Showing posts with label hundred years. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hundred years. Show all posts

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Coffee Is A Historic Beverage, And It Makes For A Great Gift

So where did this famed drink come from? We drink it out of habit, we drink it for flavor; whatever the reason, it is surely a popular beverage. For some of us, it keeps us up during the day, or for late night study sessions. a fantastic dark beverage that wakes us up in the morning. Ahhhhh, coffee...

However, Homer, and according to Arabian tales speak of a mysterious bitter black beverage with powers of stimulation that could have been this drink. The most notable dates point to around 800b.c. In the East it was widespread at every level of society, since the earlier era. Coffee, for Americans, is three hundred years old.

From there it spread to Egypt, Yemen, and Arabia, where it became a part of daily life. No matter how it actually was created, the fact remains that the coffee plant started in Africa, in an Ethiopian region known as Kaffa. After relating his observations to a monk, they boiled the berries and made a beverage that could disperse sleep and weariness. In 1400 a Yemeni goat herder observed his flock eating reddish berries, then becoming excited and restless. About the year 1000, coffee was being used for medicinal purposes.

By the 20th century, various forms of coffee were developed for the public. Much later, around 1727 coffee growing started in Northern Brazil. However, due to an increasing demand for the new beverage, and high taxes on shipping, there was experimentation with growing the crops in various other countries. In the late 1500s coffee was a commodity, being sold in Europe.

This was marketed in the 1920s. They developed the process of taking the caffeine out of the beans without losing any flavor. Decaffeinated coffee was first founded in 1903 when Ludwig Roselius, a German coffee importer, gave a batch of damaged coffee beans to researchers.

Instant coffee was first mass produced from the invention of George Constant Washington, an English chemist living in Guatemala. While waiting for his wife one day to join him outside for coffee, he observed on the spout of the silver coffee urn, a fine powder, which looked to be the condensation of the coffee vapors. This excited him and led to his founding of soluble coffee.

In 1906 he started experiments and put his invention, Red E Coffee, in the markets in 1909. Nestle', in 1938, trying to aid Brazil with their coffee surpluses created freeze-dried coffee. Nescafe was started and first introduced into Switzerland. Instant coffee became a fad after 1956 when commercial television was the new craze.

And now in the US alone, 400 billion cups of coffee a year are consumed. Coffee is one of the world's largest commodities, second only to oil. From a remote area in Africa, to millions of shelves and homes worldwide, coffee has became a fixture everywhere.

The author has been a passionate coffee drinker for many years. She has tasted coffees from all over the world, and believes in serving and entertaining her guests with only the best.

She has catered hundreds of events and affairs and is known for her attention to details, especially regarding picking the perfect coffee.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

History of Arabian Coffee

robusta. It prefers higher elevations and drier climates than its cousin C. Arabian coffee accounts for about 80% of all coffee produced in the world. Arabia lends its name to the highest quality coffee plant in the world, Coffea Arabica. Arabian coffee is the quintessential coffee of the world.

This gives it time to develop the internal elements and oils that give coffee its aromatic flavor. Generally, the higher the plant is grown the slower it matures. The tropics of South America provide ideal conditions for growing Arabian coffee which grows best between 3,000 and 6,500 feet but has been grown as high as 9,000 feet.

Arabian coffee soon came to be known as an Islamic beverage. Soon it became a beverage endorsed by the Islamic clerics as drinking alcohol was prohibited in their religion. Soon it became a beverage endorsed by the Islamic people. Coffee soon made its way to Yemen where it was embraced by the Islamic people. Coffee was originally discovered in Ethiopia, just across the Red Sea from Arabia.

However, the Catholic Cardinals shunned it as the ‘Devil's drink' and tried to have it banned. Arabian coffee was exported to Europe where the people embraced it.

He decided that to banish the delightful drink would be a shame to let the impious ones have this delightful drink all to themselves. As legend has it, the Pope was immediately enamored by the distinct, pungent aroma and taste. But then Pope Clement VIII decided that it would be imprudent to ban the beverage without having tasted it, so he summoned a sample.

Arabian coffee is still a part of the Islamic faith and is use in ritualistic ceremonies.

Arabian coffee growers protected their monopoly on the prized plant. They were the exclusive providers of coffee throughout the world for several hundred years.

That is until a coffee plant finally made its way to the Caribbean. This began a new legacy of high-quality coffee in Latin America.

It is said that all the Arabica coffee grown in the world started from this plant as cuttings were transplanted all over the world. Arabian coffee is truly the source of coffee throughout the world.

The word mocha comes from the name Mokha, the shipping port in Yemen where all Arabian coffee was exported. Mocha has become a term used for describing a coffee beverage in which chocolate is added. But originally it had nothing to do with chocolate.

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