Background And History Of Coffee

You can find few drinks in the world today that are as popular as coffee. Perhaps the most effective way to obtain caffeine short of the new energy drinks being developed, coffee is certainly widespread in many different locations, from the home to the office, from small cafes to swanky eateries.

A brief history of coffee can be tracked for just over a thousand years, a somewhat short time frame compared to alcohol based drinks, which have been drunk since prehistory, and tea, which extends back more than one thousand years BC. Despite this, coffee has now spread all over the world as a popular drink. A look at the history associated with coffee will demonstrate how it has gained its reputation.

African Sources

A history of coffee as a beverage started in Ethiopia some time around the 9th century. The legend is that Ethiopian herders realized that their goats became particularly perky after eating the fruits of a particular bush, and so had the notion to consume it as a stimulant. The truth is that coffee probably had already been developed as a beverage by the ninth century as a normal consequence of cultivation associated with plants. From Ethiopia, the drink spread to North Africa, including Egypt.

Success In The Middle East

The introduction of coffee to Egypt meant it was readily available at places having trade with the rest of the Middle East, where coffee grew to become a popular drink by the 1500s. Shortly after its introduction, authorities put a ban on the beverage due to its stimulant qualities. But similar to prohibition in America, the ban on coffee could not survive and was later rescinded. At this time in history, though, tight regulations on the product were in place. Although coffee in its roasted form began to be exported to Italy and other European countries, export of the unroasted beans as well as plants was prohibited.

Colonization and Coffee

This restrictive control covering the export of coffee plants could not continue. This particular time period of the history of coffee ended when Dutch traders smuggled coffee seeds out of the Middle East in the 1600s, where it was planted and grown on the island of Java, which is still an important exporter of coffee today and also shares its name with the nickname for the drink. Curiously, as coffee plants spread to more European colonies, another century in the history of coffee, in the eighteenth century, the plants were smuggled to Brazil, which is still the biggest exporter of coffee beans.

Coffee in the US

The history of coffee in US follows that of early wars. Brought in there in the 1700s, the popularity of coffee didn’t take off before the Revolutionary War, when tea was scarce and colonists looked to other beverages. The drink again gained in acceptance during the war of 1812 for similar reasons.

But the time when coffee drinking developed to where it was an American fixture is apparently during the time of the Civil War, when demand from customers was high enough so it became a permanent fixture as a drink in a good many American households. Through colonization and conflicts, the history of coffee seems to follow that of the history of people, and its wide-spread reputation around the world demonstrates that it is genuinely a worldwide sensation.

By: Alison Benjamin

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The history of coffee might be interesting but how does it relate to your morning espresso? Well, the first thing to consider is the quality of the coffee beans. The best espresso machine still requires top quality coffee beans. Your espresso will only be as good as the poorest beans so always buy best quality beans for your home espresso coffee maker.