The Coffee Stories

A Short History
The story of how coffee growing and drinking spread around the world is one of the greatest and most romantic in history. It starts in the Horn of Africa, in Ethiopia, where the coffee tree probably originated in the province of Kaffa.

There are various fanciful but unlikely stories surrounding the discovery of the properties of roasted coffee beans. One story has it that an Ethiopian goatherd was amazed at the lively behavior of his goats after chewing red coffee berries. What we know with more certainty is that the succulent outer cherry flesh was eaten by slaves taken from present day Sudan into Yemen and Arabia, through the great port of its day, Mocha, now synonymous with coffee. Coffee was certainly being cultivated in Yemen by the 15th century and probably much earlier than that.

Mocha was also the main port for the one sea route to Mecca, and was the busiest place in the world at the time. But the Arabs had a strict policy not to export any fertile beans, so that coffee could not be cultivated anywhere else. The coffee bean is the seed of the coffee tree, but when stripped of its outer layers it becomes infertile. The race to make off with some live coffee trees or beans was eventually won by the Dutch in 1616, who brought some back to Holland where they were grown in greenhouses. Initially, the authorities in Yemen actively encouraged coffee drinking as it was considered preferable to the extreme side effects of Kat, a shrub whose buds and leaves were chewed as a stimulant.

The first coffeehouses were opened in Mecca and were called 'kaveh kanes'. They quickly spread throughout the Arab world and became successful places where chess was played, gossip was exchanged, and singing, dancing and music were enjoyed. They were luxuriously decorated and each had an individual character. Nothing quite like the coffeehouse had existed before: a place where society and business could be conducted in comfortable surroundings and where anyone could go, for the price of coffee. The Arabian coffeehouses soon became centers of political activity and were suppressed. Coffee and coffeehouses were subsequently banned several times over the next few decades, but they kept reappearing. Eventually a solution was found when coffeehouses and coffee were taxed.

Coffee came to Asia

The Dutch were also growing coffee at Malabar in India, and in 1699 took some to Batavia in Java, in what is now Indonesia. Within a few years the Dutch colonies had become the main suppliers of coffee to Europe. Today Indonesia is the fourth largest exporter of coffee in the world.

Coffee came to Europe

Venetian traders first brought coffee to Europe in 1615. This was a period when the two other great hot beverages also appeared in Europe. Hot chocolate was the first, brought by the Spanish from the Americas to Spain in 1528; and tea, which was first sold in Europe in 1610.

At first coffee was mainly sold by lemonade vendors and was believed to have medicinal qualities. The first European coffeehouse opened in Venice in 1683, with the most famous, Caffe Florian in Piazza San Marco, opening in 1720. It is still open for business today.

The largest insurance market in the world, Lloyd's of London, began life as a coffeehouse. It was started in 1688 by Edward Lloyd, who prepared lists of the ships that his customers had insured.

Coffee came to America

The first reference to coffee being drunk in North America is from 1668 and, soon after, coffee houses were established in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and other towns. The Boston Tea Party Of 1773 was planned in a coffee house, the Green Dragon. Both the New York Stock Exchange and the Bank of New York started in coffeehouses, in what is today the financial district known as Wall Street. It was in the 1720s that coffee first came to be cultivated in the Americas, through what is perhaps the most fascinating and romantic story in the history of coffee.

Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu was a French naval officer serving in Martinique who in 1720, went to Paris on leave. With assistance and no little personal charm he acquired a coffee tree which he took with him on the ship back. The plant was kept in a glass case on deck to keep it warm and prevent damage from salt water. The journey was eventful, or at least Mr. Mathieu de Clieu's journal of the voyage was. Pirates from Tunis threatened the ship, there was a violent storm and the plant had to be tied down. Our hero faced an enemy on board who was jealous and tried to sabotage the plant. There was a violent struggle in which a branch was torn off, but the plant survived this horror.

Then the ship was becalmed and drinking water was rationed. De Clieu had his priorities right and gave most of his allowance of precious water to the coffee plant. It survived, as did he. Finally, the ship arrived in Martinique and the coffee tree was re-planted at Preebear, where it was surrounded by a thorn hedge and watched over by slaves. It grew, and multiplied, and by 1726 the first harvest was ready. It is recorded that by 1777, there were between 18 and 19 million coffee trees on Martinique, and the model for a new cash crop that could be grown in the New World was in place.

But it was the Dutch who first started the spread of the coffee plant in Central and South America, where today it reigns supreme as the main continental cash crop. Coffee first arrived in the Dutch colony of Surinam in 1718, to be followed by plantations in French Guyana and the first of many in Brazil at Para. In 1730 the British introduced coffee to Jamaica, where today the most famous and expensive coffee in the world is grown in the Blue Mountains. By 1825, South and Central America were on track towards their coffee destiny. That date is also important as it was when coffee was first planted in Hawaii which produces the only US coffee, and one of the finest.

How to Properly Taste Coffee


 Coffee beans have up to 800 flavor characteristics that our senses can detect. Most coffee connoisseurs prefer city roasts because the longer a coffee bean is roasted the more characteristics that are burned off.

Tasting coffee is an art form. To detect the most amount of flavour from the coffee bean, it must be tasted properly. Coffee tasting works much like wine tasting. As in wine tasting, coffee tasting has special terms, used to describe the taste of coffee and to find the perfect balance.

Knowing how to taste coffee is not enough. One must know how to describe the flavors. The terms below are used in cupping. Each of these terms describes certain characteristics of coffee.


Aroma: the smell of the coffee and the coffee grounds.

Acidity: refer to how tangy (sour, what many described) the coffee is when it hits the side of your palate, just like drinking a cup of orange juice. Usually coffee are described as high acidity(very sour) and low acidity coffee (very little sourish taste). Coffees from Africa are high in acidity.

Body: the way the coffee feels in your mouth. This is the feeling of weight and texture.

Flavour:  the weight of the coffee. For example drinking a yoghurt beverage comparing to drinking  fresh whole milk. The yoghurt drink would be heavier on your tongue.


The Cupping Method of Coffee Tasting

Coffee tasting, or cupping as it is called, has to be done the same way every time to ensure that the difference in the taste of coffee beans is not due to outside factors like amount of coffee and water temperature.

The cupping method works in the following way;

Choose the beans that you want to taste.

Take a 10g of coarse ground roasted coffee and p

Heat some water to just below the boiling point, you will need 180 ml.

Pour the water over the coffee in a circular motion.

Dip a spoon into the cup (with your nose close to the cup) so that it breaks the top layer of that coffee grinds that floated to the top.

Take approximately half a spoonful of the liquid from the cup.

Slurp it with a loud slurping noise. The noise is made so that you can mix the liquid with the air, spraying it directly over your tongue.

Savour and spit out the liquid if you're cupping many coffee or you can just swallow it =)

Using this method, the tongue is able to differentiate among the many subtle flavors of coffee. Different parts of the tongue detect different flavors. The back of the tongue discerns the bitterness. The sides of the tongue discern the staleness. The tip of the tongue discerns specific flavors.