National Coffee Day, Sept. 29 (part 1)

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"Coffee – favorite drink of the civilized world" – Thomas Jefferson

This month I want to celebrate coffee, where it came from and how we became a coffee drinking nation in spite of our tea-drinking roots. In part 2, I will discuss how to roast your own beans to brew the perfect cup, so you'll be all set to enjoy a cuppa come the 29th.

About eight years ago I became a certified coffee snob. Prior to that I never drank the stuff. I basically went from zero to coffee snob overnight. What brought this on?

My husband and I visited his cousin Tom, who was very excited to share his coffee roasting equipment and have us taste the result. Tasting the stuff was quite a leap for me considering I was at the coffee zero stage, meaning I couldn't stand it. But, you know, I wasn't going to spoil Tom's excitement. With a grin, he trotted us to his backyard where he pointed to a hot air popcorn popper. Yup, he was using a $15 air popper to roast coffee beans. And given that I now call myself a coffee snob, I'm living, breathing proof that a hot air popper actually works.

After roasting a batch of beans in the popper, Tom brewed up some Ethiopian beans he'd roasted a couple of days prior. The roasted beans smelled lightly of blueberries and the brewed coffee also had a hint of them. My curiosity was piqued. There weren't any additives sprayed on the beans so how could the beans smell and taste of blueberries? That opened the door to snob-land for me.

Coffee grows as cranberry-like "cherries" on trees that prefer the climate along the Equator between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, which is called the Bean Belt. Here the weather is tropical, the soil is rich, and there is plenty of rain that comes during a defined rainy season followed by a dry season. Many coffee varieties enjoy higher altitudes which can be found in some South American countries in the Bean Belt latitudes.

Now, this next part is important. It turns out that coffee beans take on subtle flavor notes depending on where exactly they are grown. For example, beans from Ethiopia are known for their fruity flavors, in particular blueberries (hence Tom's blueberry flavored coffee), and beans from Brazil have notes of caramel and chocolate. Certified Coffee Specialists can even tell a difference between plantations right next door to each other. This is because how the beans are processed (harvested, dried, stored) influences the flavor of the resulting cup.

Commercial canned coffee manufacturers and most chain coffeehouses go to great lengths to remove flavor subtleties in order to produce a consistent product. There are two main ways they do this. One is by over roasting the beans (pretty much burning them) and the other is by adding in lesser quality robusta beans. The reason I never liked coffee is because I can't stand the bitter burned flavor of commercial products.

Ethiopia is considered the birthplace of coffee. Although the trees probably first appeared in Sudan, it was in Ethiopia where coffee was first consumed, probably as the cherry fruit rather than a beverage. How it came to be roasted and brewed is the stuff of legends. In one account an Ethiopian goat herder noticed the energizing effects of the cherries when his flock at them. He tried some and was also energized so he took the cherries to a nearby monastery. Depending on the storyteller, either the monk disapproved and threw the raw cherries into the fire from which a delicious aroma arose causing further investigation. Or the monk tried the cherries himself and was impressed enough to share the knowledge. However, this second version doesn't explain how we got from eating raw coffee cherries to roasting them.

In any case, in the 1600s roasted coffee beans and coffee drinking were exported from Ethiopia to the rest of the world.

Coffee arrived in the United Kingdom in the 1650s. By 1675 there were more than 3,000 coffeehouses throughout England, including one started in 1668 by Edward Lloyd – yes, that Lloyd (his coffeehouse eventually became the location of Lloyd's of London Insurance). England was well on the way to a lasting and thriving coffee culture until a revolution (not the one you're thinking of) and the weather intervened...

France "discovered" coffee around the same time as Britain. But instead of relying on importation, they started coffee production on their Saint-Domingue (modern day Haiti) colony where they used Haitian people as slaves to tend great plantations, becoming one of the world's largest producers of coffee at the time. Haitians eventually revolted and in 1804, became an independent country from France. The revolution destroyed thousands of coffee plantations causing Haiti's coffee industry to collapse. This reduced the coffee available in Europe, including England. Britain had started its own coffee production in Sri Lanka and India, but an outbreak of weather-related fungus destroyed the trees. Between the Haitian coffee collapse and the dying trees, the British gave up on coffee. They converted the coffee plantations to tea growing and that cemented the role of tea in British culture.

Coffee came to the US Colonies around the same time as Britain and France. Even though colonists brought their tea drinking habit to the New World, desire for the amazing coffee drink quickly spread. Coffeehouses were established (same business model as running a tavern), and many became centers of political discussion. An early reading of the Declaration of Independence occurred on the steps of the Merchant Coffee House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Green Dragon coffeehouse and tavern in Boston, Massachusetts was known as the "Headquarters of the [American] Revolution" because of the meetings that occurred in the basement.

In 1773, the British made a "tea-tactical" error when they enacted the Tea Act giving British merchants an unfair advantage in selling their tea in the colonies. On December 16 of that year, angry colonists reacted by dumping 340 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. Almost overnight, drinking tea became unpatriotic and coffee became king in the soon-to-be United States.

Next time, how to roast your own coffee!

Read part 2 of this article in a future issue of The Loop newspaper.