Source: Daily Facts Daily
If you’re like us, your day doesn’t begin until your second (or third) cup of coffee. But did you know that every cup you buy or brew is part of a millennium-long history of one of the most delicious and contentious beverages the world has known?
It’s true: the coffee revolution sparked revolutions.
It’s the drink of choice of artists, writers, political whirlwinds, and revolutionaries.Despite its association with the outrageous, coffee also brings us together unlike almost any other beverage. Do you know about coffee’s fascinating place in our world? Here are our favorite amazing facts about these magic beans.
We Started Drinking Coffee Almost 1500 Years Ago
Coffee as we know it found its origins in Ethiopia sometime in the ninth century.
Its moment of discovery remains enshrined in local Ethiopian legend. According to the story, a man named Kaldi, who earned his living as a goat herder, found that his goats enjoyed eating a red fruit found on a shrub now known as a coffee plant. The berries sent the goats into a tizzy, giving them full plenty of energy. Curious, Kaldi tried the fruit for himself and found himself frolicking with his goats.
Not to leave the goats and their herders to their own devices, an Ethiopian monk harvested some of the fruit and brought it home to his monastery. Unsurprisingly, they experienced the same results: a serious caffeine buzz.
Since then, coffee transversed the entire world and transformed as it went.
Coffee Started Out as a Food
Coffee beans start out as a fruit that is similar to a small cherry. Long before the plant is dried, roasted, and ground, these berries turn right red when they’re ripe. Modern roasters extract what’s known as the coffee bean from the center of the fruit.
Coffee fruit lovers of history enjoyed the fruit and eventually the bean in many different rays. In its early days, people mixed the fruit with animal fat to create what could be described as the earliest version of a paleo snack bar so beloved by Crossfitters. Early drinkers also used the coffee fruit similarly to the way the Aztecs used the cacao fruit in a wine-like beverage. Sometime around the new millennium, people began to make drinks from the whole fruit including the pulp from the fresh, the bean, and the hull of the fruit.
It wasn’t until five centuries after the Kaldi’s goats’ legendary discovery that people began roasting the beans in a way somewhat recognizable to the way we enjoy it today.
Coffee As We Know It Began on the Arabian Peninsula
When we think about coffee, our mind shifts to subtropical coffee growing regions in Central and South America and Africa. Coffee as we know it began to evolve in Persia in the 11th century where it was imported directly from Ethiopia.
Persians loved the brew and called it the “wine of Islam” because alcohol was strictly forbidden.
Coffee became popular among Arab Muslims during the 15th century when it spread from Mecca and Medina into the rest of the Kingdom of Arabia. From here, it spread like wildfire, and Cairo met coffee in 1510.
The coffee itself didn’t just spread, but the first well documented of instances of coffee culture also arose. The first coffee house in the region…
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