More about Coffee (English), Koffie (Dutch), Kahve (Turkish), Aahwa (Arabic)
Historical
A French doctor in the 1600’s suggested Café Au Laits for patients, inspiring people to begin adding milk to coffee. Largely through the efforts of the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, coffee became available in England no later than the 16th century.
By 1675, there were more than 3 000 coffeehouses throughout England. In 1822 the French were the first to innovate a crude espresso machine. The Italians then perfected this machine and became the first to manufacture it.
Factual
The first webcam was invented at The University of Cambridge to let people know if the coffee pot was full or not.
Coffee beans are actually the pit of a berry, which makes them a fruit.
Coffee beans are graded in various ways. Examples? Kenyan coffees are graded as A, B and C. AA is the best coffee. In Costa Rica, coffees are graded as Strictly Hard Bean, Good Hard Bean, Hard Bean, Medium Hard Bean, High Grown Atlantic, Medium Grown Atlantic, and Low Grown Atlantic. Those coffee beans from Colombia are labelled as ‘Supremo’, ‘Excelso’, ‘Extra’ and the lowest grade, ‘Pasilla’.
Over half of the espresso consumed in the UK is drunk in the South East of the country.
The Italian government regulates espresso because it is considered an essential part of daily life.
Mythical
The ‘Cowboy Coffee’ legend said that cowboys made their coffee by putting ground coffee into a clean sock and immersing it in water heated over a campfire. When ready, they would pour the coffee into tin cups and drink it.
An ancient meme tells of King Solomon entering a town whose inhabitants were all ill. The angel Gabriel appeared and told him to brew up a pot of coffee and distribute it amongst the afflicted citizens who symptoms inexplicably disappeared.
At the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Louis XIV acquired a Dutch coffee sapling, in exchange for some French lawn sod, that he took home and planted in his Orangery. Myth further says that the next Louis, the XV, personally tended the cuttings by harvesting, roasting and brewing coffee with his own hands for his courtiers.
A Brazilian diplomat, Francisco de Mello Palheta, was to mediate a border issue between French and Dutch Guiana. Myth says Poncho tried to obtain some seeds from the French governor but his request denied so, using another tack, he had an affair with the governor’s wife who placed some of the forbidden cherries and cuttings in a farewell bouquet she gave her lover. Upon his return, myth tells us that Poncho started the Brazilian coffee industry but in reality, Jose Mariano da Conceicao Veloso planted coffee in 1774 using seeds, obtained from a Dutch trader named Hauptman, in the garden of St Anthony’s monastery built in 1608 in what is now Brasília the modern capital.
