With the price of college skyrocketing these days
maybe it's time we go back to the 18th century when you could get a good university education at a coffee house for just a penny, the cost of one dish of coffee. The Penny University and 18th
century coffee this time on Drinking History. So I thought looking for an old recipe for coffee
was a little silly, seeing as it's just coffee and water. Not a lot you can do but it turns out there
are a lot of different ways that they used to make it and still make it. In fact in John Knott's 1723 cookbook 'The Cooks and Confectioner's Dictionary' or 'The Accomplished Housewives Companion' he
has three different ways for making coffee. One is called To Make Coffee, then Another Better
Way, and finally Another the Best Way. I don't really know why anyone would go with the first
way when there is a better, and the best way but I'm gonna actually split the difference and go
with Another Better Way. Take running, or river-water, put your coffee in cold; mix it well with
the water, set them over the fire, and let them warm, heat, and scald, and boil together, till the
coffee sinks. Then take it off, let it settle and drink it. There is no river water nearby me, or at least any that you'd want to use for cooking so it is to the tap I go for my one quart or one liter
of water. In the previous recipe he's a little bit more specific on exactly how much water to coffee to use. He says for every quart you can use one, two, or three ounces of coffee, not too specific but more specific I'm going to again split the difference and use 2 ounces or 60 grams of coffee beans. And the beans that I'm using today are really special to me, at least, because I got
to kind of help choose how they were roasted. So short story here a little Tasting History history. When I first started the channel I scoured the internet for everything I could learn on how to make good YouTube videos, and there was another YouTuber named Graham Stefan who is in the finance space, but he had a wonderful course called the YouTube Creator Academy and I took it and I actually credit a lot of Tasting History's early success from what I learned in watching his academy. Well fast forward to last fall and we actually got in touch on Instagram and he said hey I actually am part owner of a company called Bankroll Coffee, would you be interested in coming up with a flavor and tying it into history somehow? Well since he is in finance and I'm in history, Penny University just kind of popped into my mind, and so over the next few months I got to help develop Penny University coffee which is a flavor in Bankroll Coffee. I'll put a link to this in the description if you want to give it a try, but honestly for this you can use pretty much any
coffee that you want. So first I'm going to grind my two ounces of coffee beans into a fairly coarse grind, then pour the water into a kettle and you can do this in a regular pot but it's going to be
easier in a kettle simply because it's going to be easier to pour. Then add your coffee and set the
kettle on the stove until the water is boiling, and it says until the grounds fall to the bottom, but once it starts boiling it gets really dark. I don't know how you can see the grounds going to the bottom so I let it boil for like 40 seconds and I figured that was enough because it's
gonna steep because you have to leave it then to let the grounds continue to fall to the bottom, and while they do we can go back to the 18th century and look at those early English coffee houses that boasted such an inexpensive education. There are a few things in this world more
sobering than a cup of black coffee. Though technically it actually does not sober you up, but
it feels like it does and a poem from 1651 makes a good case for this. It talks about the treacherous grape and foggy ale drowning people's reason and then "Coffee arrives, that grave and wholesome
liquor, that heals the stomach, makes the genius quicker, relieves the memory revives the sad, and
cheers the spirits without making mad." And in that same year England opened its first coffee
house in Oxford. And it quickly became a place for the scholars of Oxford to meet and discuss ideas, So that it ended up earning a reputation for being a wonderful place of learning just like the colleges that surrounded it. "So great a university I think there ne'er was any, in which you may a scholar be for spending of a penny." Hence they became known as Penny Universities, and you would think that that was a good thing, but in 1661 Anthony Wood complained that instead of discussing scholarly topics "Nothing but news of the affairs of Christendom
is discoursed of at coffee houses". And he eventually posed the question "Why doth solid
and serious learning decline, and few or none follow it now in the university? Answer: because of coffee houses where they spend all their time." But it's not like discussion was frivolous. I mean
coffee houses became a crucible for new ideas from England's collegiate elite. In one famous story from 1684 the architect and scientist Christopher Wren physicist Robert Hooke who discovered the law of elasticity and the astronomer Edmund Halley of comet fame were in a coffee house discussing gravity's effect on the elliptical orbit of the planets. Very high brow conversation. Well Hooke made a pronouncement that the inverse square law could account for exactly what they were seeing
and that he could prove it. Well Christopher Wren was skeptical and he actually bet Hooke and Halle that they couldn't and it turns out he was right, they could not. But not long after Halle was
recounting this tale to a colleague of his and the colleague decided that he would take up the
task and that colleague was Isaac Newton. So not only was he able to prove it but it even inspired
one of his seminal works of scientific literature the 'Principia Mathematical Principles of Natural
Philosophy.' What's funny is that for years after Hooke who had first mused on the subject but was unable to prove it went around telling people that it was his idea first and he kind of deserved
the credit, and it kind of reminds me of my friend from college who used to go around
telling people that he had had the idea to make 'The Lord of the Rings' into a three movie series before Peter Jackson and that Peter Jackson stole it and he owed him money. Sure Jan. Now not long after the university set embraced coffee houses the institution spread to London which became the coffee capital of Europe for years, and it was a place where all men, not women
because they weren't allowed, but all men were welcome. "Gentry, tradesmen, all are welcome
hither and may without affront sit down together." And that mingling of classes wasn't a very
common occurrence in the ale houses of the time, and another way that coffee houses were different
from their ale house cousins was in things like toasting with coffee was considered taboo
because of its association with alcohol, and if an altercation took place then whoever
was deemed responsible for starting it had to buy everyone present a dish of coffee. How civilized, and with all of this sober mingling the coffee houses allowed for a new form of conversation and free exchange of ideas just like it had in the university towns, but now it extended to all walks of life. Merchants, actors, artists, politicians, even clergy, and often the coffee houses then ended up catering to one profession more than others, and so they would use that coffee house as a way to get business or find jobs. Like if you needed a carpenter you would go to the carpenter's
coffee house and put up a help wanted sign. They also used them to do business. People actually
basically used them as an office and they would spend so much time at the coffee house that they would use that as their address rather than their home One of the most enduring legacies of coffee houses at the time was the profusion of newspapers in London because often the coffeehouse would publish the discussions that their members were having on any given day. "Amongst which the London Gazette comes out on Mondays and Thursdays, the Daily Current every day, but Sunday the
Postman, Flying Post, and Post Boys Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays." They would print stock prices, theater reviews, Parliamentary votes, and all sorts of other news. "There's nothing done in all the World, from Monarch to the Mouse, but every day or night tis hurled into the coffee house." And if there was more pressing news then a runner would go around from coffee house to coffee house to spread the word. If a war broke out or somebody famous died though sometimes it ended up just kind of being gossip. "There was a fellow in town some years ago, who used to divert himself by telling a lye at Charing Cross in the morning at eight of the clock, and then following it through all parts of town until eight at night." Like playing a big game of telephone where he
was at either end and just seeing how it went in the middle, and while i'm sure there was a lot
of frivolous conversation and gossip going around in the coffee houses of the time they also played
host to some of England's more serious endeavors. Adam Smith wrote much of the wealth of nations
at the British coffee house, and one of London's most enduring institutions began at a coffee house for ship captains owners and merchants. All sorts of shipping information passed through
this coffee house that was owned by Edward Lloyd and eventually underwriters who wanted to
ensure the cargo or the ships themselves set up at the booths in the corner of the coffee house and those booths became the Society of Lloyds, and today Lloyds of London is the world's leading insurance market. From Penny Universities to the centers of commerce the coffee houses
of England in the 17th and 18th century were remarkable places. Places fueled by the
dark caffeinated drink that I'm about to enjoy. So I put this into well- actually a tea cup but
really during the 18th century they would have used a saucer but a little bit deeper and then
eventually those saucers started to have handles and that eventually then
turned into the coffee cup, but I don't have any of the deep saucers that they
had so I'm going with this. Let's give it a shot. Smells like coffee. It's good. I'm- it's bitter. It's coffee. I feel
like it's not as strong as modern coffee but but then I feel like there's also a little
bit less grounds in it than you would usually do. It is oilier than than if I made it like in a drip
machine. There is definitely a sheen on top of this but sheen or no the flavor of the actual
coffee is really quite wonderful though I did kind of pick it out so you know what what
what was I expecting? It has a nice medium body flavor you know not too light, not too
dark. It's kind of exactly where I want it and I feel like this goes really well if
you wanted to add a little bit of creamer this is this is the way to do it. So if you ever find yourself in the predicament of not having a coffee machine which happens all the time to
me now you can make it as long as you've got some sort of pot and a flame. Now I'd say that I'd finish this cup but it's actually afternoon and if I have more than just a sip
afternoon then it really ruins my night, so I'll have probably one more sip and then switch
over to water. Anyway make sure to follow me on Instagram @tastinghistorywithmaxmiller and I will see you next time on Drinking History.
