The Coffee Portal
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Introduction
Coffee is a beverage brewed from roasted coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It has the highest sales in the world market for hot drinks.
The seeds of the Coffea plant's fruits are separated to produce unroasted green coffee beans. The beans are roasted and then ground into fine particles typically steeped in hot water before being filtered out, producing a cup of coffee. It is usually served hot, although chilled or iced coffee is common. Coffee can be prepared and presented in a variety of ways (e.g., espresso, French press, caffè latte, or already-brewed canned coffee). Sugar, sugar substitutes, milk, and cream are often added to mask the bitter taste or enhance the flavor.
Though coffee is now a global commodity, it has a long history tied closely to food traditions around the Red Sea. The earliest credible evidence of coffee drinking as the modern beverage appears in modern-day Yemen in southern Arabia in the middle of the 15th century in Sufi shrines, where coffee seeds were first roasted and brewed in a manner similar to how it is now prepared for drinking. The coffee beans were procured by the Yemenis from the Ethiopian Highlands via coastal Somali intermediaries, and cultivated in Yemen. By the 16th century, the drink had reached the rest of the Middle East and North Africa, later spreading to Europe. (Full article...)
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In 17th- and 18th-century England, coffeehouses served as public social places where men would meet for conversation and commerce. For the price of a penny, customers purchased a cup of coffee and admission. Travellers introduced coffee as a beverage to England during the mid-17th century; previously it had been consumed mainly for its supposed medicinal properties. Coffeehouses also served tea and hot chocolate as well as a light meal.
The historian Brian Cowan describes English coffeehouses as "places where people gathered to drink coffee, learn the news of the day, and perhaps to meet with other local residents and discuss matters of mutual concern." The absence of alcohol created an atmosphere in which it was possible to engage in more serious conversation than in an alehouse. Coffeehouses also played an important role in the development of financial markets and newspapers.
Topics discussed included politics and political scandals, daily gossip, fashion, current events, and debates surrounding philosophy and the natural sciences. Historians often associate English coffeehouses, during the 17th and 18th centuries, with the intellectual and cultural history of the Age of Enlightenment: they were an alternate sphere, supplementary to the university. Political groups frequently used coffeehouses as meeting places. (Full article...)General images -
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Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly was released after the main creator of Coffee Talk died in March 2022?
- ... that Justly Watson died suddenly in 1757 from the effects of poison administered in his coffee, it was believed, by a servant?
- ... that the short story collection Drinking Coffee Elsewhere was chosen by John Updike as a selection for the Today Show book club on NBC?
- ... that Bob Dylan poked Emmylou Harris when he wanted her to start singing during the recording of "One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)"?
- ... that the city council of Bandung in the Dutch East Indies initially met at the site of a former coffee-packing factory?
- ... that Kenyan coffee farmer "Pinkie" Jackson amassed Africa's largest collection of native butterflies?
- ... that during the October 1980 West Nile campaign, rebels were initially hailed as "liberators", only for them to start looting coffee?
- ... that in a copyright infringement case over a coffee-table history of the Grateful Dead, the Second Circuit held that a reuser can still claim fair use despite negotiating with the rights holder?
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Web resources
- World Coffee Research – a 501 (c)(5) nonprofit program of the international coffee industry. (Wikipedia article: World Coffee Research)
- Coffee Research Foundation – based in Kenya, and founded in 1908
- Central Coffee Research Institute – based in Chickmagalur District, India, and founded in 1915