Warm Up to Winter - Take a Coffee Break

Let’s turn to coffee. The most popular story of the discovery of the coffee bean comes from the Kaffa region of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). It was there in about 700 AD that a goat herder named Kaldi discovered his goats dancing.

He believed the cause for their strange behavior was some red berries they had been eating. Kaldi told a monk about these “magic berries.” Depending on the story you believe, the monk was either ecstatic to find something to help him stay awake all night as he prayed, or he disapproved of the berries and threw them into the fire, resulting in a pleasing aroma which led to the world’s first roasted coffee. In any case, we know that these fragrant roasted beans from Ethiopia were ground and boiled to produce what we know today as coffee. 

Coffee then crossed the Red Sea to the port of Mocha in Yemen in the 15th century. Due to coffee’s growing popularity and the shipment of coffee from the port city, the word Mocha became synonymous with coffee. Coffee was grown in Yemen and became well-known in Egypt, Persia and Turkey, called the “wine of Araby.” Coffee houses began to open all around Arabia. These “Schools of the Wise” were places where men gathered to share and hear information and we’re soon the epicenter of social activity. Arabia became the gatekeeper for coffee. If a country wanted coffee beans, they had to purchase them from Yemen. The authorities did everything they could to ensure that no one could take fertile beans out of their control and plant trees themselves. But in 1670, Baba Budan, a Sufi saint from India on a pilgrimage to Mecca, smuggled some of those fertile beans back to India and began cultivating coffee. Those beans grew into a large scale coffee farm in Southern India which still produces plants today.

The Dutch too smuggled coffee plants from Yemen in an attempt to grow the beans in Holland, but were thwarted due to the cold weather. In the late 1600s, however, friends in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) sent coffee seedlings to the Dutch Governor of Java, Indonesia. Despite multiple natural disasters wiping out their first attempts at coffee cultivation, around 1704 more seedlings were planted successfully and coffee from Indonesia became a staple. Like Mocha, Java became another household term for coffee. Indonesia’s coffee production drastically increased when the coffee plant made its way to the regions of Sumatra and Celebes.

On to the continent! Coffee quickly became popular upon its arrived in Venice in 1570. Through the 1600s, coffee houses sprang up all over Europe in England, Austria, France, Germany and Holland. France was introduced to coffee in 1669 by the Turkish Ambassador to Paris. During his time with Louis XIV the Royal Court swooned over the beverage and Paris was soon enamored too. In 1683, after the Battle of Vienna, The Blue Bottle, Austria’s first coffee house, opened thanks to a surplus of coffee left by the defeated Turks. A victorious officer opened the shop and popularized the practice of adding milk and sugar to coffee.

Coffee beans then found their way even further west to conquer every nation touching the Atlantic Ocean. It began in 1714 when the mayor of Amsterdam gave King Louis XIV of France a young coffee plant, which he placed in the Royal Botanical Gardens of Paris. A French Navy captain, Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu, who was stationed in Martinique but happened to be visiting Paris, managed to secure clippings from the tree and brought them to the Caribbean, where the coffee growing conditions are ideal. He secretly planted it on Martinique among other plants to keep it safe. Within three years coffee plantations spread throughout Martinique, St. Dominique and Guadalupe. These plants would eventually populate the rest of the Caribbean and Central and South America. In 1730, the English Governor of Jamaica, Sir Nicholas Lawes brought coffee plants to his island and soon it was growing deep into the Blue Mountains. 

Today, Brazil grows more coffee than any other country in the world. Their toehold in the coffee world started when Brazilian colonel Francisco de Melo Palheta was dispatched to Guyana to settle a dispute between the Dutch and the French in 1727. His priority, however, was to get coffee and bring it back to Brazil, whatever the cost. When his request for coffee seedlings from the French governor was refused, he managed to persuade the governor’s wife to secretly give him clippings. Returning to Brazil with these clippings, he started the largest coffee empire on the planet. Brazil’s coffee production started to boom by 1822, and in 1852 the country became the largest producer of coffee. They have maintained that status to this day. As the century came to a close, East Africa too began cultivating coffee in Kenya and Tanzania from Brazilian plants.

America’s obsession with coffee actually began with tea. The notorious Boston Tea Party occurred in 1773, when a group of patriots rebelling against the English tax on tea snuck aboard English tea ships docked in Boston Harbor and dumped all of the tea into the ocean. Following that, there was an unofficial boycott on tea in the colonies. People united and vowed to only serve coffee in their homes. This show of solidarity spread and people began to associate coffee with the Revolution and viewed tea as a traitor’s drink. As the Revolution didn’t end until 1783, the colonists, now Americans, had 10 years of boycotting tea to change their hot beverage preference and taste to coffee. Since that time, the United States has been the leading single country importer of coffee, buying far more coffee than any other country. Sometimes forgotten is the fact that the U.S. does also produce coffee. Hawaii (not a state until 1959) was introduced to coffee in 1817 when Brazilians brought seedlings to the islands. By 1825, Hawaii’s had its first official coffee orchard, beginning Kona’s legacy in the industry. 

Evolution of the Brew

Instead of spending time on the varieties of coffee as we did with tea, here we’ll simply note that there are two main types of coffee beans: Arabica and Robusta. Flavors vary greatly based on where they are grown and how they are processed and later roasted. In many ways, the journey from growing the coffee cherry to pouring it in the cup is similar to winemaking process. It’s quite extensive. Unlike tea, however, we’ve seen more innovations in brewing methods.

The first modern percolator in which boiling water rose through a tube to form a continuous cycle and was capable of being heated on a kitchen stove was invented in 1819 by Parisian tinsmith Joseph-Henry-Marie Laurens. The first US patent for a coffee percolator was issued to James Nason of Franklin, Massachusetts in 1865. His version used a downflow method without rising steam and water. Illinois farmer Hanson Goodrich patented the modern stove-top percolator in 1889. Its key elements were the broad base for boiling, the upflow central tube and a perforated basket hanging on it. Little has changed in percolator design since that time.

In 1864, Jabez Burns of New York invented the first coffee roaster that didn’tneed to be held over a fire. His patent on the machine made him the grandfather of all modern coffee roasting machines.

The sale of bulk roasted coffee beans soon followed and mass coffee production was a massive achievement. Around this time a James Folger began selling pre-roasted coffee in tins with Pioneer Mills (later renamed the James A. Folger Company). In 1871 John Arbuckle invented a machine that filled, weighed, sealed and labeled coffee in paper packages. Arbuckle’s became the largest importer of coffee in the world, even owning the most merchant ships, constantly importing coffee from South America back to the US. In 1886, Maxwell House entered the scene, with Joel Cheek naming his coffee blend after the Maxwell House Hotel, famous for the presidents who stayed there. In the 1900s Nestle was approached by the Brazilian government to find a way to utilize coffee waste. The result of their years of research was freeze-dried, or instant, coffee. Nescafe instant coffee is still the world’s leading brand today.

Innovation in coffee makers was going strong too. In Italy, Luigi Bezzera invented the espresso machine in 1901. It was the first commercial espresso machine that used water and steam under high pressure to rapidly brew coffee. In 1908, drip coffee got a boost when German housewife Melitta Bentz created the first paper coffee filter using her son’s school papers. A patent was issued for the filter and the Melitta company was born.

The coffee press (or French press) was patented by Milanese designer Attilio Calimani in 1929. Faliero Bondanini made several design modifications to the press, patenting his own version in 1958 and manufacturing it in a French clarinet factory under the Melior brand name. In 1945, Italian Achille Gaggia took Bezzera’s espresso machine a step further by adding a piston to extract the coffee at an even higher pressure. This new advancement produced a layer of foam atop each shot of espresso and, thus, cappuccino was born. German inventor Gottlob Widmann patented the first electric drip brewer, the Wigomat, in 1954. In the 1970s, drip brew coffee makers replaced percolators.

What’s in Your Cup? 

Here’s where coffee gets really fun! In case you’re a coffee drink novice, we’ve put together a primer of some of the most common coffee and espresso drinks. Click on the images to expand. 

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While we included the classic Irish Coffee in with our popular coffee drinks because it’s so common, it’s worth noting that it’s not the only coffee cocktail (just maybe the best!) out there. We thought we’d share recipes for a few others for your careful consideration in Brewed with Spirit.(Click link for recipes.)

Takes the Cake

As the popularity of coffee rose in Europe around the 17th century, it became

the custom to enjoy a delicious sweet and yeasty bread when drinking coffee. These “coffee cakes” were more like sweet breads than cakes, but almost immediately recipes were adapted by Danish and German bakers and the modern style of cakes, filled with nuts and fruit, topped with icing or streusel, came along. By 1879, coffee cakes were a well-established accompaniment to the hot beverage in America and there were already countless recipes. This recipe is a typical example and is a delicious way to use Georgia pecans: (click link for recipe) Classic Cinnamon Pecan Coffee Cake .