WORLD OF COFFEE

The good about coffee

2011-12-22T05:54:00.000-08:00

A good quality coffee extract offers the most rounded, pure coffee flavor or possible. Coffee is natural product that continues to surprise scientists with its diet and health benefits.

Coffee consumption is on the rise in the United States and over half of American drink it everyday.

The American coffee vendor Dunkin Donuts reportedly sells nearly 1 billion cups of coffee per year, or 30 cups of coffee every second.

The benefits of coffee are attributed to drinking black, caffeinated coffee. Adding some sugar and cream or some other ingredients to coffee adds calories and weakens and offsets the benefits.

Some studies that observed health and eating behaviors of adults have noted some benefits of drinking coffee, such as a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and some cancers.

Drinking two cups of coffee or a caffeinated energy drink about an hour before exercise may encourage the muscle to burn more fat and less glycogen and thus help increase the endurance.

The good about coffee

Early history of soluble coffee

2011-12-06T20:46:00.000-08:00

Early history of instant coffee or soluble coffee started as far as 1771, the British granted a patent for a ‘coffee compound’ and in the late nineteenth century R. Patterson & Son of Glasgow invented Camp Coffee, a liquid essence.

The history of instant coffee in United States is linked to wars; military commanders had long sought a way to give their troops in the field a caffeine boost without having to carry along cumbersome brewing equipment.

American attempts to create instant coffee began during the mid-1800s, when one of the earliest instant coffees was offered in cake form to Civil War troops.

Although it and other early instant coffees tasted even worse than regular coffee of the epoch, the incentive of convenience proved strong, and efforts to manufacture a palatable instant brew continued.

An Belgium immigrant named George Washington produced the first commercially viable instant coffee in the United States beginning in 1906.

Instant coffee received further boost during World War 1, when the US army purchased it for some of its troops in Europe.

The expansion was largely due to a Swiss company, Nestle, which started marketing Nescafe in 1938 and quickly dominated the market. By the 1960s, as much as one third of home prepared was soluble.

Finally, after using U.S. troops as testers during World War II, an American coffee manufacturer (Maxwell House) began marketing the first successful instant coffee in 1950.
Early history of soluble coffee

What is caffeine?

2011-11-13T19:33:00.000-08:00

Caffeine, nicotine and alcohol have been seen as having a greater effect on human civilization than all other nonmedical psychoactive substances combined.

Caffeine stands out among these three drugs because of its ubiquitous use around the world and because it is a ‘cradle to grave drug’.

In fact, caffeine is woven so intricately into social customs and daily rituals that it is often not perceived as a drug.

Moreover, common foods and other products often contain significant amounts of caffeine, although they may not be labeled as such.

Originally regarded as an oddity then as cure for all sorts of ailments, it soon became popular as a beverage.

As a mild central nervous stimulant, caffeine is commonly taken as an energy and alertness enhancer.

Caffeine is also used to enhance athletic performance because of its ergogenic effects.

In modern medicine caffeine is used as an adjuvant to the analgesic actions of aspirin and paracetamol.

Caffeine was found to have a 40% adjuvant effect compared to the of aspirin for the treatment of throat pain due to tonsillopharyngitis.

Caffeine occurs naturally in a variety of plant based products including coffee, tea, cocoa, kola nuts, guarana and mate.

Caffeine is added to cola and non-cola soft drinks, as well as o other common food item, including gum, mints, water and energy drinks.
What is caffeine?

Sorting and grading of coffee beans

2011-11-03T21:26:00.000-07:00

Most coffee regions use grading terms to indicate size. Most grade variables do not assess bean ripeness at picking or other taste related qualities.

No matter which method is used to extract the coffee beans from the cherries, once they have been freed from their encasing layers, they are sent through a mill that removes as much of the remaining silverskin as possible.

Because they have not been roasted, their color is a cloudy yellowish beige.

Bean size distribution is carried out by means of perforated pates commonly called screens. Depending on the shape of the holes screens can be grouped in two categories: rounded and slotted.

Typically the size of beans is expressed on a scale of 10 to 20.

Bean size plays an important role for roasted whole coffee beans because many consumers associate bean size to quality; however, larger beans do not necessarily taste better than smaller.

Next they are graded by weight. Beans are sorted by using an air jet to separate heavy and light beans.

Then, the beans travel along a conveyor belt, where workers with eagle eyes remove anything that doesn’t belong, including broken beans of the wrong size, the defects, black beans and any pebbles that have sneaked in.

Grading by color can be accomplished by hand picking, electronically with monochromatic light to sort out the black beans, biochromatically to eliminate brown and bleached beans or flourimetrically to eliminate ‘sinker’ beans.

When the sorting process is complete, the beans are bagged in burlap sacks that are colorful marked with country of origin and the logo of the supplier.

Many factors must be considered in grading coffee beans. These include the region, altitude, care during cultivation, type of harvesting and accuracy in production.

Although coffee is produced throughout Brazil, the highest grade beans known as Brazilian Santos or Bourbon Santos – come from the Sao Paulo region.
Sorting and grading of coffee beans

Café Latte

2011-09-22T03:11:00.000-07:00

Café latte, Italian for coffee with milk, is a mixture of espresso and a liberal amount of steamed or scalded milk and a foamy milk.

True latte contains two thirds milk to one third espresso. Café latte often served for breakfast, this white coffee consists of coffee and hot milk served with a little milk foam.

The Swiss affectionately call it schale, which literally translates to ‘bowl’.

In English-speaking countries, the so-called latte is shorthand for caffé latte or caffé ilatte. The long Italian form literally means ‘coffee and milk’, similar to the French of ‘café au lait’ and the Spanish ‘café con leche’.

William Dean Howells the American author and the writer of the novel The Rise of Silas Lapham, was the one first who used the term ‘latto’ in 1847. And then he used ‘latte’ in 1867 in his essay ‘Italian Journey’.
Café Latte

Industrial processing of green coffee beans

2011-09-21T09:03:00.000-07:00

Four methods of industrial processing of green coffee beans are used:
*Roasting, an essential process to develop coffee’s aromatic properties. Roasting changes the appearance, consistency, smell, flavor and composition of the coffee. Roasting coffee beans causes the bean to expand and become more dense, and brings out the natural oils found inside.

*Grinding
When broken down by grinding, coffee cells release their content of pyrolytic gas formed at roasting. This gas is mostly composed of CO2 and CO, accompanied by small amounts of hundreds of volatile chemical species.

The volatiles only present in low concentrations but are essential bringing forth the typical coffee aroma.

*Percolation followed by dehydration to obtain soluble coffee. In percolation process, more coffee beans are used, with a shorter percolation time. This give a strong flavor but avoids the bitterness.

Percolation refers to the coffee making process in which crushed coffee beans are broken up, mixed together, brought into collision and recomposed in a percolator to extract the full flavor of the coffee.

*Decaffeination
Caffeine is removed by soaking the beans on water or by using solvents or carbon dioxide. The last is thought to be the best method as it does not affect the flavor and there is no residue.

Prior to processing, green coffee beans are cleaned and dusted by pneumatic separating machines, then stored in partitioned soils.

Harvested coffee beans begin to ferment almost immediately and if the crop is not to be lost, it must be processed within 8 to 36 hours after picking.

Processing must remove the seeds of the coffee berry – the source of coffee as a beverage – from the surrounding organic material.
Industrial processing of green coffee beans

Seattle’s Best Coffee

2011-08-11T19:47:00.001-07:00

Seattle’ Best Coffees are available at retail outlets, in most major grocery chains and at on-line stores. Customer can choose from traditional coffeehouse blends, flavored coffees and organic varieties.

Seattle’ Best Coffee purchases and roasts whole bean coffee and sells them through its global network.

Seattle Best was started by a group of passionate coffee lovers in the early 70s. Jim Stewart was a pioneer of the company which was called Wet Whisker in 1968.

In 1991, a local Seattle restaurant hosted a coffee competition and this group’s coffee was voted ‘Seattle’s Best’.

It was purchased by AFC enterprise in 1998 and began franchising the Seattle’s Best Coffee brand. Later the company’s organic coffee line was established.

Seattle’s Best Coffee was acquired by Starbucks in July 2003. However Seattle’s Best coffees are still allowed to serve their own coffee blends.
Seattle’s Best Coffee

Coffee from Brazil

2011-07-14T19:45:00.000-07:00

Latin America countries dominated coffee production and exports, with Brazil as the main actor. It is the leading coffee producer worldwide, also is the second largest consumer after the United States.

Brazil is the largest Arabica producer in the world, and its coffee plantations are composed of 73% Arabica and 27% Robusta trees.

Brazil is experiencing a yearly increase of 5% in coffee consumption and will soon have am internal consumption rate of twenty-one million bags yearly, closed to the twenty-five million consumed in the USA.

Brazil has long been the world’s largest producer, but production has recently been boosted by changes in how and where coffee is grown.

Coffee was introduced into south-eastern Brazil around 1774, and at first became established in cleared lands previously planted in sugarcane.

Throughout the 1880s and into the early twentieth century, Brazil produced more than half of the world’s coffee.

Coffee is grown on some 2.5 million ha between latitudes 10 and 24 degree S, mostly on gently sloping land, often with high tech cultivation practices.

This country ranks first in coffee production, with a yield of around 44 million 60 kg-bags in 2006, this represent 30% of the world’s coffee production.

Most of Brazil’s coffee was exported to Europe, especially Germany, the Low Countries and Scandinavia, and to the United States, the largest single market.

There is some Brazilian coffee in almost every cup of espresso and in most canned coffee and major roaster’s blends. Coffee from Brazil has delighted the world for many years, bringing with it the contagious joy of its people, their colorfulness, their taste and their smells.
Coffee from Brazil

The History of Peet's Coffee & Tea

2011-06-28T18:23:00.000-07:00

Alfred Peet had grown up working in his family’s coffee business in the Netherlands. Later he learned the tea trade in Indonesia. By the time he landed in California, he knew the best way to roast and brew both beverages.

After several years of living and working in the United States, in 1966 he invested in a roaster and decided to open his own shop selling coffee beans and loose tea t Walnut and Vine Streets in California.

Peet bought premium coffee beans and roasted them the same way they did in the old century, and this the gourmet coffee movement in the United States was quietly born.

The used of superior quality coffee beans and hand roasted them, gave the coffee its top quality flavor.

When customers came onto his Berkeley shop, Peet would offer them a fragrant cup of coffee while they waited for beans to be freshly roasted.

He chose Berkeley, where a collection of European-style shops and bistros serving fresh cheeses and breads, along with other gourmet delicacies, was beginning to gain popularity with consumers.

His shop became a gathering place for coffee connoisseurs’, his business was frequented by University of California-Berkeley, faculty, students, intellectuals and writers.

Peet retired in 1983.

By 2009, Peet’s operate 111 retail stores in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington.

In 2001, Peet’s became a public company trading in the NASDAQ.
The History of Peet's Coffee & Tea

History of Caffeine

2011-05-13T19:04:00.000-07:00

The drinking of tea and coffee introduced a new drug, caffeine, which has not naturally available in temperate climates, into Western civilization in the 17th century.

With the development of worldwide trade routes during the 17th and 18th centuries, caffeinated products such as coffee, tea, guarana, coca, and mate spread rapidly from their indigenous environment of the parts of the world.

It is the most common stimulant drug in used for centuries, yet it wasn’t until the 1800s that scientists purified it and gave it a name.

Caffeine was first purified by German chemist named Johann Freidlieb Ferdinand Runge. With the aid of chromatography technique he purified a a crystalline white powder with a bitter taste from coffee beans.

Its chemical structure was identified in 1875. Caffeine was isolated from tea in 1827, five years after first isolated from coffee.

The plants contain the methylxanthines have been used to make popular beverages since ancient times.

In the late 1800s, entrepreneurs began selling flavored carbonated beverages with added caffeine. Original claims for promoting used of these products appealed directly to the stimulant pharmacology of caffeine.
History of Caffeine

Application of Biotechnology on Coffee

2011-05-12T08:49:00.001-07:00

There has been considerable interest in applying biotechnology to coffee through both conventional breeding using tissue culture techniques and molecular markers and through the application of genetic modification technology.

Biotechnology mean that using engineering, biochemistry and microbiology to achieve the technological application of the capabilities of microorganisms, cultivated tissues cells and parts thereof.

Plant biotechnologies can be defined as the procedures for manipulations in artificial media set up with the intention of identifying/preserving and propagating as well as modifying plants to improve their use for mankind.

Coffee improvement though biotechnology can focus on three different areas of applications: agronomy, processing industry and consumers.

Coffee farmers face many challenges in reducing an abundant and high quality crop. Biotic stress, especially from insects and fungal pathogens, are particular problems.

Coffee is plagued by a varied spectrum of pests and disease: among the most important in Africa is coffee berry disease, which is caused by a fungus.

Biotechnology will undoubtedly play a progressively more important role in assuring quality by reducing defects resulting from contamination by microorganisms and insects.
Application of Biotechnology on Coffee

Caffeine in Coffee

2011-04-17T21:47:00.000-07:00

Coffee shops have become a global phenomenon. Although coffee shops, or coffeehouses, have existed for nearly 500 years, in the past few decades they have experienced a dramatic expansion.

Caffeine, technically refer as an alkaloid, caffeine, a chemical sometimes called ‘theine,’ ‘guaranine,’ or ‘matein.’

The caffeine content of coffee depends on the variety of the coffee bean, the particle size, the brewing method and the length of brewing or steeping time.

Brewed coffee has more caffeine than instant coffee, and espresso has more caffeine than brewed coffee.

Caffeine is odorless an has characteristics bitter taste. It is a white powder solvents and water. However it solubility in water is considerably increased at higher temperature.

Caffeine is very weak base, reacting with acid to yield readily hydrolyzed salts and relatively stable in dilute acids and alkali.

Caffeine in been helpful stimulant for athletes and dieters when used sparingly. In low doses it has been shows to increases mental alertness and aid in the release of stored glycogen.

It relieves drowsiness, helps in he performance of repetitive tasks and improve the capacity for work.

Coffee is not the only one when it comes to caffeine. Plenty of beverage as well as various medications of insomnia, appetite control and headaches – are sources of the stimulant, although when it comes to beverages, coffee is indeed the most common source.

Other popular sources of caffeine included tea leaves, cacao bean, kola nuts, guarana seed and leaves of yerba mate and qat trees.

At high doses of usage, caffeine can cause anxiety, nervousness, increased blood pressure disordered eating, insomnia and an irregular heart rate.

It also can lead to upset stomach and bowels and dizziness.

Caffeine rapidly absorbed by every organ and tissue. Excessive a caffeinated beverages consumption interferes in body’s capacity to from ‘hydroelectric’ energy and depletes ATP stored in the brain and elsewhere – a contributing factor in physical and mental fatigue.
Caffeine in Coffee

Caffé Mocha

2011-03-27T18:43:00.000-07:00

This is a chocolate variation of the caffé latte.

Either cocoa powder or chocolate syrup is added at the beginning of preparing the drink, and the chocolate is mixed or frothed with hot milked until thoroughly blended, before the espresso is added. It then served topped with whipped cream.

Café mocha have two basic components: espresso coffee and steamed milk. The combination of the two is enjoyed by million of people every day. Steaming the milk is the major taste factor in all speciality coffee drinks.

Even before taste it, the delicious aroma fills the air. Once settle back, feel the warmth and start take a sip. Café Mocha takes its name form the Red Sea coastal town of Mocha, Yemen. This Yemenese port famous for its coffee.

The town of Mocha was a flourishing town even before the coffee trade was introduced. Mocha coffee is the most highly esteemed coffee. It ha smaller and a rounder bean; a more agreeable taste and smell than any other. Its color is yellow.

Caffé Mocha

A Short History of Coffee

2011-03-06T01:21:00.000-08:00

Coffee originated on the plateaus of central Ethiopia. Either the Ethiopian province of Kaffa in Ethiopia’s southwestern highlands or the plateaus of central Ethiopia is likely the original home of the coffee plant, which was discovered growing wild around 600 AD.

By A.D. 1000, Ethiopian Arabs were collecting the fruit of the tree, which grew wild, and preparing a beverage from its beans.

During the fifteenth century traders transplanted wild coffee trees from Africa to southern Arabia.

People believed that the coffee beans were brought to Arabia from Ethiopia by Sudanese slaves who chewed the fresh coffee berries during the trip to help them survive.

The eastern Arabs, the first to cultivate coffee, soon adopted the Ethiopian Arabs' practice of making a hot beverage from its ground, roasted beans.

The Arabs' fondness for the drink spread rapidly along trade routes, and Venetians had been introduced to coffee by 1600. In Europe as in Arabia, church and state officials frequently proscribed the new drink, identifying it with the often-liberal discussions conducted by coffee house habitués, but the institutions nonetheless proliferated, nowhere more so than in seventeenth-century London.

Coffee was brought to England first by a Turkey merchant returning from a voyage to the Levant in the time of Cromwell; he was accompanied by a Greek named Pasqua who understood the art of preparing the beverage.

This man founded a Coffee house in London, which prospered so exceedingly, that it is said, twelve months there were as many Coffee houses in London as in Constantinople.

The first coffee house opened there in 1652, and a large number of such establishments(cafés) opened soon after on both the European continent(café derives from the French term for coffee) and in North America, where they appeared in such Eastern cities as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia in the last decade of the seventeenth century.
Coffee bean arrived in the New World in the 18th century. French noblemen named Gabriel De Clieu is celebrated for his role in coffee’s arrival in the Americas.

In the United States, coffee achieved the same, almost instantaneous popularity that it had won in Europe. However, the brew favored by early American coffee drinkers tasted significantly different from that enjoyed by today's connoisseurs, as nineteenth-century cookbooks make clear.
American attempts to create instant coffee began during the mid-1800s, when one of the earliest instant coffees was offered in cake form to Civil War troops.

Although it and other early instant coffees tasted even worse than regular coffee of the epoch, the incentive of convenience proved strong, and efforts to manufacture a palatable instant brew continued. Finally, after using U.S. troops as testers during World War II, an American coffee manufacturer (Maxwell House) began marketing the first successful instant coffee in 1950.
A Short History of Coffee

Coffee varieties

2011-02-20T20:50:00.000-08:00

Coffee varieties
Coffee (coffee beans) includes the seeds of crimson fruits which the outer pericarp is completely removed and the silverskin (spermoderm) is occasionally removed.

The seeds may raw or roasted, whole or ground and should be from botanical genus Coffea.

About 80 varieties of the three coffee beans species are known. The most important of the species Coffea arabica are typica, bourbon, maragogips and mocca; and of Coffea canephora are robusta, typical, uganda and quillon.

All varieties of Coffea canephora are marketed under the common name “robusta”.

The names of green coffees may characteristic of the place of origin; i.e. the country and the port of export.

Arabica coffee is considered especially fine and valuable. It is aromatic, mild, and low in acidity and low in caffeine.

Robusta, on the other hand – as the name implies - is less susceptible to climatic changes and is more disease resistant, hardier, and correspondingly less expensive.

At the same time, robusta contains much more caffeine and is stronger, but is also more bitter, more acidic and less aromatic.

The finest coffee comes form Colombia. Excellent coffees are grown in Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico and nations in Africa, the Middle East and Indonesia.
Coffee varieties

Coffee Harvesting

2011-02-20T20:11:00.000-08:00

Coffee Harvesting
Coffee harvesting may have different objective depending in the method of processing as well as the availability and cost of labor.

Where the wet or semi-dry method is to be used, traditionally the main objective is to maximize the percentage of ripe cherries harvested.

On the other hand, if the dry method is to be used, the usual objective is to harvest all cherries simultaneously with the least percentage of unripe ones.

The ideal situation is to harvest all fresh, ripe cherries with the least possible damage to the tree, irrespective of the processing system to be used.

With the harvesting technology available today, 100% ripe cherry harvesting may be only achieved be selective hand-picking, which generally corresponds to the most expensive operation available.

In situations where labor is scarce or expensive in relation to coffee prices, selection may have to be overlooked so unripe and over-ripe cherries must then be picked. This is mostly the case today, with 100% ripe cherries harvesting nearly impossible to achieve with or without selective picking.

High quality coffee may still be produced in any case from the fresh, ripe cherries alone, but the total volume of high quality coffee available is then smaller.

Ideally, only ripe coffee berries should be harvested because they provided the best beverage. In Brazil, 90% of the plantation are harvested manually; the berries are stripes from the plant branches and fall on the ground, into basket or on fabric or plastic strips laid under the plant. Letting the berries fall on the ground is not recommended because dirt, debris, moldy and rotten berries end up being collected as well.

However, mechanical harvesting has been increasingly used it is so difficult to hire manage and pay the large force required for manual harvesting; operational, costs may drop by 40%. Mechanical harvesting is more suitable for medium to large plantation in areas with slopes of up to 20% incline.
Coffee Harvesting

Beneficial Drinks of Coffee

2011-01-14T07:20:00.000-08:00

Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world. Over 500 billion cups are consumed annually. Coffee is currently grown in over fifty countries and is second only to petroleum in global trade activity and value.

Coffee is not usually thought of as health food, but a number of recent studies suggest that it can be a highly beneficial drink.

Researchers have found strong evidence that coffee reduces the risk of several serious ailments, including diabetes, coronary heart disease and cirrhosis of the liver.

It also reducing the risk of several cancers, rheumatoid arthritis and possibly Alzheimer’s disease.

Habitual coffee consumption appears to be associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.

Coffee contains antioxidants that help control the cell damage that can contribute to the development of the disease.

Larger quantities of coffee seem to be especially helpful in diabetes prevention. Researchers found that people who drank four to six cups of coffee a day had a 28 percent reduced risk compared with people who drank two or fewer. Those who drank more than six had a 35 percent risk reduction.

There was study in Amsterdam that components in coffee seem to help the body metabolize sugar, thereby reducing the risk of diabetes, which affects 130 million people worldwide.

Some studies show that cardiovascular risk also decreases with coffee consumption. Using data on more than 27,000 women ages 55 to 69 in the Iowa Women’s Health Study who were followed for 15 years, Norwegian researchers found that women who drank one to three cups a day reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease by 24 percent compared with those drinking no coffee at all.

The antioxidants found in coffee have been found to inhibit inflammation and thereby reduce risk of cardiovascular and other inflammatory disease in post menopausal women.

The most protective effect was found at a dose of 1 to 3 cup of coffee per day.

In males, consumption of 8 or more cups of coffee a day reduce d the risk of cerebral infraction (stoke) when compared to non coffee drinkers.

In another analysis, published in July in the same journal, researchers found that a typical serving of coffee contains more antioxidants than typical servings of grape juice, blueberries, raspberries and oranges.

Researches caution that coffee is not for everyone and that people with hypertension, children, elders and pregnant women are most susceptible to adverse affects.
Beneficial Drinks of Coffee

Maxwell House Coffee – The History

2011-01-05T18:21:00.000-08:00

Maxwell House Coffee – The History
Joel Owsley Cheek was born on December 8, 1862, in Burkesville, Kentucky. When he turned 21, he left the family farm and traveled by raft along the Cumberland River to Nashville, Tennessee, where he was hired as a travelling salesman for a wholesale grocery company.

At about the same tome, Colonel John Overton opened an elaborate Nashville hotel that he named The Maxwell House in honor of his wife, whose maiden name was Harriet Maxwell.

The hotel quickly became famous for its fine cuisine and lavish hospitality and the Maxwell House became the place stay whole travelling though Nashville.

Of all the products that Cheek peddled, coffee held most of his interest. As he traveled from village, he developed plans for blending his own brand of coffee.

He was eventually granted a partnership in the grocery firm that he worked for, while he meant that his travel days were over. With his free time in Nashville, he started experimenting with coffee blends.

In 1882, he quit the partnership and established a full time coffee business.

Over the next decade, Cheek built his coffee business while continuing to experimenting with new blends.

In 1892, he developed a particularly fine blend that he considered to be rich that it was suitable for a hotel like The Maxwell House.

He approached the management of the Hotel who agreed to serve it to customer for a trial period. Soon, everyone seemed to be talking about the wonderful Maxwell House coffee.

One satisfied customer was Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States. While visiting Nashville in 1907, a hostess asked him if he would like another cup of the Maxwell House coffee. “Delighted,” responded the president, “It’s good to the last drop!” This response was later adopted by Maxwell House as its long running slogan.

The success of the coffee bend contributed to a rapid growth of Cheek’s partnership, the Cheek Coffee Company that he operated with John W. Neal. Other innovations followed such as Maxwell House tea, which was introduced in 1917.

On August 1, 1928, the Postum Company acquired the Cheek Neal Coffee Company for approximately $40 million, changing its name to the Maxwell House Products Corporation.

One year later, Postum changed its name to General Foods Corporation.

Joel Cheek died on December 13, 1936, at the age of 83. The original Maxwell House hotel was destroyed by a fire on December 25, 1961.
Maxwell House Coffee – The History

History of Coffee

2010-12-26T15:34:00.000-08:00

History of Coffee
From it legendary origins to modern times, coffee has been praised and valued for its taste and more importantly, its effects on arousal. As a result, this simple fruit of the coffee plant became the basis for an industry that has grown over the centuries to multibillion dollar proportions.

World coffee exports average six million tons annually or over 200 million bags of coffee beans.

Although humans have been drinking coffee for centuries it is not clear just where coffee originated or who first discovered it.

However, the predominant legend has it than an observant goatherd named Kaldi discovered coffee in the Ethiopian highlands. Various dates for this legend include 900 BC, 800 BC, 300 AD and 800 AD.

Regardless of the actual date, it is said that Kaldi noticed that his goat did not sleep at night after eating berries from what would later be known as a coffee tree.

When Kaldi reported his observation to the local monastery, the abbot became the first person to brew a batch of coffee and note its alerting effect when he drank it.

The world of the arousing effects and pleasant taste of this new beverage soon spread beyond the monastery initially east to the Arabian Peninsula and eventually throughout the world.

The story of Kaldi might be more fable than fact, but at least some historical evidence indicates that coffee did originate in the Ethiopian highlands. Indeed most, of not all, coffees have been traced to that part of the world, whether they are now grown in Asia, Africa, Central and South America or Pacific and Caribbean Islands.

The first know reference to coffee in Arabic writings came from an Islamic physician, Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Zakariya ‘El Razi (know as “Rhazes”), who wrote a now lost medical textbook circa 900 AD.

Rhazes made first reference to what can be reliably identified as coffee, and archeologists have found iron roasting pans dating 1000 AD. However, Rhazes’ textbook has been lost to the ages, and only more recent references in other Arabian literature exist citing his book.

The oldest extant accounts of coffee roasting date to the writings of the famous Islamic physician Ibn Sina, traditionally referred to in English-Language texts by his Latinized name, “Avicenna.”

Avicenna’s praises of coffee were published in Arabic circa 1000 AD and translated into Latin circa 1200 AD.
History of Coffee

Early History of Instant Coffee

2010-10-28T00:09:00.000-07:00

Early History of Instant Coffee
The early history of instant coffee is linked to wars; military commanders had long sought a way to give their troops in the field a caffeine boost without having to carry along cumbersome brewing equipment.

The earliest experiments with and patents for instant coffee date to the Civil War; further experiments were conducted during the Spanish American War.

As an outgrowth of these experiments, a European immigrant name George Washington produced the first commercially viable instant coffee in the United States beginning in 1906.

The G. Washington Coffee Company continued to sell instant coffee in the US market into the 1940s.

Instant coffee received a further boosts during World War I, when the US Army purchased it for some of its troops in Europe.

By most accounts, this early instant coffee was a poor quality and had a somewhat foul taste.

The first major advance in instant coffee production occurred in the 1930s, when Nestle technicians, in consultation with Brazilian coffee official trying to find ways to dispose off their huge coffee stockpiles, realized that the spray-drying technology they used to produce powdered milk could be adapted for the production of powdered instant coffee.

Nestle built an instant coffee factory in the United States in 1939.

Commercial development of instant coffee for the consumer market was interrupted by World War II, but at the same time , the US government provided a huge stimulus of the development of the industry by making instant coffee a standard component of the rations given to US troops and purchasing massive quantities of it.
Early History of Instant Coffee

The Legend of Coffee

2010-10-26T02:21:00.000-07:00

The Legend of Coffee
Over the centuries numerous legends have accumulated about the discovery of coffee. Possibly the earliest references to the use of coffee are to be seen in the Old Testament.

Although cultivation may have begun as early as the 6th century C.E., the first written mention of coffee as such by Razes 10th century Arabian physician.

The most well story of the discovery of the coffee plant is concerned with a goatherd tending his flock in the hills around a monastery on the banks of the Red Sea. He noticed that his goats, after chewing berries from bushes growing there started prancing excitedly.

A monk from monastery observed these behavior, took some of the berries, roasted them, and brewed them.

When served, the brew kept his people more alert during the long prayers at night. And this saw the birth of the world’s most stimulating beverage.

The word coffee is derived from the Arabic word ‘quahweh’, which is a poetic term for “wine.” Since wine is forbidden to devout Muslims, the name was change to coffee.

The wild coffee plant is indigenous to Ethiopia, from which it spread to Arabia and nearby countries.

The transport of coffee from countries near Arabia to other parts of the world was limited; the raw beans were not allowed out of the country without steeping in boiling water or heating to destroy their germinating power.

Strangers were not allowed to visit the plantations; it was Baba Budan, a pilgrim from India, who smuggled out a few seeds capable of germination. He planted the seeds in western Ghats of Coorg in South India around 1600 C.E.

The cultivation was expanded during British rule. In Brazil, coffee entered through a Brazilian officer who, while on a visit to French Guyana in 1727, received a plant hidden in a bouquet of flowers as a token of affection from Governor’s wife.

The coffee pant belongs to the Rubiaceae family, which has over 70 species of coffee. But only seven of them have significant economic importance.

The commercially cultivated species are Arabica (Coffea arabica) and robusta (Coffea canephora).

Coffea liberica, another species was devastated during the 1940s by an epidemic of tracheamycosis due to infection by Fusarium xylaroides and the commercial growth of this species has effectively ceased since then.

Coffea robusta, which is noted for its resistance to disease contains more caffeine than Coffea arabica and is thus more economical in the manufacture of instant coffee.

Coffee is one of the most important agricultural products trade worldwide. It is grown and exported by over 70 developing countries in the tropical and subtropical belt, but industrialized countries import and consume most of it.

Of these 70, 51 countries including Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, India and Mexico are responsible for more than 88% of world output and are exporting members of the International Coffee Agreement.
The Legend of Coffee

History: Political Influences on Coffee

2010-08-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

History: Political Influences on Coffee
In Muslim countries, the closing of coffeehouses was ordered by the Bey of Cairo in 1511, by the Sultan of Mecca in 1524, and by the Great Vizier Koprulu in 1656.

In 1675, Charles II of England issued an edict abolishing cafes, “places of idleness where His Majesty is defamed”, because of scandalous rumors implicating the king and his ministers.

However, he repealed the ordinance because of “Royal compassion”; actually, he was forced to do so because of demonstration against this edict.

In Germany, the Landgrave Frederick of Hesse prohibited coffee houses in 1773. Frederick II the Great of Prussia held the monopoly of the importation of coffee up until his death.

Since coffee consumption in Prussia was very high, coffee importations were a burden on the State budget and caused a loss to brewers and producers of barley and hops.

As a consequence, Frederick II increased taxes and forbade “anyone from roasting the beans”. Even though he himself appreciated coffee, he declared that “workmen, and farm girls and other manual workers had no reason to drink coffee”; and that “he was sickened to note increased coffee consumption by his subjects who, on the contrary should drink beer as he and his workers did.

Many battles were won by beer drinking soldiers and he added that he did not think that coffee drinking soldiers would capable of withstanding hardship and could beat the enemy.

In spite of these exhortations, Germany was the largest consumer of coffee in Europe in the 19th century and currently Germans drink more coffee than beer.

In Scandinavia, coffee was subject to high taxes because of pressure from the medical community which considered its use excessive and wished to limit it.

In fact. coffee consumption was actually forbidden in four times: in 1745, 1794, 1796 and 1766, it was only starting in 1853 that its consumption was again unrestricted.
History: Political Influences on Coffee

The term of ‘Coffee’

2010-07-17T23:46:00.000-07:00

The term of ‘Coffee’
It is perhaps, not generally known that the word “coffee” is of Abyssinian origin. Its name is said to be derived from the city of Kaffa, near which tradition places the origin of the coffee tree.

It is stated on the contrary by Macfarlane that “coffee” is derived from the Arabic word “Kahwah” meaning wine, and that is was the name given by the Arabians to the decoction obtained from the pulp of the coffee berries.

The botanical name Coffee arabica - indicates an Arabian origin.

The coffee tree on the American continent where it grows over wide areas from Mexico southward to the southern limit of toleration, is described as a shrub rather than a tree, growing to a height of from 14 to 18 feet.

It has a rather long and slender trunk, without branches except near the top.

The roots of the plants are thin and very numerous; they grow deeply into the earth, and there is usually one central root, a counterpart of the stem of the tree, running straight down, if not interfered with by instructions.

If the soil be poor on which the coffee is cultivated, it does not reach the dimensions above stated. According to the richness of the soil it is pruned so as to vary from 6 feet in height in poor soil, to 8 or 10 feet in soil of better quality.

One of the objects of thus preventing the growth of the tree to the extreme height, is to facilitate the cultivating of the tree and the harvesting of the berries.
The term of ‘Coffee’

History of Starbucks Coffee Company

2010-06-15T22:15:00.000-07:00

History of Starbucks Coffee Company
The routes of the company’s reason for being go back to 1971, when three coffee fanatics – Gerald Baldwin, Gordon Bowker and Ziev Siegl – opened a small coffee shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market.

The shop specialized in selling whole Arabica beans to a niche market of coffee purists.

Original the name of the company was Starbucks Coffee, Tea and Spices, but later changed to Starbucks Coffee Company.

At this time per capita coffee consumption in the U.S was in the decline and supermarket brands dominated the larger coffee market was dominated by supermarket brands.

When Howard Schultz first joined the marketing team of the company in 1982, Starbucks was already a highly respected local roaster and retailer of whole bean and ground coffees.

A business trip to Italy opened Schultz’s eyes to the rich tradition of the espresso beverage and espresso drinks became an essential element of Schultz vision.

Upon his return, he convinced the company to set up an espresso bar in the corner of its downtown Seattle shop to create a place where people could go to relax and enjoy others.

A few years later in 1987, Schultz got his chance when Starbucks’ founders agreed to sell him the company.

As soon as Shultz took over, he immediately began opening new stores. The stores sold whole beans and premium coffee beverages by the cup and catered primarily to affluent, well educated female between the ages of 25 and 44.

By 1992, the company had 140 such stores in the Northwest and Chicago and was successfully competing against other small scale coffee chains.

That same year Schultz decided to take the company public raising USD 25 million of the public offering to open more stores across the nation.

By 2002, Schultz had unequivocally established Starbucks as the dominant specialty coffee brand in North America.

Sales had climbed at a compound annual growth rate of 40% since the company had gone public, and net earnings had risen at a compound annual growth rate of 50%.

The company was now serving 20 million unique customers in well over 5,000 stores round the globe and was opening on average three new stores a day.
History of Starbucks Coffee Company

Taxonomy of Coffee

2010-06-13T02:46:00.000-07:00

Taxonomy of Coffee
The genus Coffea belongs to the family Rubiaceae. This family comprises many genera including Gardenia, Ixora, Cinchona (quinine) and Rubia.

The later includes Rubia tinctoria (Turkey Red), from which the name of the family Rubiaceae was derived. The genus Coffea covers approximately 70 species.

The main species of coffee tree cultivated on a worldwide scale are Coffea arabica and C. canephora var. robusta.

Minor cultivated species include C. liberica and C. excelsa, which are mainly restricted to West Africa and Asia, and account for 1-2% of global production.

In the past, coffee classification has undergone frequent alterations and the present system of classification is not yet the final version.

Specialists are well aware that further native species of Coffea are likely to be discovered in Africa and possibly elsewhere.

In addition, genome studies involving cellular studies and molecular chemistry, will undoubtedly highlight factors that will refine and simplify present day coffee classification.
Taxonomy of Coffee