of coffees that we can purchase at the shops today or drink at our local coffeehouse.
Where a coffee is grown and at what altitude often determines its quality. Some of the best Caribbean coffee is grown on the Islands of Costa Rica and Jamaica, including the famous Jamaican Blue Mountain. Colombia produces a mild variant that is known the world over, while Brazil produces over 30% of the world’s coffee. From Africa comes mocha, the traditional coffee still grown in North Yemen, with its rich, dusky taste and aroma, and Ethiopian Harrar. Kenya produces another full-bodied coffee. Asian coffees come from among others, India and Sumatra, which produces a coffee with a distinctive deep acidity. Then there is Hawaii, which produces original Kona as well as variants.
In the coffeehouse
The coffee ‘culture’ as we know it today probably began on the western seaboard of the United States in the city of Seattle. That is of course the home of Starbucks. From this enterprise the non-coffee literate world began to discover the merits of late, cappuccino, espresso and more. Today almost every main street has its coffeehouse, where once again you can sit, relax, read the paper or discuss the day’s gossip for the price of a cup of coffee. Our favourite tipples include the strong espresso, the milky latte, the chocolate powder-topped cappuccino, macchiato and mocha, a mix of coffee and chocolate.
Today you can buy a good cup of coffee virtually everywhere and the whole coffee industry has grown to a point where it is not just culturally important but economically so as well. It’s vital to many of the world’s economies including some emergent ones and is traded on major futures and commodity exchanges. So drinking that glass of latte may be doing more than just giving you a pleasant interlude; it’s bolstering the global economy.