HISTORY OF EVERY DAY DRINKS PART THREE - COFFEE

Of all of the drinks I love, coffee would have to be at the very top of the heap. I think I speak for literally about a billion other folks when I say, the day hasn’t really begun until a cup of coffee has passed my lips.

Coffee is from the Rubiaceae or Madder family which also includes our native coprosma robusta - karamu. It has similar fruits to coffee that also contain, albeit a much smaller, pair of seeds. These seeds can be collected, roasted and drunk in the same way apparently. I haven’t tried it so don’t blame me if its foul. There are two main types of coffee beans used today - arabica and robusta. Arabica beans come from the Coffea arabica plant whose beans tend to have a superior aroma and taste but require specific growing conditions thus the price tends to be higher. Robusta beans from the Coffea canephora plant tend to have a higher caffeine content and a less complex and enjoyable taste but will thrive in a wider range of environmental conditions.

Coffee is number seven in the most traded commodity by value. Arabica coffee demands a relatively high elevation and humid climate to flourish and produce flavourful beans. Thus, the most successful arabica bean growing areas are Colombia and Brazil, often in difficult to access areas. As the world grapples with issues with efficient transport and climate change, a deficit in the worlds arabica coffee beans is imminent. We might all have to get used to the more hardy, more bitter African grown robusta beans in our near future!

Coffee fruits

Coffea arabica is native to Africa. The mythical story goes that coffee is thought to have been discovered the in 850CE by an Ethiopian goat herder called Kaldi ( its always the goat herders) Kaldi noticed that when his goats ate the berries from the coffee tree that they were rowdy, danced and did not sleep. Probably bored and curious, Kaldi is thought to have tried the beans himself and become more alert. He took the beans to show his local monks, one of whom threw the beans on the fire professing them to be the devils work. Upon smelling the beautiful aroma from the fire, the monks took them from the embers and poured water over them to preserve the smell. They drank this likely pretty gross concoction and were converted as it helped them stay up praying.  Not exactly the oat mylk latte I like. This is a nice wee story but It is more likely that the first people to have used coffee were either  the nomadic Oromo people of Ethiopia, who used the coffee bean ground up and mixed with ghee, when they were going on long or arduous journeys.  Or perhaps enslaved Sudanese people who chewed the raw fruit and beans to stay alert. Either way, coffee has its roots in East Africa.

Kaldi and his dancing caffeinated goats

By the 13th century, Yemen, just across the Red Sea from Ethiopia in the Middle East, became the seat of coffee cultivation. In fact, the word coffee is thought to have its roots, through several iterations in other languages, in the Arabic word qahwa, This word does mean wine, which is why coffee is sometimes known as Arabian Wine. In some Arabic myths, coffee was said to be a gift from Muhammad, who, through the archangel Gabriel, brought it to man to replace the wine, which Islam forbade.

Coffee cultivation was closely guarded by Yemeni coffee growers and traders as it was such a lucrative business for them. They made sure that all beans to leave the port of Mocha to export to Europe were all roasted beans and export of the viable green beans was punishable by death. Thus coffee was not cultivated outside of Yemen until the 17th century, when an Indian Sufi monk named Baba Budan, on his journey back from his pilgrimage to the Hajj, tasted coffee in the Yemeni port of Mocha. Legend has it that he was enamoured with the drink and endeavoured to find some coffee seeds to take back to India. He managed to find seven magick seeds which he hid in his bushy beard until he got back to Karnataka in India where he grew the first coffee bushes in India.

Baba Budan and his beard!

The Dutch also had light fingers. In 1616 Pieter van den Broecke, a Dutch merchant, stole some coffee plants from Yemen which he took back to Amsterdam to grow. Later, the Dutch took coffee plants to their occupied lands in Indonesia ( Java) which had a more suitable climate. Enamoured with this new plant, the mayor of Amsterdam gifted Louis XIV of France seeds which he grew in the French occupied Caribbean. Its cultivation eventually spread through central and south America and these days Latin America is one of the worlds biggest coffee cultivation regions.

Coffee plantation

Coffee houses were popular hangouts since the first opened in Constantinople, Turkey in the late 1400s. Turkish coffee was and is a fragrant affair with spices like cardamon, cinnamon and anise along for the ride. Although an exceedingly popular drink throughout the Ottoman Empire, over the following century and a half, coffee houses were went through cycles of being banned due to religious concerns. It seems that the allure of coffee was too strong, as it is reported that the prohibition was largely ignored. As a non drinker myself, I can confirm that coffee is an essential vice when you don’t have any others!

The 17th century saw coffee houses become popular through most of Europe and although clergymen wanted to ban this new drink, Pope Clement VIII loved it and gave it the old papal okay. It wasn’t plain sailing for coffee houses in Europe though. Coffee houses were banned by various governments, kings and clergy right through the 18th and 19th and even in to the 20th century in some places. The basis of these bans appears to be that coffee bought together people of all classes, ages and races who talked and likely complained and maybe organised and plotted to bring down existing governments and monarchies. It seems that many of the heads of state would prefer that their people drank other drinks. In fact, in 1777 Frederick the Great of Prussia proclaimed that  It “Everybody is using coffee. If possible, this must be prevented. My people must drink beer.”

And don’t even get me started on women and coffee. We simply were not allowed to drink coffee, although in many cases we brewed and ran the coffee houses. Rude.

Coffee is one of the worlds favourite beverages

Coffee has always been used as an invigorating beverage , from the Oropo people who used coffee to be able to suppress appetite and improve stamina during long periods of travel or work. Similarly, the Sufi monks used coffee in order to allow for feeling alert during nighttime prayers or during Ramadan to suppress daytime hunger. The herbalist John Parkinson (1567–1650) went further stating that coffee strengthens the stomach, improves digestion, treats tumors and blockages of the liver and spleen.

Coffee is packed full of antioxidants – in fact people get most of their daily antioxidants solely from coffee or tea. They tend to get a lot more antioxidants from drinks like tea, coffee and wine rather than from food. There are observational studies showing coffee drinkers have a lower risk of diabetes, heart disease and have a decrease of 30% of all cause mortality. Could be all those antioxidants, could be reduced calorie intake - who knows!  From a taste perspective, coffee contains  bitter compounds so it gets the digestion going and the liver secreting bile which is your bodies natural laxative. I know many of you have a bathroom stop after that morning coffee!

Coffee is indeed stimulating as it contains a fair whack of caffeine, which is produced by the plant to protect it from pests and to enhance pollination. So the caffeine gives  you that speedy buzz as the alkaloid  caffeine causes the release of epinephrine which in turn is shown to promote a feeling of alertness and reduction in tension as well as mild euphoria, improved sociability and self-confidence. It also keeps you awake as caffeine is what is called an adenosine antagonist. Adenosine is a by product of the energy cycle and as it builds up the longer you are awake, it interacts with adenosine receptors making you feel sleepy.  Caffeine blocks the adenosine receptor so it cannot interact with the receptor and elicit those feelings of sleepiness and fatigue.  Unfortunately that adenosine is still accumulating so you likely will crash and burn when the caffeine wears off.

So that’s coffee. The ancestors of that cup of joe you are drinking maybe as you read this, may have travelled thousands of miles in a monks beard.

Have you tried our Magick Coffee? Its a 50/50 blend of fair trade, organic coffee blended with the magick of 4 medicinal mushrooms. There is A LOT of history in that cup…

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