Coffee

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Coffee

Coffee legend : How was the magic of coffee first discovered?

Legend has it that a goatherder named Khaldi living in Ethiopia a thousand years ago was puzzled one day by the strange antics of his goats who were jumping about on their hind legs. When Khaldi noticed that the goats were munching on bright red berries growing on tall bushes, he tried the berries himself, experienced a sense of exhilaration, and proclaimed his discovery to the world.

Special Coffees:

"Instant" coffee, first produced in 1909, is manufactured in huge, sealed, pressurized percolators and brewed for hours. The liquid is then sprayed under high pressure to the top of a room several stories high. As the spray falls, it dries to a powder by the time it reaches the floor.

Espresso coffee is brewed by forcing steam through finely-ground coffee in a specialized coffee maker, resulting in a heavier extraction of flavor.
Coffee may be spiced up with chocolate, vanilla, orange, hazelnut, almond or other extracts. Powdered roots of the chicory plant, a European native that has been introduced as a roadside weed known as "cornflower" in the U. S., may be mixed with ground coffee to give it a distinctive bitter flavor. Chicory flavored coffee is especially popular in New Orleans.

Other coffees:

The beans from two other species of coffee plants, Coffea canephora ("robust coffee") and C. liberica ("Liberian coffee") are sometimes used. Both are grown primarily in Africa and both tend to produce a more bitter drink than standard coffee.
Coffee houses:

By 1675 the idea of commercial establishments that served coffee in an atmosphere where politics and other issues of the day could be discussed had become so popular that over 3,000 coffee houses had sprung up in England alone. In France cafés flourished as gathering places for artists and intellectuals. The term "café" comes from the Turkish word kahve, meaning coffee. With so many special coffees now on the market, cafés have blossomed in the U. S. in recent years. Nowadays they seem especially popular as a compliment to book shops.

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