Trivia about coffee


(111 facts)

"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and as sweet as love" - Turkish Proverb

52% of Americans drink coffee.

A acre of coffee trees can produce up to 10,000 pounds of coffee cherries. That amounts to approximately 2000 pounds of beans after hulling or milling.

A scientific report form the University of California found that the steam rising from a cup of coffee contains the same amounts of antioxidants as three oranges. The antioxidants are heterocyclic compounds which prevents cancer and heart disease. It's good for you!

Adding sugar to coffee is believed to have started in 1715, in the court of King Louis XIV, the French monarch.

Advertisements for coffee in London in 1657 claimed that the beverage was a cure for scurvy, gout and other ills.

After the decaffeinating process, processing companies no longer throw the caffeine away; they sell it to pharmaceutical companies.

After they are roasted, and when the coffee beans begin to cool, they release about 700 chemical substances that make up the vaporizing aromas.

An arabica coffee tree can produce up to 12 pounds of coffee a year, depending on soil and climate.

Australians consume 60% more coffee than tea, a sixfold increase since 1940.

Beethoven who was a coffee lover, was so particular about his coffee that he always counted 60 beans each cup when he prepared his brew.

Before roasting, some green coffee beans are stored for years, and experts believe that certain beans improve with age, when stored properly.

Before the first French cafe in the late 1700's, coffee was sold by street vendors in Europe, in the Arab fashion. The Arabs were the forerunners of the sidewalk espresso carts of today.

Brazil accounts for almost 1/3 of the world's coffee production, producing over 3-1/3 billion pounds of coffee each year.

By 1850, the manual coffee grinder found its way to most upper middle class kitchens of the U.S.

Caffeine is on the International Olympic Committee list of prohibited substances. Athletes who test positive for more than 12 micrograms of caffeine per milliliter of urine may be banned from the Olympic Games. This level may be reached after drinking about 5 cups of coffee.

Citrus has been added to coffee for several hundred years.

Coffee as a medicine reached its highest and lowest point in the 1600's in England. Wild medical contraptions to administer a mixture of coffee and an assortment of heated butter, honey, and oil, became treatments for the sick. Soon tea replaced coffee as the national beverage.

Coffee beans are similar to grapes that produce wine in that they are affected by the temperature, soil conditions, altitude, rainfall, drainage and degree of ripeness when picked.

Coffee is generally roasted between 400F and 425F. The longer it is roasted, the darker the roast. Roasting time is usually from ten to twenty minutes.

Coffee is graded according to 3 criteria: Bean quality (Altitude and Species) Quality of preparation Size of bean

Coffee is grown commercially in over forty-five countries throughout the world.

Coffee is the most popular beverage worldwide with over 400 billion cups consumed each year.

Coffee lends its popularity to the fact that just about all flavors mix well with it.

Coffee Recipe from: 'Kitchen Directory and American Housewife' (1844)
"Use a tablespoonful ground to a pint of boiling water [less than a quarter of what we would use today].
Boil in tin pot twenty to twenty-five minutes. If boiled longer it will not taste fresh and lively.
Let stand four or five minutes to settle, pour off grounds into a coffee pot or urn.
Put fish skin or isinglass size of a nine-pence in pot when put on to boil or else the white and shell of half an egg to a couple of quarts of coffee."

Coffee represents 75% of all the caffeine consumed in the United States.

Coffee sacks are usually made of hemp and weigh approximately 132 pounds when they are full of green coffee beans. It takes over 600,000 beans to fill a coffee sack.

Coffee trees are evergreen and grow to heights above 15 feet but are normally pruned to around 8 feet in order to facilitate harvesting.

Coffee trees are self-pollinating

Coffee trees produce highly aromatic, short-lived flowers producing a scent between jasmine and orange. These blossoms produce cranberry-sized coffee cherries. It takes four to five years to yield a commercial harvest.