Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of Coffee (Encore)

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

Sometime in the 15th century, a drink became popularized in the Arabian peninsula. It was dark, bitter, and people couldn’t get enough of it.  From its simple origins, over the centuries, it has spread around the world to become one of the most popular beverages in history. Today you can find it being served almost everywhere, including specialty stores built around its consumption. Learn more about coffee, once called the devil’s drink, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Available nationally, look for a bottle of Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond at your local store. Find out more at heavenhilldistillery.com/hh-bottled-in-bond.php Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free offer and get $20 off. Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month. Use the code EverythingEverywhere for a 20% discount on a subscription at Newspapers.com. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Benji Long & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, this is Gary. I'm off for the next few days to hopefully see the solar eclipse, which is going to be passing over the United States, weather permitting. And while I'm away, I've lined up some encore episodes that, statistically speaking, most of you haven't heard before. I'll be back in just a few days with fresh new episodes for you to enjoy. Sometime in the 15th century, a drink became popularized in the Arabian Peninsula. It was dark, bitter, and people couldn't get enough of it. From its simple origins, over the centuries that is spread around the world to become one of the most popular beverages in history. Today, you can find it being served almost everywhere, including specialty stores built entirely around

its consumption. Learn more about coffee, once called The Devil's Drink, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? Throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thulein podcast from NPR. The true origin of the coffee plant isn't known for certain. However, the consensus is that it probably came from the highlands of Ethiopia.

In fact, the Ethiopians have a legend about the discovery of coffee. Supposedly, a 9th-century goat herder named Caldi from the Kaffa region of Ethiopia was watching over his goats when they began eating the beans off certain trees. He found that his goats wouldn't sleep and became hyperactive after eating the beans. He told a local abbot of a monastery about what he discovered, and the abbot went out and created a beverage from the beans. He found that the drink kept him alert while doing his evening prayers, and thus coffee was born. There is another legend from Yemen that holds that a doctor named Sheikh Omar from the city of Moka was sent into exile in a cave in the mountains. There he saw the berries of the coffee plant and tried to eat them. The berries were too

bitter, so we put them in a fire, hoping it would take the bitterness away. Having been roasted, they were now too hard to eat, so he put them in boiling water to soften them. And the result was coffee. We have no idea how true these legends are, but even if they aren't true, they do make for a good story. The real story of coffee begins in the 15th century in Yemen. If you look at a map, there's a very short distance between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, known as the Bob al-Mandeb, it's only 31 miles or 50 kilometers across. The short distance is why there's been so much historical commerce and interaction between these two regions. So if coffee did indeed come from the Ethiopian highlands, which seems to be

the case, then it's easy to understand how it became popularized in Yemen. Yemen was the first region where the coffee plant was cultivated. In fact, the early cultivation of coffee and Yemen and the fact that so much documentation points to Yemen for the popularization of the drink is the reason why there's doubt as to where coffee originated. In addition to cultivation, Yemen was the place where coffee beans were first roasted and then brewed, creating the beverage that you would recognize today. From its initial cultivation in Yemen, coffee spread all over the Arabian Peninsula. One of the things that made coffee so popular in Arabia was the Islamic prohibition against the consumption of alcohol. Alcohol was alcohol was alcohol was, alcohol was,

an intoxicant. Coffee, however, was just the opposite. It was a stimulant. Because there was no prohibition against coffee, it served as a popular alternative to alcohol. Coffee was served in homes, as well as in special coffee houses, known as Kaffa He Khana. It became something that you could do socially and encouraged conversation and discussion. Coffee houses were places where you could play chess and listen to music. Arab coffee houses became some of the primary places to exchange local information and became known as Schools of the Wise. It also turned out that the Arabian Peninsula was the perfect place to spread the word about coffee. As pilgrims from around the world descended on Mecca to perform the haj, they discovered coffee and brought word of the new beverage back home

with them. In 1580, the Venetian physician Prospero Alpini introduced coffee to Venice, having brought it over from Egypt, and called the drink the wine of Arabi. The European reaction to coffee, was not positive at first. This was a land where alcohol was consumed, sometimes in great amounts, and at first they found the taste to be bitter and unpleasant. It was called the devil's drink, or the bitter invention of Satan. Not only had it to do with the beverages taste, but the fact that it originated in Muslim lands. The issue of the holiness of coffee was put to rest in the late 16th century when it was offered to Pope Clement V. He loved coffee and was reported to have said, quote, why this Satan's drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have

exclusive use of it. We shall cheat Satan by baptizing it, end quote. One of the reasons why Pope Clement approved of the drink is that he felt it was a better alternative than drinking alcohol. Having received papal approval, coffee took off all over Europe, proving as popular there as it was in the Muslim world. Coffee houses became a cultural phenomenon all over Western Europe. By the mid-17th century, there were 300 coffee houses just in London and over 3,000 in all of England. King Charles II actually tried to ban coffee houses because they were hotbeds for political discussion. On December 29, 1675, he issued the proclamation for the suppression of coffee houses. The law was supposed to go to effect on January 10, 1676, but it was already

abolished on January 8th because of the great public outcry. The first coffee house in Vienna was opened in 1683 after the siege of Vienna by the Ottoman Turks. Supposedly, the first coffee house was opened by a Polish military officer by the name of Gryorges-Khrans Kolchitsky, who found coffee in the supplies left behind by the Turks when they retreated. Supposedly, Kulshitsky introduced the idea of adding sugar and milk to coffee. At the start of the 17th century, coffee was almost still exclusively produced in Arabia and exported through the Yemenis port of Moka. However, the 17th century, saw the Arabian monopoly of coffee come to an end. In 1616, a Dutch merchant by the name of Peter Vandenbrookka, arguably the first person from the Netherlands to taste coffee, managed to get a

live sample of a coffee plant. He brought it back to the Netherlands, where, with very little notice, the plant thrived in the greenhouses of the Amsterdam Botanical Garden. The plant grew for 40 years, and attempts were made to transport the plant to Dutch colonies for cultivation. Initially, they tried to grow it on the island of Sri Lanka, but eventually they found success on the island of Java in Indonesia. By the end of the century, Java coffee became the largest source of coffee in Europe. India also received the coffee plant in the 17th century, although it wasn't brought by Europeans. Supposedly, an Indian practitioner of Sufi Islam named Baba Budan brought the seeds to southern India. They were first grown in the town of Chick Magalur in the state of Carnotica.

The initial coffee plants which were taken to the Netherlands were eventually traded with other botanical gardens in Europe. In particular, in 1714, the mayor of Amsterdam presented a gift of a coffee plant to King Louis XIV of France. The king had it planted in the Royal Botanical Garden in Paris. The mayor of Amsterdam couldn't have known, but that gift became the basis of an entire industry. In 1720, a French naval officer by the name of Gabriel de Clieu brought a few seedlings from the coffee plants in the Paris Botanical Gardens with him to the island of Martinique. Within 50 years, those seedlings had become 18,680 coffee plants just in Martinique alone. Coffee production began in earnest in the French colony of Saint-Doming, or modern-day Haiti in 1734,

and by 1788, San Doming was producing half of the coffee in the world. The production of coffee in San Doming and the brutal condition of the slaves who grew it was one of the major reasons for the Haitian revolution. In the 18th century, North America was primarily a tea-drinking culture due to its influence from the British, who had shifted over to tea with its conquest of India. However, after the British imposed tea taxes on the American colonists, there was a shift in consumption from tea to coffee, and to this day, North America remains more of a coffee-drinking culture than a tea-drinking culture.

Today, the largest coffee producer in the world is Brazil. The Brazilian coffee industry was supposedly started by the Portuguese military officer Francisco de Mello Palheta, who was sent to French Guiana to bring back coffee samples. The French, obviously wanting to protect their coffee industry, refused to give him any samples. However, the wife of the governor in French Guiana became taken with Palheda and, as a parting gift, gave him a bouquet of flowers. Hidden inside the flowers were coffee seeds, which became the basis of the Brazilian coffee industry. By 1852, Brazil had become the largest coffee producer in the world, a distinction that it has held ever since. In the 19th century, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Colombia saw dramatic expansions in their coffee

industries. Their dependence on coffee actually became a liability during the Second World War as European imports of coffee dramatically collapsed. The United States intervened to create a system during the war for coffee importation from various Latin American countries so their coffee industry could stave off collapse. Today, there is a belt of coffee production that extends around the world through tropical regions. The five largest coffee producers in the world today are Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia, and Ethiopia. As coffee spread around the world, different methods of serving and consuming coffee spraying up.

The number of different ways to serve coffee is beyond the scope of a single podcast episode, as there are so many. However, every method involves water and ground roasted coffee beans. Different methods for brewing coffee have been developed all over the world, and you're probably familiar with many of them. It can be percolated, dripped, cold brewed, flashbrood, French-pressed, or even shot at high pressure through an espresso machine. In 1907, instant coffee was developed, which allowed freeze-dried crystals of coffee to just be mixed in hot water. Coffee in some ways is very similar to wine in that different regions can produce different varietals. One of the most famous coffee varieties is Kopi Luak from Indonesia. They are coffee beans that have been passed through

the digestive system of a palm civet. The civet feeds on ripe coffee beans, but is not able to digest the coffee beans inside them. The beans are then excreted in the animal's feces, which are collected and processed to produce Kopi Luak coffee. The unique production process of Kopi Luak coffee is said to give it a distinct flavor profile characterized by a smooth, earthy taste with hints of chocolate and caramel. However, it is also one of the most expensive coffees in the world with prices that can exceed $100 a pound. Gopi Lua coffee collected in the wild can go for 10 times that price. Thailand has a similar type of coffee being known as Black Ivory Coffee, which has passed through the digestive system of an elephant. Black ivory coffee is extremely rare. The entire 2021 global

production was only 215 kilograms, and the product can sell for as high as $2,000 a kilogram, and a single cup of coffee can run as much as $50. Today, coffee is said to be the second largest legal commodity traded in the world after oil. The annual global production of coffee is over 10 billion kilograms or 22 billion pounds. And the entire global coffee industry is estimated to be over a hundred billion dollars annually. The humble coffee bean has come a long way in the last 1,000 years. from its legendary discovery by an Ethiopian goat herder to one of the world's most important commodities,

which millions of people around the world can't start their day without. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place

where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.