Coffee Garden

Coffee the excellent flavor

2007-10-10T03:15:00.001-07:00

The coffee tastes is the admirable flavor drinks, as known there are different flavor that can be added to your coffee to experience ordinary flavor. Some of the flavor comprises of coffee are vanilla, coffee chocolate, macadamia, etc. The coffee is in fact savored by the combination of some flavorings substances following to the roasting. Should keep the coffee safe in a tight container and it is better to keep them in a freezer to protect from the heat of the sunlight.

Coffee supports in averting sensitivity infection and internal body infections, it helps in preventing the cell from destroying away by the internal body illness. Furthermore is it said that the antioxidants present in the coffee is advanced than that of the antioxidants presents in apple or tomatoes.

Normal utilization of coffee does not affect a person’s alertness, moreover coffee become the significant drinks in human’s life it is serve in several restaurants, and it’s also dependable for the expansion of employ through cultivating the seed, The Coffee that’s cultivated in the fields is affluent in productions of nitrogen, manufacturing the soil in a perfect conditioner and an enormous accompaniment to fertilize. Accumulation of the leftover from the daily preparation will make that possible and in returns it makes us attractive to view the fields, with the foundation of the plants after removing the dead cells

The importance of a New World drink coffee trace back to 1773 Boston tea party which reject of the british tea. Later on, in the year 1810, New York founded the famous “Tontine coffee house” became the mosts expensive that associated durings that time. The Coffee cultivation spread to brazil, peru, peraguay, etc then exports almosts to all the parts of the worlds, which becames a major roles in a country.

Philosophically Perfect Cup of Coffee: Sign of the Times Evident in Gold Cup

2007-10-02T18:19:00.000-07:00

© 1983 Stuart Daw
(published in Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, March 1983)

The National Coffee Service Association is developing a new operations manual. I have been asked by the board of directors to prepare a section dealing with coffee brewing standards around lines established by the Coffee Brewing Center in the days of the Golden Cup Award.

Many readers will recall the brewing standards one had to meet in achieving success in that program. Winning a Golden Cup had nothing whatever to do with flavor quality, only strength as measured by the percentage of solids in solution at a given ratio of coffee to water.

You will see in the accompanying diagram the form used in determining whether or not a food service outlet would qualify for a Golden Cup. As a sign of the times, I have extended the form 50 percent lower to have regard for weights of coffee currently in use in Coffee Service, something never even contemplated by the Coffee Brewing Center. Everything below .80 percent soluble solids in solution is "New Chart."

On the left hand side of the chart, the numbers stand for the percentage of a given cup of coffee that is coffee oil (soluble solids). The difference between that number and 100, is the percentage of water in that cup of coffee. Across the top of the chart and down the right hand side, you will see numbers that represent the amount of coffee used per decanter in a given brew.

The line that represented the bottom perimeter of the old chart represents the weight of the number of ounces of coffee oil per pound of coffee that had been extracted during brewing.

By knowing the amount of water and ground coffee used in preparing the brew, a soluble solids test done either by a hydrometer, a conductivity meter, or in a drying oven, would reveal the percentage of soluble solids in solution. Thus you can pinpoint on the chart precisely where the cup in question belongs, and then by running your eye vertically down the page, you can see the rate of ounces of coffee oil per pound that is represented by that particular cup.

As you can see, the old form shows that it would be impossible to win the Golden Cup with less than 3.2 ounces of coffee per decanter. If you look at the left hand side of the chart, that means that an "ideal" cup of coffee had to be between 1.15 and 1.25 percent soluble solids. In other words, at 1.2 percent soluble solids, a cup of coffee would contain 98.8 percent water.

If you use 3.2 ounces of coffee to a decanter, the extraction rate would have to be perfect in order to get precisely 1.15 percent soluble solids in solution, for too much or too little extraction would send you into either the "bitter" or the "weak" section.

Coffee brewed to the necessary specifications was rich indeed. And "forcing" the food service outlet that wished to benefit from the fine public relations flowing from the award to serve "coffee with some guts in it" was probably very good for the coffee business.

But with today's package weights it would be impossible to even get onto the chart let alone into Golden Cup territory. Is it then an absurd idea to even try to dignify today’s weights with a word such as "ideal?"

As I said in the September 1982 issue of' the TEA & COFFEE TRADE JOURNAL, the type of coffee represented by the Golden Cup standard should be thought of as the "philosophically perfect" brew. But the correct "socially objective" strength is that which satisfies the most people in any given environmental context, whether a hotel, restaurant, or business office.

At any strength the rate of extraction should remain the same. One can make coffee weaker than the "philosophically perfect" brew by using more water in the brewing process, in effect adding water to the "perfect brew." For if we simply add a decanter of water to a brew that has been made at 3.5 ounces, we have, in effect, brewed at 1.75 ounces, a fair weight in today’s OCS market. A hydrometer test of both brews will show the result as having simply gone vertically down the chart, as the percentage of solids extracted from the grounds would remain the same.

To the mathematical purist, forgive the poetic license taken in the preceding paragraph. In fact, 3.5 ounces of coffee would lose seven ounces of water in the brewing process. Then by adding a full 64 fluid ounces that would not actually pass through the grounds, we would more than just double the ratio of water to coffee.

To fit the old chart to modern reality, let us enter the "socially objective" strength for different types of eating places requiring different beverage qualities in the away from home market, and give "CUP" awards accordingly.

If you look at the chart vertically from the ideal range on down, you will see that we have assigned numbers to the cup in each rectangle, and herewith you will see a suggested scale of awards to be given in accordance with the various strengths involved.

Cup No. I — The Golden Cup Award
(for the philosophically perfect cup of coffee)
Cup No. 2 — The Silver Cup Award
(for normal restaurant use)
Cup No. 3 — The Tin Cup Award
(light snack bars, high class business offices, etc.)
Cup No. 4 — The Plastic Cup Award
(for ordinary business offices)
Cup No. 5 — The Paper Cup Award
(for weak coffee oriented offices)
Cup No. 6 — The Empty Cup Award
(for that chiseling competitor)

The chart below is based on the original "Golden Cup Brewing Control Chart" as issued by the Coffee Brewing Institute (later the Coffee Brewing Center), which has been slightly modified in current usage by the Specialty Coffee Association of America for their registered name, "Golden Cup."

The Coffee House? Latte Can be Just as Good at Home

2007-09-27T19:23:00.000-07:00

Where do you go for your best coffee? Perhaps you go to your local coffee house. Latte, espresso, mocha - all is available at reasonable cost. But what is reasonable?

Of course, the question of cost means different things to different people. Nobody can deny the sociable aspects of having a coffee in a coffee house. Latte somehow does not taste the same without the social environment. And, of course, there are other features associated with coffee houses that draw punters in for that leisurely cup.

But consider the alternative - or when you simply can't or don't want to go out. What better thing to be able to do than have that perfect cup of coffee in the home. With modern machines this is eminently possible and practical. Gone are the days when the precision of producing a cup of decent coffee was such that you needed a science degree to even attempt it. Gone is the mess and the wastage. Say hello to sparkling new machines, built for the purpose of producing coffee that an expert would be hard pressed to distinguish from the real thing produced elsewhere at four times the cost.

And, incidentally, it IS the real thing. Coffee beans and coffee flavors are available for your home machine at reasonable cost and from reasonable sources. You just have to look and you will find. No more detective work in finding product sources, no more juggling the budget. No more settling for an inferior product due to cost of complexity considerations.

Perfectly stylish and robust coffee machines are available from hundreds of online and offline stores. They fit the bill for coffee making in the same way that they do the pocket. They are as affordable as you want them to be and, treated well, will last years. Now, there are no more excuses for venturing to the coffee house. Latte is on your doorstep.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eric_Hartwell

Coffee the excellent flavor

2007-09-25T21:22:00.001-07:00

Espresso Basics - History

2007-09-21T01:20:00.002-07:00

Evolution of the Caffe Machine. The first European patents for steam-pressure coffees machines were filed between 1821 and 1824. A variation of the method was first applied to a large caffe machine by Edward Loysel de Santais in 1843. Santais's machine wowed visitors to the Paris Exposition of 1855 by producing "two thousand cups of coffee an hour." Santais's machine brewed coffee a pot at a time, however, and used steam pressure, not to force the brewing water directly through the coffee, but, instead, to raise the water to a considerable height above the coffee, from whence it descended through an elaborate system of tubes to the coffee bed. The weight of the hot water, not the trapped steam, applied the brewing pressure.

New Century, First Espresso Machine. It was not until the dawn of the 20th century that the Milanese Luigi Bezzera patented a restaurant machine that used the pressure of trapped steam to directly force water through ground coffee. The Bezzera machine also innovated by distributing the freshly brewed coffee through one or more "water and steam groups" directly into the cup.

In many respects the Bezzara machine established the basic configuration that espresso machines would maintain throughout the 20th century. These machines decreased the size of the strainer that held the coffee, but increased the number of valves, enabling them to produce several single cups of coffee simultaneously, rather than a single big pot at a time. Then as now, the espresso operator packed a few teaspoons of very finely ground, dark-roast coffee into a little metal filter. The filter was clamped into a receptacle called the group, which protruded from the side of the machine. When the operator opened the valve (or, in more modern machines, pulls a handle or pushes a button), hot water was forced through the coffee and into the cup.

The Gaggia Breakthrough. In 1948 Achille Gaggia introduced the first truly modern espresso machine. As Gaggia's design eventually evolved, the water tank was laid on its side and concealed inside a streamlined metal cabinet with lines like a Danish-modern jukebox. The simple valve of the old days was replaced with a spring-powered piston that pushed the water through the coffee harder and faster. The operator depressed a long metal handle. The handle in turn compressed a spring-loaded piston that forced a dose of hot water slowly through the coffee as the handle majestically returned to its original erect position. The new spring-loaded machines pushed the water through the coffee at a pressure that is now accepted as ideal for espresso brewing: a minimum of nine atmospheres, or nine times the ordinary pressure exerted by the earth's atmosphere. By comparison, the pre-war steam-pressure machines exerted a feeble one-and-a-half atmospheres of pressure.

Computer-Age Espresso. In the 1960s, just when pumping the handle became the signature performance piece of espresso caffes, less dramatic and more automated means for forcing the hot water through the coffee began to evolve. The earliest of these no-hands machines were built around simple hydraulic pumps. Today's versions heat water separately from the main reservoir, control water temperature and pressure with precision, and flatter the hi-tech pretensions of the late 20th century with digital read-outs.

These push-button machines tend to carry the streamlined look to an extreme. Everything is concealed inside a single, sleek enamel and chrome housing. All have one feature in common: The operator pushes a button or trips a switch rather than pumping a long handle. Since so much of the process is automated, the push-button machines are easier for the novice to master, but do not necessarily make better espresso. Proprietors of some of the better caffes in the San Francisco Bay Area, at any rate, still prefer the pump-piston machines because they give the sophisticated operator maximum control over the brewing process.

Enter Frothed Milk. With the long, gleaming handle going the way of the running board, the best routine left to the espresso operator is heating and frothing the milk used in drinks like cappuccino and caffè latte. Espresso is a strong, concentrated coffee, and, in accordance with European tradition, many of the drinks in espresso cuisine combine it with milk. If the milk were unheated, it would instantly cool the coffee. Early in the history of the espresso machine, someone, probably Luigi Bezzara in 1901, realized that the steam collected in the top of the tank could be used to heat milk as well as provide pressure for making coffee. A valve with a long nozzle was fed into the upper part of the tank where the steam gathers. When the valve is opened by unscrewing a knob, the compressed steam hisses out of the nozzle. The operator pours cold milk into a pitcher, inserts the nozzle into the milk, and opens the valve. The compressed steam shoots through the milk, heating it and raising an attractive head of froth or foam.

Espresso Basics - A Definition by Place

2007-09-21T01:20:00.001-07:00

Finally, espresso can be defined in terms of the places it has helped create and that helped create it: the caffes, cafes, coffeehouses, espresso bars, and espresso carts of the world. For espresso is a quintessentially public coffee. The technological sophistication of the espresso system only could have evolved in the context of public establishments with enough coffee drinkers to support the expense involved in maintaining such large and complex coffee-making equipment. Thus espresso and the espresso machine have come to constitute the spiritual and aesthetic heart of a variety of subtly different institutions, including the Italian-American caffe, the espresso bar, the American coffeehouse, and now the Seattle-style espresso cart and stand.

Espresso Basics - Espresso as Cuisine

2007-09-21T01:19:00.001-07:00

Espresso also can be defined as a kind of coffee cuisine. For example, mainstream American coffee cuisine emphasizes the bottomless cup: large, repeated servings of usually brisk-tasting, light-bodied coffees prepared by the filter method, often taken without milk or sweetener. Espresso cuisine, on the other hand, emphasizes smaller servings of heavier-bodied, richer coffee, brewed on demand rather than in batches, usually drunk sweetened, and often combined with frothed milk and other garnishes and flavorings.

In Italy the classic espresso cuisine emphasizes simplicity: perfect short pulls of espresso and a handful of exquisitely modulated combinations of coffee and milk. Predictably, in North America a more free-wheeling, idiosyncratic, bigger approach has evolved. At one extreme the Seattle-style espresso cuisine rears its many-flavored head: wide-open, innovative, the basic themes of espresso and milk exuberantly elaborated with flavored syrups, ice, a score of garnishes, and seemingly endless refinements involving the milk (1%, 2%, 3%, skim, soy, eggnog ...).

At the other is beatnik espresso, the original Italian-American cuisine, the espresso of storefront shops in old Italian neighborhoods and seedy artists' caffes. This cuisine resembles the classic Italian, but the coffee is darker, the servings are bigger, and the taste is rawer. Between the two are a few, very few, caffes that conscientiously pursue the classic Italian ideal. The Cuban tradition of south Florida constitutes still another, though more regional, American espresso cuisine.

Finally, there is still another American cuisine, which I would like to dub espresso manque, and which is all of the misinterpretations and misunderstandings of espresso being committed in the United States today thrown together, including watery, bitter, overextracted coffee, scalded milk, meringue-like heads of froth, all presented to the background flatulence of canned whipped cream being sprayed on top of the drink to distract us from the grim reality underneath.

Espresso Basics - Cultural Definition

2007-09-21T01:18:00.000-07:00

Defining espresso culturally and historically is more problematic. The taste for a dark, heavy, intense coffee, sweetened and drunk out of little cups, is obviously much older than the espresso machine itself, and may stretch back as far as the first coffeehouses in Cairo, Egypt, established during the early fifteenth century. On the other hand, technology (and the imagery of technology) is also obviously an important element of espresso culture. Although all coffee-making lends itself to technological tinkering, no other coffee culture has applied technology to coffee-making with quite the passion as the Italians have to espresso. The word espresso itself suggests custom-brewing, as in brewed expressly for you, as well as direct, rapid, non-stop, as in express train. Not only has technology been applied enthusiastically to the actual process of brewing espresso, but the imagery of technology, the idea of modernity and speed, also turns up as a major element in espresso's cultural symbolism.

So culturally and historically we have a paradox. On the one hand, espresso as a general taste in coffee-drinking goes back to the very beginnings of coffee as a public beverage. On the other, Italian espresso culture has refined that taste through a technology that flaunts its modernity.

When we turn our attention to the United States, an historical and cultural definition of espresso might emphasize still another set of connotations. Rather than being associated with modernity and a dynamic urbanism, espresso in America has become identified with various alternate cultures, from Europeanized sophisticate nostalgically evoking tradition, to intellectual rebel attacking it.

Espresso Basics - Technical Definition

2007-09-21T01:17:00.000-07:00

A definition of espresso along technical lines is perhaps least ambiguous: Espresso is coffee brewed from beans roasted medium to dark brown, with the brewing accomplished by hot water forced through a bed of finely-ground, densely-compacted coffee at a pressure of approximately nine atmospheres. The resulting heavy-bodied, aromatic, bittersweet beverage is often combined with milk that has been heated and aerated by having steam run through it until the milk is hot and covered by a head of froth.

To extend the technical definition somewhat, we might say that espresso is an entire system of coffee production, a system that includes specific approaches to blending the coffee, to roasting it, and to grinding it, and that emphasizes freshness through grinding and brewing coffee a cup at a time on demand, rather than brewing a pot or urn at a time from pre-ground coffee and letting the result sit until it is served.

Espresso Basics - What is Espresso?

2007-09-21T01:16:00.000-07:00

Espresso Basics: What is Espresso?

Espresso is several things at once. It is a unique method of brewing in which hot water is forced under pressure through tightly packed coffee, one or two servings at a time. It is a roast of coffee, darker brown than the traditional American roast but not extremely dark. In a larger sense, it is an entire approach to coffee cuisine, involving not only roast and brewing method, but grind and grinder, a technique of heating and frothing milk, and a traditional menu of drinks. In the largest sense of all, it is an atmosphere or mystique: The espresso brewing machine is the spiritual heart and esthetic centerpiece of the great coffee places, the cafés, caffes and coffee houses of the world.

The espresso system was developed in and for cafés and caffes. Despite advances in inexpensive home espresso systems, it is still difficult to duplicate the finest caffe espresso or cappuccino in your kitchen or dining room without spending several hundred dollars on equipment. Even those on a budget can come close, however, and I outline the strategy for that effort in Chapter 11. For now, I want to discuss the big, shiny caffe machines.

Fundamentally, they make coffee as any other brewer does: by steeping ground coffee in hot water. The difference is the pressure applied to the hot water. In normal drip brewing processes, the water seeps by gravity down through ground coffee, loosely spooned into a filter. In the espresso process, the water is forced under pressure through very finely ground coffee packed tightly over the filter.

Caribbean Coffees 2007: Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Dominican Republic

2007-09-21T01:01:00.000-07:00

Caribbean Coffees 2007: Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Dominican Republic
by Kenneth Davids

This year's review of coffees from the islands of the Caribbean is notable as much for what isn't here as for what is. Samples of Caribbean coffees were hard to come by this year, even from Jamaica's famous Blue Mountains. And only the tiniest smattering of offerings turned up from Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. This despite all of these islands' long and distinguished coffee histories and their engaging coffee stories: the glamorous reputation of Blue Mountain; the grown-in-America appeal of Puerto Rico; the coffee-centered efforts to help Haitians, the poorest people in the Western Hemisphere.

Those Caribbean coffees we did turn up, with a couple of exceptions, tended to be predictably (and appropriately) low in acidity but surprisingly light in body and limited in aromatic range and complexity. By aromatic complexity I mean the little whiffs and tickles of floral- and fruit-based notes that expand the range of sensation in cup and aroma. The most common aromatic note in these coffees was a pleasant cocoa-toned chocolate, which is one guise that fruit notes can take in coffee under the impact of processing or roast. But too often, a variant on this note was the only intrigue in an otherwise simple cup.

Chocolate-Toned Exceptions

With one of these coffees, the Wallenford Blue Jamaican Blue Mountain (91), I felt that single note was all that was needed because it was a pure and complexly nuanced note, supported by a delicately balanced structure of fundamental taste and texture. In other cases, like the Old Tavern Estate Jamaica Blue Mountain Medium Roast (89), the superb chocolate-toned aromatics were splendid in the nose but faded in the cup. Martinez Fine Coffee, the company founded by the great Jamaican coffee man John Martinez, sent several Jamaican coffees, all beautifully packaged and impeccably clean in character (two are reviewed here at 87), but all a bit short on intensity and complexity.

The one Haiti coffee that turned up, the Haitian Bleu from Coffee Masters (87), was similarly limited but quite pleasant in character, a good value compared to the expensive Blue Mountain coffees, and a worthy choice for those who want to support the struggling Haitian coffee industry.

The three Puerto Rico coffees that we cupped all were marred to some degree by musty or mildewed notes (a taint usually caused by rain- or moisture-interrupted drying). The best of the three, the SpecialtyJava.com Yauco Selecto (85), was otherwise sweet and sound enough to turn the mild musty notes toward the rough maltiness that many coffee drinkers find attractive in traditional Sumatra coffees.

A Particularly Limited Year?

Why so relatively few Caribbean coffees available in the North American market, and why so few displaying clear quality and distinction?

From an aficionado's perspective, Caribbean coffees never were particularly startling in their character, tending toward a low-key, syrupy richness and balance rather than complex aromatic fireworks. And in the case of Blue Mountain Jamaicas the high prices asked for such low-key richness never made much sense from a pure dollars-to-distinction perspective.

Nevertheless, the 2006/07 versions of these coffees, as represented by the twenty-five or so we sampled this month, seemed particularly underpowered and aromatically simple.

Hurricanes, Coffee and Climate Change

I know that climate change owing to global warming is regularly cited as a prime suspect in an increasing menu of the world's ills, but in the big picture it also may be a background reason for the declining number and quality of Caribbean offerings in North American specialty. Hurricanes and tropical storms have increased in frequency and intensity in the Atlantic. And Caribbean growing regions, owing to their inevitable proximity to the ocean, are particularly vulnerable to such catastrophes. Tropical storms and hurricanes are often devastating knock-out punches to coffee growing regions that take years from which to recover, years during which other regions with less severe weather crises (all growers face them) continue to sell coffee and grow market share. Hurricane Ivan devastated Jamaica in 2004, and Alex Twyman of Old Tavern Estate in Jamaica reports that his trees are only now beginning to produce coffee of pre-Ivan quality. And, although we can't blame global warming, the history of coffee growing in Puerto Rico is a long tale of cyclical recoveries from repeated hurricane devastations.

Losing Years and Market Share

Compounding the storm problem is the specialty coffee world's understandable tendency to give up on coffees that are both sporadic in availability and expensive in favor of origins that are consistently available at better prices. Jamaica Blue Mountain, of course, is one of the world's most expensive coffees and Puerto Rico coffee, owing to relatively high labor costs, is also quite expensive. No Caribbean coffee, to my knowledge, is a bargain. So buyers for roasting companies quietly pass them by for the more plentiful, often more distinctive and usually less expensive coffees from Central America, East Africa and Indonesia.

Caribbean producers sometimes compensate for the loss of buyers for their green coffee by roasting and packaging their coffees themselves, usually for the local market, including the tourist market. This may work for the tourist market, but can be a problem when these same coffees, frequently very simply packaged, are air shipped to be sold in the United States or Canada. Unless they are roasted and shipped on demand, these coffees, in their technically limited packaging, may be half stale by the time they reach their North American consumers. This appeared to be the problem with some of the Caribbean coffees that we sampled but did not review here, including the only two samples we received from the Dominican Republic.

A Threat and a Hope

What I fear is that the apparent fall-off in production and quality in the Caribbean is simply the canary in the coal mine in regard to the general impact of climate change on coffee growing worldwide. Changes of this kind are difficult to read year by year because they are obscured by the complicating temporary factors that impact production and quality in any given growing region. But I suspect we will begin to register such changes over the long haul, perhaps benefiting some growing regions but definitely hurting others.

Hopefully, however, I'm wrong about the impact of global warming, hurricanes will spare the coffee growers of the Caribbean, and we will see a re-emergence of the richly complex, deeply sweet coffees for which this region is famous.

Coffee Craze Spread With Islam

2007-09-18T21:14:00.000-07:00

Certainly the ingenious Arab who stirred up the first “bean broth” from the coffee cherry’s agreeable seed had no way of knowing how his concoction would later stir the world. Launched about A.D. 1000 from Yemen (map), its popularity soon perked across all Arabia, keeping dervishes whirling through nightlong rituals and worshipers awake. For teetotal Muslims, it became an integral part of religious and secular life.

Battles over the brew began about 1500 when physicians sought exclusive distributorship and mullahs complained that outside imbibing was emptying their mosques. Despite frequent efforts to restrict its use, coffee collected devout disciples as Islam’s influence pushed north and west.

Constantinople (now Istanbul) quickly acquired such a great thirst that Turkish law permitted a wife to divorce her husband for failing to keep the family ibrik, or pot, filled. Suing on such grounds should be easy these days. Never able to grow its own coffee, Turkey can no longer afford to import it from abroad.

Behind the landmark Blue Mosque in Istanbul, a middle-aged Turk who had traveled in the States stopped me to practice his English and his charm:

“You are from America, yes? I will show you around.”

“All I’m looking for is a cup of real Turkish coffee.”

“Ah, so sad. There is none. Something nice in leather, perhaps? Or maybe copper?”

“No thanks.” I edged away.

He took my arm and guided me into a dark, cavelike café, where hidden from the eyes of less fortunate Turks glowering into their tea, we sipped small cups of bootleg brew—perhaps a bit milder but no less muddy than in better days.

The proprietor wasn’t shy about his sources. “Mostly from my countrymen who work abroad. They bring in two kilos when they come home, for their own use of course. I buy what I can for 3,000 lira [$36] a kilo. Six times old price, but I do OK.”

The bill convinced me: $1.50 for each three-ounce thimbleful.

“Government say Turks here no work hard any more. I say ’bah.’ Take away our coffee and what they expect?”

Recognizing coffee as a hot item, visiting merchants of Venice carried their first cargo from Constantinople to Italy in 1615; by 1750 it could be found throughout most of western Europe. So, too, could that fraternal lodge of the Levant—the coffeehouse.

As the coffee craze rumbled across Europe, devout Catholics denounced it as the drink of the infidels, and therefore sinful. Before committing himself, Pope Clement—so it’s said—tried a cup and became an instant convert. He settled the matter by baptizing the brew to give it Christian status.

Germans (map) grudgingly did without for a while when Prussia’s King Frederick the Great banned the beverage to bolster sagging beer sales. In other places women agitated for prohibition, claiming coffee inhibited the virility of their mates.

By the late 1600s Britons became smitten with the bean, despite prices that reached the equivalent of $48 a pound—a record. Within a few years London was putting away more coffee than any other city in the world. (The economies of empire later caused a shift to colony-grown tea.)

Many of Europe’s 18th-century literary and musical greats found coffee a pleasant prod to genius. Voltaire reportedly drank 50 cups a day; it’s a wonder he got any work done. Balzac revved up on it before he wrote, and Talleyrand took time to pen his perfect formula: “black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.” Johann Sebastian Bach composed an entire cantata poking fun at those who sought to suppress the brew.

Along about the Bach era, the ever enterprising Dutch took a good look at the lucrative coffee trade, another at their colonies in the East Indies, and decided the two were made for each other. By the early 18th century Java was supplying the Netherlands with a steady flow of fine beans carried in the steamy holds of westbound sailing ships.

Fortunately, the unroasted beans react little to lengthy storage if properly protected from strong odors, which they readily absorb. Once roasted, however, beans begin to deteriorate. Present-day purists put the peak flavor at no more than one month. Once coffee is ground and opened, they say, flavor declines after about ten days, even in refrigerated tight-lid containers.

The Bonanza Bean: Coffee

2007-09-18T00:21:00.000-07:00

(Note: This article, originally published in the March 1981 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, is re-presented here in its entirety. Facts and figures have not been updated.)

The Bonanza Bean: Coffee

By Ethel A. Starbird
Photographs by Sam Abell

The Japanese gentlemen buried me up to the chin in a shallow grave and left me to compost in 13 tons of soggy ground coffee. Fermentation, induced by pineapple pulp, had heated my pool-size percolator to a barely tolerable 140°F [60°C].

For 2,000 yen ([U.S.] $9.50) and 30 minutes, I steamed in some $10,000 worth of the world’s most popular beverage component, perhaps the best buy in today’s Japan (map). Billed as an antidote for almost everything, this featured attraction at Nishiarai Kouso Sauna Center in suburban Tokyo merely left me limp. And somewhat immodestly clad in a dissolving paper bikini.

If the unique bath did little for me therapeutically, it surely showed how tastes have changed in this land of traditional tea drinkers. A generation ago few Japanese had sampled coffee by the cup, let alone by the tubful. Now Tokyo alone has some 16,000 coffeehouses; the nation, more than 100,000.

None I visited even remotely resembled Europe’s “penny universities” of yesteryear, where scholars, philosophers, and politicians crowded into smoky dens to sip the brew for a penny or two. When an early English (map) coffeehouse suggested customers ante up a little extra “to insure promptness” in service, the gratuity called the tip was born.

Japan’s yen for coffee requires plenty of yen these days—the equivalent of $1.50 a serving. For those who find indoor prices too steep, platoons of curbside vending machines dispense coffee for about 50 cents a can, hot or cold according to the season.

Although new to Japan, coffee had been an eye opener in other places since the ninth century, when according to legend, an Ethiopian goatherd found his flock frolicking about after munching on coffee cherries. He sampled a few and was soon gamboling along with his goats.

From humble beginnings as both food and drink for African tribesmen, coffee evolved into a global phenomenon of extravagant proportions. Among natural commodities in international trade, coffee usually ranks second only to petroleum in dollar value, accounting for 12 billion in 1979.

All 50 exporting countries—led by Brazil (map), Colombia (map), Indonesia (map), and the Ivory Coast [now known as Côte d’Ivoire (map)]—rely upon coffee as a major source of foreign exchange. Some 25 million people depend upon it for their livelihood. And uncounted millions down it by the potful.

This adds up to an amazing piece of action for a peanut-size bean whose sole purpose on this planet is to provide a virtually nutritionless beverage made mildly stimulating by the caffeine it contains—75 to 155 milligrams per cup. (Tea: 28 to 44 milligrams.)

Unlike Brazil, which grows a third of the world’s supply—some five million tons last year—and drinks a third of what it raises, most producing nations consume coffee sparingly. The bean brings more leaving home than staying there.

It’s not their addiction to cafezinhos—demitasse doses heavily sweetened and darkly brewed—that gives Brazilians the jitters. Rather, it’s the chilling thought of a killing frost, which, in 1975, damaged nearly half of the country’s three billion coffee trees and sent retail prices into orbit.

Another such disaster loomed in June 1979, when I talked to Wolney Atalla, the world’s largest coffee grower. Frost had again hit southern Brazil. “The loss of a single tree means the loss of income on that spot for the three to five years it takes to replace it. Multiply that by our 15 million trees, and you can appreciate our concern.”

At Pirajuí, an hour’s flight inland, the cold wave had already blackened large swatches of trees. Atalla’s workers, bleary-eyed, toiled into their third sleepless night, burning oil-soaked sawdust and saltpeter to smudge vulnerable areas with a warming smog. The Atallas, pioneers in this process, saw their efforts pay off in rescued trees.

The only major export country susceptible to frost, Brazil, suspended all shipments pending assessment of damage. And uneasy importers, fearing a shortage, went on a buying spree. Inevitably, prices rose, even though Brazil’s actual losses fell far below the first dire predictions.

Several international experts summed up coffee’s swings in much the same way: “We have long periods of low prices, short periods of high ones. When highs occur, farmers rush in to plant. Once the tree begins bearing, it churns out beans without too much effort for the 12 to 30 years of its normal life. Overproduction follows; prices fall. Farmers tear up their plants and put in more stable crops. A disruption in coffee supplies starts the cycle all over again.”

Producers and consumers agree that the only sensible solution is to limit output to what the market can absorb, plus a standby reserve, and sell at prices reasonable to both sides. But what’s reasonable?

Since 1963, 24 import and 44 export countries have cooperated through their London-based International Coffee Organization to stabilize the situation. By imposing a quota system, they can limit the outflow of beans from producing nations in times of oversupply. These controls, in force to sustain prices only until the market does so normally, have been applied twice: from 1963 to 1973 and again in October 1980.

Despite yo-yo conditions and a 100 percent increase in living costs in the United States (map) over the past decade, coffee remains one of the least inflated prepared beverages: five cents a brew-it-yourself cup.

History of Coffee

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The history of coffee can be traced to at least as early as the 9th century, when it appeared in the highlands of Ethiopia. According to legend, shepherds were the first to observe the influence of the caffeine in coffee beans when, after their goats consumed some wild coffee berries in the pasture, the goats appeared to "dance" and have an increased level of energy. From Ethiopia, coffee spread to Egypt and Yemen,^[13] and by the fifteenth century had reached the rest of the Middle East, Persia, Turkey, and northern Africa.

In 1583, Leonhard Rauwolf, a German physician, after returning from a ten-year trip to the Near East, gave this description of coffee:

“

A beverage as black as ink, useful against numerous illnesses, particularly those of the stomach. Its consumers take it in the morning, quite frankly, in a porcelain cup that is passed around and from which each one drinks a cupful. It is composed of water and the fruit from a bush called bunnu.

”

From the Muslim world, coffee spread to Italy. The thriving trade between Venice and the Muslims of North Africa, Egypt, and the Middle East brought many African goods, including coffee, to this port. Merchants introduced coffee to the wealthy in Venice, charging them heavily for it, and introducing it to Europe. Coffee became more widely accepted after it was deemed an acceptable Christian beverage by Pope Clement VIII in 1600, despite appeals to ban the "Muslim drink". The first European coffee house opened in Italy in 1645.The Dutch were the first to import it on large scale, and they eventually smuggled seedlings into Europe in 1690, defying the Arab prohibition on the exportation of plants or unroasted seeds. The Dutch later grew the crop in Java and Ceylon. Through the efforts of the British East India Company, coffee became popular in England as well. It was introduced in France in 1657, and in Austria and Poland following the 1683 Battle of Vienna, when coffee was captured from supplies of the defeated Turks.

When coffee reached the Thirteen Colonies, it was initially not as successful as it had been in Europe. However, during the Revolutionary War, the demand for coffee increased so much that dealers had to hoard their scarce supplies and raise prices dramatically; this was partly due to the reduced availability of tea from British merchants. After the War of 1812, during which Britain had temporarily cut off access to tea imports, the Americans' taste for coffee grew, and high demand during the American Civil War together with advances in brewing technology secured the position of coffee as an everyday commodity in the United States.

Source from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee