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John Lynn with Hugo Coffee roasters. I hope everyone’s having a great day. Just wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about the history of coffee. So we’re going to go over the history a little bit today, kind of where coffee comes from, you know, how it was discovered by people, and how it eventually made its way across the globe and ended up in all the places that, uh, Hey girls now.
Got my coffee ready and pretty ready to go. I do. I have my little cheat sheet in front of me cause there’s a lot of dates. Don’t want you guys to miss stuff. ‘ll be peeking down at this from time to time just to make sure we get everything right. Instead of just kind of telling you guys the story of coffee, I’ll make sure I get all these dates that I don’t have memorized.
So, I guess the first thing we’ll do is we’ll start with kind of the first occurrences that people have with coffee.Sothe first time we really see. Coffee and people mixed together is somewhere between 800 and 1,008.
We’re not exactly sure. Nobody really knows the true origin story of exactly how coffee was discovered.
There’s a few different things I’ve heard. Uh, but I will tell you guys what makes sense to me and what I kind of believed kind of what happened.
So we’ll go with that.
One of the main things you’ll hear and what I kind of believe is that, some sheep or goat herders in Ethiopia, Ethiopia notice that their, livestock would eat these red berries and would gain a lot of energy. And so they were kind of checking these berries out there, like what’s the deal with these?And they started to eat them and realize, Hey, they give us a lot of energy to, So from there we see the first consumption of coffee as food. In fact, they would make power bars kind of with animal fat. And these berries probably have a bunch of other stuff mixed in there.
Like I said, we don’t know.I don’t even know if this story is completely true. There’s some different versions of this story and different things in Yemen and Morocco. But because coffee grows naturally Ethiopia. And Ethiopia is where coffee comes from. I believe that it had to besomebody in Ethiopia who was kind of discovering this and who kind of came upon this.
So that’s kind of the first interactions we see with coffee. We don’t actually know when people started roasting coffee for the first time, either. Although stories that I have heard,
We’ll say that the first roasted coffee and coffee being consumed as a beverage happened in Yemen, just across the sea, right above Ethiopia and that’s the first time we kind of see people drinking coffee, from their coffee, you know, bounce around just a little bit. Dutch settlers ended up finding coffee and they took it to Java where they had a Connie and they started growing coffee there. From that point, the Dutch, you know, via that east Indian trading company, were trading all of this kind of coffee.We’re seeing coffee pop-up in India. Coffee is in, like I said, Java. So, you know, the Indonesian Isles and eventually coffee makes its way to Amsterdam and some of the Netherlands, you know, back to the, you know, Dutch people,
The mayor of Amsterdam, I believe takes a coffee tree and presents it to the king of France at the time.And let’s see, I forgot the date here.Okay. Uh, I think that was 17. 14 is when the French ended up getting this coffeetree and I’ve heard of this tree is being called the noble tree because its genetics are the main reason that we have the varieties that we have that grow in central and south America and how those coffees got there. So, uh, that.Noble tree, that, that one plant that, uh, the mayor of Amsterdam gave to the king of France was planted in a greenhouse, in a garden in Paris, from which they kind of started cultivating the plants from there, the coffee made its way to the new world.
Coffee had already made its way to the new world of the, uh, John Smith and a Virginia company, but we didn’t have any actual coffee trees in the new world and the first place that this coffee shows up and starts being cultivated is in Martinique and that’s in 1723. At the time it was a French colony, from their coffee spread, pretty soon Brazil was producing insane amounts of coffee all over the Caribbean Isles and coffee just kind of grew and exploded.
We have coffee start taking over tea in certain areas around the time that the revolutionary war, New York. Had kind of given up on T a little bit. They were, they were a coffee drinking city. They. And then with the revolutionary work, I was the point I was going to get to with the Boston tea party, those kinds of rebellion against England and imports main one being tea.And we decided that America we’re coffee drinkers. We’re not tea drinkers anymore. Tease out the door. Coffee’s the new thing. And from there, coffee just kind of exploded by the time we get to the 18 hundreds, coffee becomes a commodity. It’s something that you’ll find in almost every household in Europe and the United States.And it just kind of exploded.
By the time we get to, you know, the 1950s we have, you know, coffee shops all over the place. Everything’s, you know, coffee, this coffee that there’s all these new, you know, coffee. Brewing techniques and brewers that are kind of popping up everywhere. And then,
Starbucks moves in and the seventies and we get that big second wave of coffee where we’re having all these prepared coffee beverages, and people are hanging out in coffee shops and have this environment, which pushed into the big third wave of coffee in the two thousands that were kind of in and pushing through right now where a coffee quality, you know, becomes.Really important transparency of where your coffee’s coming from. And you know, how people in those developing countries and coffee growing countries are being treated and how much they’re getting paid for their work and their labor. And that’s kind of where we’re at right now. And that’s a little bit of the history of coffee developing in the United States.
A few other dates I wanted to look back on. We have the first coffee shop ever popped up in, uh, Constantinople or Istanbul now. And that was in 1475. So we’ve had coffee shops for quite some time. What’s another cool coffee history fact?
Oh, when coffee made its way into Europe, coffee was being drunk in Venice.In fact, Venice was the first European. City that had coffee. We already talked about the Nobel tree in it, you know, France being the first European country to have a coffee tree, but as far as drinking coffee, uh, we’re looking at Venus is the first place where coffee is really being, uh, drunk in Europe now, because coffee is so popular right in the middle east. It’s kind of looked down on in Europe and might be some sort of devil’s drink. No one knew exactly. You know, what these properties were, why it was making you feel this way. And it was kind of looked as like the. He then drink or, you know, it comes from the infidels or, you know, whatever. So there was coffee was being banned in some places. It w you know, it, they just weren’t really sure what coffee was and housing to fit into their society.So Pope decides don’t knock it before you try it. He drinks some coffee. He says, coffee is great. He actually baptizes some coffee. And Venice and says, coffee’s good. We’re good to drink coffee. No worries. So coffee just kind of starts taking over in Venice and Italy. As most people know is kind of a big coffee hub country.
Coffee shops started popping up all over. I believe the first coffee shop in Europe was in Venice and the firstespresso machines were manufactured and designed in Italy. So another cool fact. Let’s see what other cool facts I have for you guys. Just jotted some stuff down, even though I said I was going to look and I wasn’t going to forget miss forgotten, missed.So we’ll kind of check this out.actually, oh, let’s see. Here we go. The first modern espresso machine was designed in 1822. So that’s a pretty cool little fact to have decaffeinated coffee was first, ind of invented, I guess you could say, figure it out. And we started decaffeinated coffee in 1903 and the first commercial espresso machine was available in 1905. The Pavoni company was the company that was producing those espresso machines.
That’s about all I have for you guys on the history of coffee, gonna keep that just. Really brief kind of how coffee spread throughout the world, why we drink so much coffee today. And it’s crazy. Like Starbucks just opened less than 20 years ago.Their first shop in China and already,I mean, most of Asia is now a pretty heavy coffee consuming area. A lot of coffee is being purchased and sent to Southeast Asia all over China. People are really loving coffee there. It’s, it’s taken over Teas, you know, taken a back seat coffee shops and, you know, all of these amazing brewing techniques and roasters and, express and machines are being developed there right now. It’s kind of a hotbed for coffee at the moment. So even still coffee’s exploding, the history is growing, and we’re moving forward with coffee.
I really appreciate you listening to me. Kind of Blab on and have patience with me while I look through my notes.Make sure we didn’t forget any cool or fun facts.
I appreciate you guys have a good weekend and enjoy some good coffee. Bye-bye.