Brew: A Brief History of Coffee

[Music] [Applause] [Music] you know for some people that morning cup of coffee is the elixir of life it's your wake up in a cup or it's just necessary to i don't know carry on i'll give you fair disclosure i'm not really a coffee drinker myself but historic coffee drinkers include beethoven and bach thomas jefferson and ben franklin de balzac and voltaire teddy roosevelt and napoleon bonaparte well there's some evidence that people have been drinking tea since the second century bc the invention of coffee is a relatively new phenomena and while some people seem to think that coffee's worth dying for there really was a time when you could be killed for drinking coffee in public with its stimulating properties and its storied past the history of coffee deserves to be remembered coffee beans aren't actually beans at all they are the seeds of an evergreen woody shrub in the wild can grow up to 10 meters tall but it's generally kept around 2 meters in commercial settings for ease of harvesting the coffee plant is an undergrowth plant requiring a shady canopy to thrive and produce its best its climate requirements limited to the regions between the tropic of cancer in the tropic of capricorn although that encompasses some 70 plus countries with production the word coffee is apparently derived from the arabic word kawa which itself might be derived from the kapha region of ethiopia where the coffee plant originates but it also might be derived from the arabic word for power and energy or alternatively from the arabic word for wine to appreciate the work that goes into the world's most popular go juice the best coffee fruit or cherries are harvested by hand they don't all ripen at the same time the other method is to strip all the cherries at the same time and then sort them by ripeness either way the seeds must be removed from the rest of the cherry but the big question is who realized that the seeds when roasted make morning bearable one legend seemingly the most popular has it that in the 8th or 9th century a.d a goat herder in ethiopia named kaldi noticed that when his goats ate a certain dark berry they were excitable and had a hard time sleeping at night so the goat heard her tried them himself had the same experience and ended up collecting some of the fruit he took it to an islamic monastery where it was supposedly cast aside because of its bitterness and tossed in the fire but as the alluring aroma of roasted coffee beans wafted from the coals the soon-to-be coffee addicts raked them out of the fire and put them in some water they found that the drink was less bitter than the beans themselves and helped with alertness during lengthy evening prayers there's no direct evidence however that the story is true and the story doesn't appear to have been recorded until 1671 hundreds of years after it was supposed to have happened most historians think that that story is apocryphal a similar story is told about a sufi mystic who noticed birds who fed on the berries had unusual vitality and tried some himself the bird story may also be apocryphal but imam muhammad ibn saeed al-dabani is credited with bringing the liquid lightning to yemen becoming known as the saint of mocha the earliest reliable accounts of coffee in trade came from arabic scholars writing in the 15th century noting that it spread from africa to the ottoman empire via yemen this is when we first find mentions of coffee as a drink like we currently consume it from roasted and ground coffee beans steeped and served piping hot the turkish method uses a specific pot called an ibric in which finely ground coffee is mixed with sugar and water and heated until it froths can be reheated multiple times to achieve the desired amount of froth constantinople boasted the first coffee shop in the 1450s soon coffee houses became a place where ideas were pondered and entertainment was found however those in power sometimes feared the power of these institutes so much so that in 1633 sutton murad iv of the ottoman empire banned the vices of smoking drinking alcohol and drinking coffee presumably because people would sit around and complain about him while indulging in any of the three rather fourth was supposedly known to dress as a commoner in order to find and then behead those who dared to disregard the ban the development of a worldwide market in coffee came largely as a result of dutch companies in fact the website easy to espresso suggests that the word coffee first came into the english language from the dutch word coffee k-o-f-f-i-e itself derived from the arabic the 1860 novel max havelar the coffee auctions of the dutch trading company written under a pseudonym by dutch colonial official eduard decker explains that in the early 17th century the government of yemen where most coffee was grown at the time tried to maintain a monopoly on its export the word mocha another name for coffee is derived from the red sea yemeni port of mocha in 1616 dutch traders avoided the ban by shipping away complete coffee plants first to india and then to batavia the then capital the dutch east indies now jakarta indonesia as the dutch came to dominate the world coffee trade in the latter 17th century so much coffee was grown and exported from the indonesian island of java that java initially only referring to coffee from that island became another generic word for coffee the dutch were also responsible for taking the morning elixir to the americas growing it in the south american dutch colony of suriname by the early 18th century plants were then stolen from suriname by the french and cultivated in neighboring french guiana a portuguese officer then acquired seeds from guyana in another possibly a pocketful story seducing the french governor's wife and smuggling the seeds out in a bouquet of flowers and cultivating the plants in brazil now the world's largest coffee producer yet another story has french captain gabriel de clio transporting a cutting stolen from a plant that had been gifted to king louis xiv by the mayor of amsterdam to the french colony of martinique in 1720 and like the beverage itself the trading coffee has its dark side for example more than 2 million enslaved people were imported from africa up until the middle 19th century to work in the coffee plantations in suriname and brazil in fact the novel backs havolar considered a masterpiece of dutch fiction and to the netherlands what harriet beecher stowe's uncle tom's cabin is to the united states is a satirical attempt to denounce the abuses of dutch colonialism which by pushing out food crops for coffee cultivation through pernicious taxes and quotas and via the sale of opium to natives resulted in near starvation and abject poverty among the natives of java the novel created a political storm when it was published resulted in reforms in the dutch east indies that then the new york times wrote in 1999 sparked the indonesian independence movement which in turn sparked the call for revolution in africa which in turn awakened ever more of the world's colonized peoples and signaled the end of european colonial domination another legend has it that the morning mud was actually viewed as satan's drink in the christian world another possibly apocryphal story says that pope clement viii was asked to denounce the drink but first asked to try it and liked it so much that he instead baptized it officially making it acceptable to drink throughout europe regardless of the truth of the story that morning brew was blessed coffee houses soon began to sprout up all around europe with italy's first in 1645 england's first in 1652 paris joined the front in 1672 in vienna about a decade later here coffee was brewed in a coffee pot whose spouts helped to filter out the grounds at the time one of the only other beverages that was safe to drink was beer and so this new wakey wakey juice was credited with clearing the minds of many who otherwise might have been inebriated and as such it is seen as possibly helping to spur or at least correlated with the 17th and 18th century rise of the european age of enlightenment the online book of author and motivational speaker david gertin notes that the london coffee houses of the 17th and 18th century were the engines of creation that helped drive the enlightenment a more sedate place for serious conversation than ale houses curtin observes any man could gain admittance to a coffee house by purchasing a cup of coffee for the price of one penny here he could drink coffee smoke read the newsletters or join one of the conversational groups therefore it's not too surprising that such coffee houses became known as penny universities gertie's own hallmark is a conversational process called a knowledge cafe cafe itself being a 19th century french word for coffeehouse in his book uncommon grounds the history of coffee and how it transformed our world author mark pendergrass notes that one of the ironies about coffee is it makes people think sort of creates egalitarian places coffee houses where people can come together and so the french revolution and the american revolution were planned in coffee houses on the other hand the same coffee that was fueling the french revolution was also being produced by african slaves in haiti and at least some people today seem to still think that coffee can produce enlightenment while captain john smith introduced coffee to america in 1607 americans remained primarily tea drinkers until 1776 when the boston tea party made the drinking of tea unpatriotic and the balance shifted towards coffee after the tea party the website public goods explains britain was now a country of tea drinkers in america coffee drinkers while there are multiple theories for the etymology of the common term for coffee used in the united states one suggestion is that when secretary of the navy joe daniels banned alcohol on u.s naval ships in 1914 sailors started referring to coffee now the strongest drink available on a ship derisively as a cup of joe today coffee is the world's most popular drink the website house stuff works notes that more than 400 billion cups are consumed worldwide each year more than 450 million cups of coffee are consumed in the united states every day if internet memes are to be believed the lives of millions of annoying co-workers are saved yearly by the magical effects of the black icker of life moreover how stuff works notes nearly 25 million farmers worldwide depend on coffee crops for their economic livelihood the methods of making coffee ring from the french press to percolators the automatic drip pot espresso pour overs and even instant or freeze-dried coffee the coffee percolator which incorporated the rising of boiling water through a tube to form a continuous cycle was invented in 1819 by frenchman joseph henry marie lawrence drip coffee was enabled when german entrepreneur emil auguste melitta bentz invented the paper coffee filter in 1908. instantly soluble coffee was invented by new zealander david strang in 1890 ready to brew coffee was brought to the u.s in 1850 by a company in san francisco that would eventually become the folger company now the most popular brand of ground coffee in the united states the process of vacuum packing to prevent oxidation and lengthening shelf life was invented by new yorker edward norton in 1898 and coffee sold in vacuum packed cans was sold by san francisco coffee maker hills brothers in 1900 while drip coffee makers are still the most popular in the united states statistician notes that single coffee cup brewers like the keurig now represent some 27 percent of the u.s home coffee brewing market one popular way to brew coffee has a surprisingly recent history while italian inventor angelo moriendo patented new steam machinery for the economic and instantaneous confection of coffee beverage in 1884 machine brewed in bulk and moriendo never took the machine to regular production it was improvements made by luigi bersera in 1901 patent that created the world's first espresso from the italian cafe espresso literally pressed out coffee machine bezera's motivation was purportedly to reduce the time needed to brew coffee in order to reduce the length of workers coffee breaks during the industrial revolution espresso is made using a small amount of nearly boiling water which is forced through finely ground coffee beans producing a cup of coffee in less than 30 seconds espresso is the most common way of making coffee in southern europe while milk had been added to coffee in europe since at least the 18th century the addition of froth milk to espresso began with the improvement of espresso machines in italy in the 1950s that facilitated the heating of milk along with the coffee creating cappuccino a version called latte that uses roughly twice as much milk that was thoroughly mixed rather than layered was invented in the mid-1950s reportedly at the cafe mediterranean in berkeley california another term familiar today has a surprising etymology until 1938 in italy a bartender in a coffee shop was called a bar man but the word was apparently borrowed from english it was under dictator benito mussolini that the term barista was coined as part of a campaign to italianize words used in italy the term was popularized in the united states by seattle-based starbucks founded in 1971 and employing more than 340 000 employees today and if you think that your favorite barista is the best a world barista championship is held annually by the specialty coffee association not held in 2020 the preeminent international coffee competition which focuses on promoting excellence in coffee was won by south korean julian jones in 2019 october 1st is officially world coffee day although for about two-thirds of the american adult population world coffee day is well pretty much every day according to a 2015 survey that was published in the huff post more than half of american coffee drinkers would rather skip their morning shower than their morning cup of coffee but the united states isn't even in the top 10 in terms of per capita coffee drinking the world population review notes that the top coffee drinkers in the world are the scandinavian countries where the long dark cold winters make coffee highly prized in a strange twist kefia arabica the species that accounts for nearly 60 of world coffee production is today endangered in the wild due to deforestation along with its rich and flavorful history the global coffee market which research and marketing.com valued at 465 billion dollars in 2020 looks likely to stimulate humanity well into the future or at least to get you through monday morning i hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guide short snippets of forgotten history and if you did enjoy feed the algorithm by making a comment or clicking that like button if you have suggestions for future episodes please send those to 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Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 152,067

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy, coffee

Id: yxdTpNOeeyE

Length: 14min 50sec (890 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 04 2021