Coffee Facts

Coffee Facts

For most people, that morning cup of coffee is the staple of life. The day just wouldn't be the same without the needed jolt that you can only get from coffee.

But other than knowing that it is a stimulant drink, what other miscellaneous coffee facts do you know? For instance, where does coffee grow? What is a coffee cherry? And how is coffee decaffeinated?

Believe it or not, there is more to your regular cup of java than you realize, and in this article, we'll be discussing a few of these coffee facts, so the next time you do your morning coffee routine, you know better.

Coffee Facts: How a Goat Started the Coffee Revolution

Okay, that might be going a bit overboard, but legend says that, indeed, the history of coffee began with a goat. Kaldi, an Ethiopian goatherd, noticed one day that his goats turned hyperactive after eating a certain shrub. Curious about this shrub, he took some of the berries and ate them, surprised to experience the same hyperactive feeling as his goats did.

And that, at least according to legend, is how coffee came to be.

But one coffee fact that not everyone knows is that coffee wasn't always a drink. Originally, it was a food that early East African tribes mixed with animal fat in order to form large berry-fat balls that they used as a source of energy when they went out to raid other tribes.

In short, coffee mixed with animal fat was the primitive power bar.

Then the Arabs came and they transplanted the coffee tree in the Arabian Peninsula. It was here that coffee was first developed into a hot drink. By the 13th century, the Muslim Arabs were drinking coffee fervently to the point that the "whirling devishes” of early Islam were attributed to the effects of coffee.

Coffee Facts: How Coffee Went to Europe

For years, the Arabs were the only ones who knew the secret workings behind the wondrously stimulating drink, called coffee. But the Arabs liked to travel and when they traveled, they liked to bring coffee with them. The more they traveled, the more coffee facts were revealed to the rest of the world.

But it was the Turks who were responsible for revealing much of the coffee facts to Europeans. When European traders came to this exotic locale, they learned of coffee and brought this news with them wherever they went.

With the rise of the Dutch colony came the establishment of the first European coffee estate. It was there on the island of Java, then a Dutch colony (now a part of Indonesia) that coffee was known worldwide as a precious commodity.