HISTORY OF BEVERAGE

Sugar in drinks during ancient times

2012-01-22T07:13:00.000-08:00

Sugarcane cultivation and the technique of sugar production began in India probably around 2000 BC and moved to Persia around AD 600.

The high sucrose content of sugarcane makes it an ideal source for the production of alcoholic beverages. Ancient Sanskrit texts refer to fermented varieties of sugarcane wine in India.

In AD 800, sugarcane cultivation spread from Persia to Egypt, Syria and as far as Morocco and Spain.

Sugarcane wine was probably also produced in parts of the Arab world during the Mediterranean phase in sugar production.

Sir Thomas Herbert, traveler in Persia from 1627 to 1629 wrote, ‘Their liquor is sometimes fair water, sugar, rose water and juice of lemons mixed, and sugar confected with citrons, violets or other sweet flowers and for more delicacy, sometimes a mixture of amber, this we call sherbet’.

Throughout Europe, demand for sugar accompanied home and café consumption of cocoa, coffee and tea. By 1573, the first German refinery at Augsburg was producing cane sugar for local shop.

Sugar became popular in tea in Britain by the end of the seventeenth century. Sugar was in the vanguard of the ‘hot drinks revolution’ of the eighteenth century.

It was also only during the course of the nineteenth century that it was discovered that yeast coverts sugar into ethanol and carbon dioxide in the process known as fermentation.

Sugar in drinks during ancient times

William Jones and the invention of Mountain Dew formula

2012-01-12T17:38:00.000-08:00

The late William H. Bill Jones formulated the flavor of the soft drink Mountain Dew in Marion, following a series of experiments in the early 1960s at Marion’s Tip Corporation.

He experimented with soft drink flavors from 1959 to 1962 in the development of mountain Dew.

It was Bill Bridgforth of Tri-City Beverage in Johnson City, Tennessee, was instrumental in creating its final formula.

Two brothers: Barney and Allie Hartman of Knoxville, Tennessee, originated the lime green beverage as a mixer in the late 1940s. Both were the stockholder of the Tip Corporation.

That mixer was redeveloped in 1954 as a soft drink called Mountain Dew. It was only used for their personal entertainment.

By 1961, Jones had acquired all rights to the product and introduced a new Mountain Dew on local stores. He first bottled Mountain Dew in his basement, placing the drink in old Pepsi bottles until he could not keep up with the demand.

This Marion famous product was sold to PepsiCo in 1964. While the town of Marion has been designated as the ‘Home of Mountain Dew’.

William Jones and the invention of Mountain Dew formula

Coca Cola Zero

2012-01-09T03:00:00.000-08:00

The Coca-cola zero was launched in June 2005 by CEO of the Coca-Cola Company Neville Isdell. It is a sugar free Coke.

The drink was sweetened partly with a blend of aspartame and acesulfame potassium. The goal for The Coca-Cola Company was to develop a soft drink that had real Coke taste, but zero calories.

Coke Zero was targeted primary to young adult males. Coke was an immediate hit in Australia, selling more than three times the target of its first year but disappointing sales in United States.

The Coke Zero abandoned red and white packaging in favor of a sleek black livery. Later Coke Zero was reintroduced in 2007 with a black and silver label.

Currently, the company sells more than 600 million cases of Coca-Cola Zero each year in more than 130 countries.

Coca Cola Zero

History of whiskey boilermaker

2012-01-01T19:55:00.000-08:00

A boilermaker is a shot of whiskey with a beer chaser, although it may also be a glass of beer with a shot of whiskey in it – sometimes dropped in, shot glass and all.

Classically the liquor is drunk in one gulp and chased immediately by the beer.

How it started? For centuries, distillation was very primitive, leaving all kinds of impurities in the whiskey along with a dreadful taste. So when a man drank a shot, he wash the taste out of his mouth with beer.

The boilermaker originated in the 1890s in the mining camps of Burte, Montana, as the ‘Sean O’Farrell.’

The powerful, ten-cent Sean O’ was served only as miners came off their shift.

Scotland also is a major brewing and beer drinking country. Typically, Scotch ales have been maltier and less bitter than English beers, it became common practice to ‘chase’ a shot of whiskey with light ale.

History of whiskey boilermaker

History of Coca-Cola C2

2011-12-23T07:31:00.000-08:00

Coke C2 is a reduced sugar cola launched by Coke in 2004. The product made its official debut in May with an ad featuring the Rolling Stones’ tune – You Can’t Always Get What you Want’ which was first aired during the American Idol finals.

The purpose to market this product was to capitalize on the low carb craze where Coca-Cola C2 is a soda with half the carbohydrates, sugar and calories of the regular drink.

In C2 Coke it uses a blend of aspartame and HFCS to produce a drink that tastes as much like the original beverage as possible, but which has half the calories.

Coke introduce this new cola C2 in Japan before it took the product to America.

However, the product did not live it up to the expectations, and the product disappeared from the store shelves with the introduction of Coca-Cola Cherry Zero.

History of Coca-Cola C2

History of New Coke

2011-11-27T20:08:00.001-08:00

Robert Winship Woodruff, the president of The Coca-Cola Company died in his bed at Emory hospital on March 7, 1985.

Six weeks later at a glamorous news conference, in April 23, 1985, the company announced with much fanfare that after a four year taste test involving 190,000 persons, the formula for Coca-Cola was being changed and that New Coke would take place.

The ‘old Coke’ would be a thing of the past. Coca-Cola’s market share had eroded from 60 percent just after World War II to less than 24 percent in 1983.

At that time Pepsi was gaining market share and Diet Coke innovation had been a hugh success. As the newly appointed CEO of Coca-Cola, Roberto Goizueta was determined to modernize the company.

The reinvented Coca-Cola, a sweeter variant dubbed New Coke, was released with the slogan ‘The Best Just Got Better’.

But soon the ‘Old Coke’ loyalists started speaking out and a previously apathetic public, fueled by media reports, began to voice their unhappiness with the new product.

The situation became untenable and then-CEO Roberto Goizueta ordered a ‘retrograde march’ and New Coke was killed. As an executive Goizueta could recognized a mistake, and he was not afraid to admit it and fox it.

On July 10, less than three months after the introduction of New Coke, company officials announced that the original would return as Coca-Cola classic. For a brief few months Pepsi gained sales leadership, but by early 1986 Coca-Cola Classic was back in top.
History of New Coke

History of condensed milk

2011-11-21T06:53:00.001-08:00

The early solution to the problems of distribution of fresh milk was to process it. The process were making milk safer and ending the dreadful sequence of nineteenth century urban epidemics associated with tainted milk.

Because milk consists mostly of water with lactose accounting for only about 5 percent of its weight and fat and protein 4 percent each - it can be substantially reduce by boiling at a low temperature in a vacuum.

The thick liquid resulting from this process can be sterilized to make evaporated milk or mixed with sugar to make condensed milk.

There was a British patent for ‘condensation’ as early as 1835, but the American, Gail Borden who concentrated milk by evaporation in a vacuum and then sold the product from open vessel like ordinary milk, was the true pioneer; he also produced a canned condensed milk which preserved by the inclusion of sugar.

Gail Borden had been a teacher, land surveyor, inventor, real estate salesman and editor. He went into invention the canning of condensed milk. He patented condensed milk in 1856.

In fall 1861, the Commissary Department order the first 500 pounds of condensed milk from New York Condensed Milk Company for the Union Army.

By 1899 twenty-four condenseries were manufacturing condensed and evaporated milk countrywide.

In Europe, tinned milk consumption increased rapidly after the establishment of the Anglo Swiss Condensed Milk Company in 1865 and an export trade emerged almost immediately.

By 1890 price had fallen enough to make it appeal to poorer. It became increasingly popular in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Some was produced in Britain, but a rising proportion was imported.

Sweetened condensed milk was cheaper than fresh milk if diluted to the same consistency, and of also kept longer, an important matter in houses with no cool larders.
History of condensed milk

Apple Juice

2011-11-13T08:27:00.001-08:00

The sweet apples resembling today’s; appeared several thousand years ago in Kazakhstan.

In the mid second century Galen explain, implying the existence of a big range of varieties, that ‘some apples have sour juice, some acid, some sweet’ and some combine all three flavors.

Pliny the elders refers to a drink made from the juice of the apple Cider was drink throughout Europe in the third century AD and in the fourth century.

Apples made their way to the New World with early settlers– not to be grown for their good eating qualities but to be grown form seeds for their juice, which farmers used to make into hard coder each fall.

In North America since prohibition cider refers to unfermented, unpasteurized and usually unfiltered apple juice. After processing so as to resemble European apple juice, it is called ‘sweet apple juice’.

In the days before refrigeration, fresh fruit juice was either consumed immediately or made into an alcoholic beverage,

In the ancient and medieval world, however, allowing foodstuffs to ferment under controlled conditions was sometimes the best war to preserve them for human use,. and hard cider was a popular drink in medieval Europe.

The fermentation of apple juice to produce an alcoholic beverage is believed to have been practiced for over 2000 years.
Apple Juice

Beverages and Hospitality

2011-11-07T05:02:00.000-08:00

Social activities require hospitality and beverages play important roles in cementing bonds of hospitality between individuals and nations.

Hospitality can be defined as the ‘friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests and strangers’.

Offering or accepting a drink is an indication of a social relationship, the acknowledgement of social obligation. Hospitality has its rules.

In Egypt, the host and hostess serve guests a range of beverages, sometimes specially brewed coffee and other times, juices from fresh fruits or sugar cane.

In Mongolia, the tradition is an offering of hot tea to visitor.

In Botswana, tea also has become a social drink that is offered to visitors in most households. Tea is consumed by adults and used to be drunk with fresh milk.

Beverages are also important on a larger diplomatic scale, where toasts of rice wine were the social highlights of President Nixon’s initial visits to the China and vodka toasts are central to diplomatic missions to Russia.

By offering the beverages and hospitality, customer looks for fulfillment of needs relating to self-esteem, status and security.

Historically many societies valued the social setting in which hospitality occurs, particularly the trait to act with generosity as host to visitors. This traditionally involved being charitable to strangers, giving drink was basic part of the social fabric.
Beverages and Hospitality

The cigar bar

2011-10-29T20:38:00.000-07:00

Specialty bars which concentrate on one type of libation, from wine to martinis or theme, like cigar bars are gaining popularity.

The cigar bar is trendy addition to the beverage scene and a profitable one. The cigar and the cigarette were first introduced among the upper classes of society and their use has spread downward.

Customers who enjoy high-priced also have opportunity to order premium spirits, wines, beers and after dinner drinks to accompany them.

In cigar bars customer obtain all the news, all the scandal, all the politics and all the fun.

Sometimes, in states or cities where smoking is illegal in foodservice establishments or public building, these businesses must be operated as private clubs that charge membership fees and restrict access to minors.

Many cities offer some form of exemption for cigars bars and there’s certain level of alleged non-compliance in the higher end bars and clubs.

During 1840s, the cigar bar of an American hotel is generally large room in the basement. A long counter runs across it, behind which stand two or three bar keepers waiting upon the customers and distribute the various drinks, compounded from the contents of several rows of bottle behind them.
The cigar bar

History of English Breakfast Tea

2011-10-22T08:44:00.000-07:00

The prototype of this most popular of all teas was developed over a hundred years ago by the Scottish Tea Master Drysdale in Edinburgh.

By the 1700s, it become indoctrinated into the English lifestyle. It replaced the customary practice of drinking ale at breakfast.

The institution of tea for breakfast was probably influenced by Queen Anne (1665-1714).

It was marketed simply as "Breakfast Tea". It quickly became popular in England because Queen Victoria loved all things Scottish.

Tea shops in London, however, changed the name and marketed it as "English Breakfast Tea", claiming it as their own.

It is an originally blend of fine black teas from India and Chinese tea, often including some Keemun tea.

Keemun, a black Chinese tea with a fruity taste and a hint of pine. Keemun possess a full, concentrated flavor and a toasty aroma and sometimes referred to as the ‘Burgundy of teas.’

Nowadays Assam, Ceylon and African teas are blended to provide drinkers with the three elements they require – strength, flavour and color.

It should be offered with milk or lemon. It may also be used to brew iced tea.
History of English Breakfast Tea

History of yoghurt drinks

2011-10-21T06:25:00.000-07:00

Curdled milk products may have been discovered by Neolithic people shortly after they learned to milk animals. It then develop into a product similar to yoghurt or other cultured milk drinks.

Since yoghurt is a Turkish word, it is widely considered a Turkey’s gift to the culinary world.

The Turks claimed to have brought yoghurt from Asia to the Middle East. They still enjoys an iced yoghurt drink called Ayran, a refreshing drink that Persians once called musd, Arabs recognized as laban shrab and Indian know as lassi.

Aryan is a refreshing beverage made by whipping up yoghurt with water and salt. It is delicious and good for stomach.

Ayran was the main source of protein in the nomadic diet in Central Asian. These groups keep sheep and goats as well. Cattle and camels are also herded.

Laban is a cultured milk drinks made from curdled milk by Levantine and North African peoples. The word are derived from the ancient Aramaic word meaning ‘white’ a reference to the snow mountains behind Beirut.

It has been a drunks in the Middle East since the earliest nomadic and pastoral tribes.

Yoghurt drinks also traces its roots to the Caucasian Mountain region of Russia. The people of this rugged region were commonly nomadic and as subsistence used both the milk and meat of cows, sheep, goats and yaks.

The fermented milk product traditional to this region, kefir, is a liquid cultured product. It is an ancient yoghurt drinks with beneficial probiotics than be made with nut milks. The name translates to ‘good feeling’.

During Sumerians times 4th millennium BC, they treated fresh milk as a lower class beverage. Yet milk also offered to the gods in alabaster libation vessels for breakfast at the Sumerian temple at Uruk.

While most of the milk drunk at that time by the urbanite was fermented; it may have been similar to the diluted yoghurt drinks popular the Near East.
History of yoghurt drinks

History of anise drinks

2011-10-14T05:17:00.000-07:00

Anise is a native of Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean region and western Asia. This herb is mentioned in the Bible, and the Egyptians used it as an aphrodisiac.

It was cultivated since 2000 BC in Greece and Egypt as a flavoring for drinks, anise is used in various alcoholic beverages – anis, anisette, ouzo, pastis, raki and absinthe.

Absinthe , drinks flavored with anise derived from Greek word apsinthion, meaning undrinkable. The common English term is wormwood, which is usually associated with bitterness or extreme sorrow.

During ancient Roman, travelers who drank an anise concoction would feel immediately refreshed and equal to any exertion.

The active constituent of anise is an essential oil containing anethole, which is obtained by distillation of the seeds, The anise based drink called ouzo is popular in Greece; in Greek islands it is often replaced by a stronger drink known as raki.

Raki is also principle alcoholic drink of Turkey. Meanwhile, Moroccans brew a homemade alcoholic drink from anise called mahia or water of life.

Anise has expectorant properties and anise tea mixed with honey was used for coughs in ancient times. Dioscorides, a Greek physician, wrote in the 1st century that anise facilities breathing and relives the pain.
History of anise drinks

History of Cocktail

2011-10-03T06:39:00.000-07:00

People had been drinking mixtures of alcoholic beverages and various other substances such as fruit juices for thousands of years, but the actual process of having a cocktail mixed up in a tavern by a bartender began after the middle of the nineteenth century.

Most people agree that it’s an American invention. Other people describe that cocktails as America’s first culinary tradition.

The very first known mention of the word cocktail was found in an early American newspaper, the Farmer’s Cabinet, in April 28, 1803. It read, “Drink a glass of cocktail – excellent for the head. Call’d at the Doct’s.”

In May 6, 1806, New York newspaper, The Balance and Columbia Repository use of the term as a political stab against Democrats.

The editor received many questions about the new term, present in a concession speech from a losing political candidate, and here was his response:

“Cock tail, then is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and butters – it is vulgarly called a bittered sling, and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold at the same time that it fuddles the head.”

A popular history suggested that the drink originated at the Manhattan Club in New York City in the early 1870s, where it was invented for a banquet hosted by Jennie Jerome (Winston mother) in honor of presidential candidate Samuel J. Tilden.

The success of the banquet made the drink fashionable, later prompting several people to request the drink by referring the name of the club where it originated – the Manhattan cocktail.

The origin of the word cocktail will probably never be known because there are many stories of where it came from. Rumor also has it that early in American history, bartenders used to pour remnants of drinks and almost empty barrels into single container, selling swigs from this mixture to patrons at a reduced price. ‘Cock’ was another name for spigot and ‘tailing’ is the last bit of alcohol, so his drink was called ‘cock tailing,’ quickly shortened to ‘cocktail’.

After the first cocktails sprang up in the American Northeast and have been evolving ever since. The cocktail moved west and then abroad. But regardless of where the cocktail was served, in bars, saloon or lounges, it became the icon of neighborhood gathering places and instant brotherhood.

Until Prohibition, the American saloon keeper was a prominent member of society and bartending was an honorable profession.

In 1862, Jerry Thomas, the first celebrity bartender, published the first drink recipe book to contain cocktails, How to Mix Drinks.

Initially, cocktails were drinks that men imbibed in the morning, at breakfast, to get their circulation going.

Later in the nineteenth century. Cocktails became more festive and were served as a aperitif, before-dinner drinks.
History of Cocktail

History of Dr Pepper

2011-10-02T05:11:00.000-07:00

While working at Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store, Dr Alderton noticed that customers quickly tired of the beverage flavors offered at the soda fountain.

Old Corner Drug Store was located in the ground floor of Waco’s McClelland Hotel.

He mixed a variety of fruit extracts from the fountain and through trial and error, eventually devised a distinct tasting that both he and store owner Morrison enjoyed.

They shared beverage with customers and soon people were coming to the drugstore to try ‘Doc Alderton’s drink.’ The two later renamed the drink Dr Pepper.

Created in 1885, in Waco Texas, it was sold as a ‘tonic, brain food, and exhilarant’.

Exactly how Alderton’s creation came to be called Dr Pepper is unknown. It might have been chosen by Morrison, who had once worked at a drug store, owned by Dr Charles T Pepper in Rural Retreat, Virginia. Dr Charles T Pepper was the father of the woman Morrison once hoped to marry.

Morrison would often talk of how his girlfriend’s father had come between them in Virginia. Alderton at the store mixed up the concoction of flavors as a beverage for his customers, and it hopes of helping out Morrison’s romance, named it after the girl’s father.

In the beginning, Morrison and Alderton worked in a backroom at the Old Corner Drug Store, mixing up batches of the syrup for sale at their fountain and a few others. When demand increased, they decided to expand and rented a building for that purpose.

Robert S. Lazenby, Morrison’s soda fountain patron studied Alderton’s mixture for two year and patented the formula that is still used today.
History of Dr Pepper

Wine in ancient Roman

2011-09-29T23:15:00.001-07:00

In the Roman period, from 150 BC to AD 150, wine – a fermented grape juice and pulp – was a comestible of complex associations.

Wine was produced north of the Alps even before the region was conquered by the Romans. The grapes were even cultivated in England under the Roman Empire.

Wine was one of the chief indicators of the élite life style which gave cultural coherence to the systems as Greek and Roman civilization.

It acted as a differentiator, even within exclusive high ranking circles.

Wine drinking had not been the regular Roman habit in the earlier Republic that it became during the Empire.

In earlier times Romans had been content with water and home-made brews concocted out of all manner of fruits, flowers and vegetables: figs, medlars, roses, parsley, saffron and other strong flavorings mixed sometimes no doubt with juice of the grape.

Wine was traded to Gaul from Italy from the 3rd century BC. But a great expansion wine export began in the second half of the 2nd century BC from Etruria, Latium and Campania to all areas of Roman territory.

Wine was particularly in demand from the late 2nd century BC in southern Gaul, where viticulture had not yet been introduced.

Wine became national drinks of the Romans. Usually mixed with water and honey, it was served even to young children.

The wine in ancient Romans was often unlike wine as tasted today. It was more medium to which a multitude of ingredients were added, from such understandable additions as herbs and spices, to more improbable ingredients of seawater, pitch and resin.
Wine in ancient Roman

Wine during ancient Egypt

2011-09-20T03:48:00.000-07:00

Viticulture is estimated to have originated in the 6th or 7th century B.C in the region to the south of the Black Sea.

The wine industry in Egypt was most likely the result of trade between Egypt and Canaan during the Early Bronze Age.

Because of their higher alcohol content, wines could be kept longer than beer, and proved a suitable trading product over relatively long distances.

Archaeobotanical and chemical evidence suggest that the grape was introduced Egypt during predynastic period.

Where bread and beer were everyday commodities to the ancient Egyptians, wine, like meat, was not considered a staple element. By contrast to beer, Egyptian wine is expensive and a rich person’s drink.

Wine is also offered to the gods and the deceased. It served mainly a ceremonial role, and would have only been enjoyed by pharaoh, nobles and religious priests.

Later on, the Egyptians become wine growers themselves.

The earliest evidence for ancient Egyptian wine itself comes in the form of lexicographic and artifactual evidence dating to the very start of the historic period, the early dynastic period beginning 3100 BC.

The best vineyards are in the Nile Delta region and the wine of Mareotis (the lake behind the site of modern Alexandria) is considered to be the best.

In the Old Kingdom only dark grapes are represented on several tomb walls , and the wine must have been red.

At El Bersheh in the XIIth dynasty white grapes are seen and the juice is light, such as would make white wines.

Wine was considered a vital provision for the afterlife, and vessel containing wine residue have been discovered in several Egyptian tombs.
Wine during ancient Egypt

Coca-Cola advertising and Promotion

2011-09-15T06:27:00.001-07:00

Coca-cola invested heavily in advertising and promotion since its beginning. The great strengths, apart from allying the brand very early on with religion and patriotism, was a strong commitment to advertising in a society restless to progress and try new products.

Pemberton marketed his concoction as a patent medicine, a supposed cure-all for a variety of ailments.

Asa Candler own early ads he proclaimed that he was a great sufferer of headaches. He claimed to be a great benefactor by offering to the world the cure that relived his suffering.

However, the product only really took off when the company stopped marketing Coke as a drug and rebranded the sweet formula as a tasty beverage.

In 1895, Coca-Cola launched a new advertising campaign encouraging consumers to ‘Drink Coca-Cola, Delicious and Refreshing.’

Six hundred thousand miles of highways were built in the 1920s. and the first of the ‘Ritz boy’ billboards appeared in 1925: a smiling bellhop holding a tray with a bottle of the soft drink and a glass on it.

The bottle in the Ritz boy ad was telling: Coca-Cola had been built on soda fountain sales.

In the 1970s, a song from Coca-Cola commercial called ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing’ became a popular hit single, but there is no evidence that it did anything to increase sales of the soft drink.

The Coca-Cola Company has historically targeted children and youth in its advertising and promotional activities.

Coca-Cola is one of the brands that are frequently used as examples of longtime successful global advertising.
Coca-Cola advertising and Promotion

Coca-Cola sports drink of Aquarius

2011-09-10T05:18:00.001-07:00

Aquarius is a sports drink for whom like sports and enjoys a healthy lifestyle.

This sports drink Aquarius first had been rolled in Japan in 1983. It was more of a leisure beverage than an efficacious rehydration drink and had become as profitable in Asia and Europe as Gatorade was in United States.

It was introduced as a grape flavored drink. At that time the nearest competitor was Pocari Sweat which the manufactured by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.

By the year 2000, Aquarius and Pocari Sweat are the major brands of sports drinks in Japan. These tow brands control about 90% of the sports drink market in Japan, for the past 22 years.

In Europe Coca-Cola launched is new sports drink, Aquarius, in Belgium in 1993, and since then the category has been growing exponentially.

However, Coca-Cola didn’t have the trademark rights to the name Aquarius in the United States and the company cannot compete head to head with Gatorade until US drink PowerAde was unveiled in fountain form in April 1990.

In 1992, Aquarius became an official drink for Olympic Games in Barcelona.
Coca-Cola sports drink of Aquarius

History of peppermint tea

2011-08-24T19:27:00.000-07:00

Peppermint is a favorite for many tea drinkers. It is one of humanity’s oldest and most loved herbs.

Peppermint’s origin are unknown, but the dried leaves have been found in the pyramids in Egypt, dating from as early as 1000 BC.

It didn’t become popular in Europe until about the eighteenth century. Peppermint is a hybrid of watermint and spearmint that was first cultivated near London in1750.

Peppermint tea has a long history as a digestive aid and as a treatment for the symptoms of cough, colds and fever. It is indicated by records from Roman and Greek periods.

It was cultivated by ancient Egyptians for its volatile oils. The Greeks and Romans crowned themselves with peppermint as their feasts and used in their wines and sauces.

Its genus name, Mentha, is derived from Greek mythical nymph Mintha, who metamorphosed in this plant.

Ancient Arabs believed that peppermint works for better sex.
History of peppermint tea

History of Seattle’s Best Coffee

2011-08-11T19:10:00.000-07:00

Seattle Best was started by a group of passionate coffee lovers in the early 70s.

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

They renamed their company and are now one of the largest coffee companies in the world.

Jin Steward was the pioneer of the original coffee company, The Wet Whisker opened in 1968, which eventually became known as Seattle’s Best Coffee.

In January 1997, Seattle’s Best Coffee selected Oregon Chai for their nationwide outlets. At that time, they owned forty five shops, with thirty more planned for construction.

Seattle’s Best Coffee was acquired by Starbucks in July 2003.

In 2005, Borders Group Inc, one of the largest operators of book superstores, entered an agreement with Seattle’s Best Coffee to operate cafes in substantially all its locations.

By 2009, Seattle’s Best Coffee has more than 540 cafes in the United States, as well as 86 espresso bars; plus, the brand’s coffee products are available nationwide in supermarkets and more than 3,900 food service locations.

In February 2010, Burger King would begin serving Seattle’s Best Coffee in its restaurants. Seattle Best also announced that they begin selling their coffee in Subway outlets and launch a new line of flavored coffees to sale in supermarkets.
History of Seattle’s Best Coffee

Beer in Ancient Egypt

2011-08-02T21:09:00.001-07:00

Ancient beer was not only mildly alcoholic but also nutritious. Its prominence in Egyptian diet of commoners reflects its food value as much as the pleasurable sensation that went with drinking it.

The brewing of beer is depicted on a number of tomb walls, for example, in a Fifth Dynasty at Saqqara; in a Sixth Dynasty tomb at Deir el Gebrawi; in a Middle Kingdom tomb at Meir; in a Middle Kingdom tomb and in an Eighteenth Dynasty tomb respectively.

Beer called heneket or booza, was a popular drink in ancient Egypt, the brew was made of barley and homebrewed in some areas. It has been called Egypt’s ‘national drink’. It was nutritious and highly caloric, containing protein, B vitamins and live yeast.

During ancient Egypt, there are quite a number of different beers, which would necessitate their brewed with a variety so ingredients or by different methods.

Some of these beer types, of which ‘dark beer’, ‘iron beer’, ‘garnished beer’, ‘friend’s beer’ and ‘beer of the protector’ may be mentioned, would undoubtedly have been brewed for special occasions.

Both bread and beer were the most important foods in ancient Egypt. When the grain was ground up fine, it made bread flour.

To make commonest beer, a piece of barley bread is crumbled in water, and then malted cereal, the remainder of an old batch of beer or yeast is added.

The mash is gently heated for several hours and then allowed to ferment for a day or more, growing stronger until it spoils by about the fifth day.

The beer was drained off after a period of fermentation. Beer was kept in vats in cellars and store houses and was consumed by rich and poor alike.
Beer in Ancient Egypt

Aquavit

2011-07-18T22:34:00.000-07:00

The yellowish alcoholic sprit known as aquavit derived its name in the late nineteenth century from the Norwegian akavit, which in turn developed from the Latin aqua vitae, meaning water of life (whiskey likewise derives its name from a Gaelic phrase also meaning water of life).

It is the Scandinavian version of vodka is often called schnapps. Typically is produced from potatoes. The potatoes are cooked and then grain malt is added to covert the starch to sugar.

Its official names are aquavit – from Norway and akvavit –from Denmark. The word schnapps is from an ancient Norwegian word meaning ‘to snap up or gulp’ and the traditional way to drink is ice cold, in a single gulp.

Another beverage – one spiced with cloves, ginger, cardamom and mace, haves been known since the mid eighteen century as aqua mirabilis, Latin for wonderful water.

Eske Bille, who created the drink in 1531, named it Aqua Vitae (water for Life) ‘a cure for all ills’ and over the years this liquor graduated from medicinal potion to social beverage. It was initially produced with the intention of providing long life.

Strong aquavit was introduced to Norway by the archbishop himself. The Danish Leader Eske Bille was occupying Bergenhus Castle in 1531 and sent a letter to the archbishop together with a bottle ‘of some water which is called Aqua Vitae and is a help for all sort of sickness which man can have both internally and externally.’

Industrious Norwegians began distilling their own aquavit, and by 1827 approximately eleven thousand stills were pumping out homemade liquor.
Aquavit

Beverages: rites and rituals

2011-07-12T07:46:00.000-07:00

Alcohol and other beverages have been part of the people lifestyle for centuries.

Beverages form parts of the cycles of humans and integrated to birth, rites of passage, coming to age, marriage and death.

Variations among societies in the quantities, form, circumstances, and other features of drinking are not likely to be capricious but, rather may be expected to be related to the whole culture.

The birth of children worldwide is celebrated by offering beverages to guests who come to visit and inspect the newborn.

Coming of age, that mysterious and dangerous life, is also marked by beverages in different societies. At 21, the question of maturity arises in many American youth, some of whom, with the incautious abandon of youth, couple with lack of awareness of physiology, celebrate their 21st birthday by downing 21 shots of liquor, the infamous 21/21 that has led to many alcohol related deaths.

Because alcoholic beverages were a fundamental part of most people’s diet, people of all ages consumed large amounts of alcohol on a daily basis. Even the old who were poor had occasions to drink, especially during the rites, festivals and rituals that usually featured the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

Other examples of beverage related initiations worthy of note include the smashing of a bottle of champagne during the launching of ships; the three martini ‘power lunch’ that once served as the central point for business discussion and sealing deals; blessing of Holy Water sprayed over assembled worshippers; the preparation of eggnog and wassail bowls by Christian; the use of green food coloring to ‘spruce up’ beer on St. Patrick’s day and even the rituals associated with bathing in asses’ milk.

The rituals and devotional activities of ‘santeros’ of ‘Seven African Powers’ are primitive, bizarre affairs, often involving the consumption of beverages concocted from exotics herbs and roots, the use of incense, oils and foreign perfumes, drumming, dancing, trance inducement and animal sacrifices.

In Africa alcohol and cola are used for all types of rites and ceremonies. All significant life events and cycles of nature are celebrated with communal drinks. Alcohol also used in the settling disputes.

Alcohol has been a key element in state ritual and sacrifice, a primary aspect of institutional Confucianism since the Shang dynasty (1500-1050 BC).

It has also been important element in the rites of passage and social gathering and an event, helping nurtures the bonds between families, friends, and associates that marks Confucianism more diffuse aspects.
Beverages: rites and rituals

History of Sparkling Water

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In the early 18th century, Belgian chemist, Jean Baptiste Van Helmont coined the word ‘gas’ to describe a mysterious substance he had observed.

Sparkling of the water brought into the new era in 1741, when Dr. William Brownrigg first made soda water in England.

His method of infusing plain water with carbon dioxide required immediate bottling to retain the fizz.

Natural sparkling mineral water discovered in upstate New York in the 1780s, was first brought to the city around the turn of the century by health pioneers Samuel Latham Mitchill and Valentine Seaman.

Artificially sparkling water or carbonated water was first offered in New York’s city Hotel in 1809 by Noyes Darling, which became a leading manufacturer of ‘soda water’.

In 1783, German born Johann Jacob Schweppe used new technology using yeast where infusing water with carbon dioxide by placing the water over a fermenting mash, to invent a device to create artificially sparkling water.

Carbonated waters were developed to imitate the popular and naturally discharged waters from other famous springs.
History of Sparkling Water