Introduction

A cup of black coffee

Coffee is a beverage brewed from roasted, ground 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.

Coffee production begins when the seeds of the Coffea plant's fruits (coffee cherries) are separated to produce unroasted green coffee beans. The beans are roasted and then ground into fine particles. Coffee is brewed from the ground roasted beans, which are typically steeped in hot water before being filtered out. 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. There are also various coffee substitutes.

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...)

Plate from Ceylon, Physical, Historical and Topographical, titled "The Coffee Regions. Badulla"

Coffee production in Sri Lanka peaked in 1870, with over 111,400 hectares (275,000 acres) being cultivated. The Dutch had experimented with coffee cultivation in the 18th century, but it was not successful until the British began large scale commercial production following the Colebrooke–Cameron Commission reforms of 1833. By 1860, the country was amongst the major coffee-producing nations in the world. Although coffee production remains a source of revenue, it is no longer a main economic sector. In 2014, the country ranked 43rd of largest coffee producers in the world. (Full article...)

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Caffè mocha with a layer of espresso

A caffè mocha (/ˈmɒkə/ MOK or /ˈmkə/ MOH-kə), also called mocaccino (Italian: [mokatˈtʃiːno]), is a chocolate-flavoured warm beverage that is a variant of a caffè latte, commonly served in a glass rather than a mug. Other commonly used spellings are mochaccino and also mochachino. The name is derived from the city of Mokha, Taiz Governorate, Yemen, which was one of the centres of early coffee trade. The name is sometimes shortened to just mocha. (Full article...)

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Robusta coffee beans after harvesting (right) and after being dried (left)

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