Coffee: A Historic Beverage, And A Great Holiday Gift
Ah, coffee... a fantastic dark beverage that wakes us up inthe morning. For some of us, it keeps us up during the day,or for late night study sessions. We drink it out of habit,we drink it from addiction, we drink it for flavor; whateverthe reason, it is surely a popular beverage. So where didthis famed drink come from?Coffee, for Americans, is three hundred years old.
In theEast it was widespread at every level of society, since theearlier era. The most notable dates point to around800b.c. However, Homer, and according to Arabian tales speakof a mysterious bitter black beverage with powers ofstimulation that could have been this drink.About the year 1000, coffee was being used for medicinalpurposes. In 1400 a Yemeni goat herder observed his flockeating reddish berries, then becoming excited and restless.After relating his observations to a monk, they boiledthe berries and made a beverage that could dispersesleep and weariness. No matter how it actually wascreated, the fact remains that the coffee plantstarted in Africa, in an Ethiopian region known as Kaffa.From there it spread to Egypt, Yemen, and Arabia, where itbecame a part of daily life.In the late 1500s coffee was a commodity, being sold inEurope.
However, due to an increasing demand for the newbeverage, and high taxes on shipping, there wasexperimentation with growing the crops in various othercountries. Much later, around 1727 coffee growing started inNorthern Brazil. By the 20th century, various forms ofcoffee were developed for the public.Decaffeinated coffee was first founded in 1903 when Ludwig Roselius, a German coffee importer, gave a batch ofdamaged coffee beans to researchers. They developed theprocess of taking the caffeine out of the beans withoutlosing any flavor. This was marketed in the 1920s.Instant coffee was first mass produced from the invention ofGeorge Constant Washington, an English chemist living inGuatemala.
While waiting for his wife one day to join himoutside for coffee, he observed on the spout of the silvercoffee urn, a fine powder, which looked to be thecondensation of the coffee vapors. This excited him andled to his founding of soluble coffee.In 1906 he started experiments and put his invention, Red ECoffee, in the markets in 1909. Nestle', in 1938, trying toaid Brazil with their coffee surpluses created freeze-driedcoffee. Nescafe was started and first introduced intoSwitzerland. Instant coffee became a fad after 1956 whencommercial television was the new craze.And now in the US alone, 400 billion cups of coffee a yearare consumed.
Coffee is one of the world's largestcommodities, second only to oil. From a remote area inAfrica, to millions of shelves and homes worldwide, coffeehas became a fixture everywhere. is the webmaster ofAll Special Coffee Irene D. Hope is the webmaster ofAll Special Coffee
Coffee Grounds & Your Future
Reading your fortune with coffee is a lot like taking a Rorschach test.
You need to get the big picture and interpret the symbols correctly to know what lies ahead.Here's the step-by-step guide to how to prepare to read coffee grounds:
- Use a white cup to get an accurate reading
- Grind your beans as usual.
You can use espresso, but do not allow cream, milk or sugar or anything else to be added
- Heat water to a boil
- Make your coffee in a French press as usual
- Then add a large pinch of coffee grounds to your cup and pour the freshly made coffee over it.
Then stir.
- Drink the coffee by holding both hands on the cup
- When finished drinking the coffee, tip the cup on a 90 degree angle and slowly turn the cup to allow all excess grounds to be expelled onto a saucer.
Do not tap the cup.Do not swirl more than 3 times.
Coffee > Coffee Grounds & Your Future
World's Most Bizarre Specialty Coffee
Anyone who lives in a big city these days has seen first-hand the proliferation of 4-dollar-a-shot coffee shops. Thanks to Starbucks and their like coffee has become the number 2 commodity in the world (petroleum is number 1).Grown in dozens of countries world wide the coffee 'bean' is actually the pit of a coffee 'cherry'. In normal circumstances the cherries are picked at the peak of ripeness and once the outer fruit is removed the coffee bean is ready for roasting, grinding and transporting to your local caf?.However, there are three small islands in the Indonesian Archipelago called Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi where this process takes a bizarre twist. You see coffee is coveted by not only by us humans but a local creature called a Palm Civet. The Palm Civet is a tree dwelling marsupial with a particular fondness for the local variety of coffee cherries.Of course, these cat-sized coffee aficionados don't have the time to peal the cherries and eat just the fruit, so they swallow them...
World's Most Bizarre Specialty Coffee
Coffee > World's Most Bizarre Specialty Coffee