ArticleMap.com

Coffee

By: Mar

Coffee is a beverage, served hot or with ice, prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant. These seeds are almost always called coffee beans. Coffee is the second most commonly traded commodity in the world, trailing only petroleum, and the most consumed beverage. A total of 6.7 million tonnes of coffee were produced annually in 1998-2000, forecast to rise to 7 million tonnes annually by 2010. Coffee is one of humanity's chief sources of caffeine, a stimulant. Its potential benefits and hazards have been, and continue to be, widely studied and discussed.

Etymology and history
The coffee bean, itself, contains chemicals which are mind-altering (in a way some find pleasing) to humans as a coincidental result of their defense mechanism; those chemicals are toxic in large doses, or even in their normal amount when consumed by many creatures which may otherwise have threatened the beans in the wild.

The word entered English in 1598 via Italian caffè, via Turkish kahve, from Arabic qahwa, meaning "to have no appetite," as in to have no appetite for sleep. Its ultimate origin is uncertain, there being several legendary accounts of the origin of the drink. One possible origin is the Kaffa region in Ethiopia, where the plant originated (its native name there being bunna). Coffee beans were first exported from Ethiopia to Yemen. One legendary account is that of the Yemenite Sufi mystic named Shaikh ash-Shadhili. When traveling in Ethiopia he observed goats of unusual vitality and, upon trying the berries that the goats had been eating, experienced the same effect. A similar myth ascribes the discovery to an Ethiopian goatherd named Kaldi. Qahwa originally referred to a type of wine, and need not be the name of the Kaffa region.

Consumption of coffee was outlawed in Mecca in 1511, and in Cairo in 1532, but in the face of the drink's immense popularity, the decree was later rescinded. In 1554, the first coffeehouse in Istanbul opened.

Largely through the efforts of the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, coffee became available in Europe no later than the 16th century, according to Leonhard Rauwolf's 1583 account. The first coffeehouse in England was set up in Oxford by one Jacob or Jacobs, a Turkish Jew, in 1650. The first coffeehouse in London was opened two years later in St. Michael's Alley in Cornhill. The proprietor was Pasqua Rosée, the Ragusan servant of a trader in Turkish goods named Daniel Edwards, who imported the coffee and assisted Rosée in setting up the establishment. The coffeehouse spread rapidly in Europe and America after that, with first coffeehouses opening in Boston in 1670, and in Paris in 1671. By 1675, there were more than 3,000 coffeehouses in England.

Women were not allowed in coffeehouses, and in London, the anonymous 1674 "Women's Petition Against Coffee" complained:

"…the Excessive Use of that Newfangled, Abominable, Heathenish Liquor called COFFEE […] has […] Eunucht our Husbands, and Crippled our more kind Gallants, that they are become as Impotent, as Age. "
Legend has it that the first coffeehouse opened in Vienna in 1683 after the Battle of Vienna, taking its supplies from the spoils left behind by the defeated Turks. The officer who received the coffee beans, Polish military officer Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki, opened the first coffee house in Vienna and helped popularize the custom of adding sugar and milk to the coffee (until recently, this was celebrated in Viennese coffeehouses by hanging of picture of Kulczycki in the window). Additionally, another credible story is that the first coffeehouses were opened in Krakow in the 16th or 17th century because of closer trade ties with the East, most notably the Turks. The first coffee plantation in the New World was established in Brazil in 1727 when Lt. Col. Francisco de Melo Palheta smuggled seeds from the French Guiana in a bouquet spiked with seedlings that was to sprout a coffee empire. By the 1800 Brazil’s harvests would turn coffee from an elite indulgence to an everyday elixir, a drink for the people. Brazil, like most other countries cultivates coffee as a commercial commodity, relied heavily on slave labor from Africa for its viability until abolition in 1888. The success of coffee in 17th-century Europe was paralleled with the spread of the habit of tobacco smoking all over the continent during the course of the Thirty Years' War (1618–48).

For many decades in the 19th and early 20th centuries Brazil was the biggest producer and virtual monopolist in the trade, until a policy of maintaining high prices opened opportunities to other growers, like Colombia, Guatemala and Indonesia.

Coffee bean types
For a discussion about different varieties of coffee beans, see also: Coffee varietals

Coffea arabica—BrazilThere are two main species of the coffee plant. Coffea arabica is the older of them. Thought to be indigenous to Ethiopia, it was first cultivated on the Arabian Peninsula. While more susceptible to disease, it is considered by most to taste better than Coffea canephora (robusta). Robusta, which contains about twice as much caffeine, can be cultivated in environments where arabica will not thrive. This has led to its use as an inexpensive substitute for arabica in many commercial coffee blends. Compared to arabica, robusta tends to be more bitter, with a telltale "burnt rubber" aroma and flavor. Good quality robustas are used as ingredients in some espresso blends to provide a better "crema" (foamy head), and to lower the ingredient cost. In Italy many espresso blends are based on dark-roasted robusta.

Arabica coffees were traditionally named by the port they were exported from, the two oldest being Mocha, from Yemen, and Java, from Indonesia. The modern coffee trade is much more specific about origin, labeling coffees by country, region, and sometimes even the producing estate. Coffee aficionados may even distinguish auctioned coffees by lot number.

The largest coffee exporting nation remains Brazil, but in recent years the green coffee market has been flooded by large quantities of robusta beans from Vietnam. Many experts believe this giant influx of cheap green coffee after the collapse of the International Coffee Agreement of 1975-1989 with Cold War pressures led to the prolonged pricing crisis from 2001 to 2004. [citation needed] In 1997 the "c" price of coffee in New York broke US$3.00/lb, but by late 2001 it had fallen to US$0.43/lb. Robusta coffees (traded in London at much lower prices than New York's Arabica) are preferred by large industrial clients (multinational roasters, instant coffee producers, etc.) because of their lower cost.

Coffee beans from two different places, or coffee varietals, usually have distinctive characteristics such as flavor (flavor criteria includes terms such as "citrus-like" or "earthy"), caffeine content, body or mouthfeel, and acidity (black coffee has a pH of around 5). These are dependent on the local environment where the coffee plants are grown, their method of process, and the genetic subspecies or varietal.

Article Source: http://www.articlemap.com

Related pages: Cappuccino recipes, cookie recipes, fudge, pudding, cheesecake recipes. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license.
Article Submission made possible by: www.articles-submit.com
Courtesy of:Reserve Domain