coffee

View more Food & Cooking videos

Coffea spp., Rubiaceae

Grain du caféier, arbuste originaire de l'Éthiopie et de l'Afrique tropicale. Les fleurs blanches du caféier donnent naissance à des fruits qui abritent deux graines de couleur vert pâle recouvertes d'une membrane coriace, la parche, contenant entre 1 et 2 % de caféine selon les espèces. Seulement deux variétés du genre Coffea occupent le gros du marché, soit la Coffea arabica (environ 75 % de la production) et la Coffea robusta. Les grains de l'arabica sont passablement gros et allongés et traversés d'un sillon légèrement sinueux. Ce café au goût doux, fin et parfumé est l'un des plus appréciés ; son taux de caféine est de 1 % seulement. Les grains de la variété robusta sont plus courts, plus ronds et leur sillon, droit. Ces grains ont un goût moins raffiné et une saveur plus âcre que ceux de l'arabica et leur teneur en caféine est de 2 %. Ce café est moins coûteux. Le café est nommé d'après la variété, le lieu de culture (Brésil, Colombie, Java, Moka, etc.) ou le port d'où il a été expédié. Toutefois, ces appellations ne sont pas exclusives. Le café commercialisé sur le marché international est vert, donc non torréfié, car il peut ainsi se conserver plusieurs années sans perte de saveur. 

Lors de la torréfaction, les grains sont rôtis à sec à haute température. Ils sont ensuite immédiatement refroidis. On les enrobe souvent d'une mince pellicule de résine, de gomme arabique ou de sucre, ce qui les rend brillants et préserve la saveur. La torréfaction provoque toute une série de transformations du grain :

      • la coloration passe du gris verdâtre à une gamme de brun dont l'intensité dépend de la température atteinte et de la durée de la torréfaction ; plus la torréfaction est longue, plus le café sera foncé ;

      • les grains gonflent jusqu'à 60 % de leur volume initial tout en perdant de 15 à 20 % de leur poids sous forme d'eau. Il se forme de l'anhydride carbonique et du caramel qui donnent au café l'arôme caractéristique de la torréfaction. Le développement de cafféol (huile essentielle volatile) ainsi que de certains acides gras se déposant à la surface des grains leur donne leur allure luisante et est responsable de la saveur et de l'arôme du café ;

      • la teneur en caféine est chimiquement stable à la torréfaction ;

      • la durée de la torréfaction augmente l'amertume du café mais en diminue l'acidité.


Le café instantané consiste en une poudre de café à laquelle il suffit d'ajouter de l'eau. Les grains qui donneront ce café sont généralement de qualité moindre, souvent de la variété robusta. La poudre peut être vendue telle quelle, mais elle est généralement agglomérée. Le café instantané est parfois aromatisé à l'aide d'un extrait de café concentré. Le café instantané n'est pas aussi savoureux que le café infusé, mais il est simple et rapide à préparer.

Le café décaféiné est du café dont on a retiré la majeure partie de la caféine. Les grains de café sont traités avant la torréfaction. 

Le succédané de café est une substance exempte de caféine qui sert à préparer des boissons dont le goût s'apparente à celui du café. Le succédané le plus fréquemment utilisé est la chicorée ; de l'orge et du seigle lui sont souvent mélangés. Le café additionné de chicorée est plus amer, dense et noir que le café pur. 

Décaféiné ou nature, le café torréfié doit être emballé sans délai car il est très fragile et perd ses arômes volatils. De plus, l'humidité et l'oxygène oxydent les graines. L'emballage sous vide protège le café moulu durant environ 3 mois. L'emballage pressurisé s'effectue avec un récipient métallique dans lequel on fait le vide ; cette méthode permet de conserver le café jusqu'à 3 ans.

Achat

Il est préférable d'acheter le café dans un empaquetage sous vide et dans un magasin où le volume de vente est important (surtout s'il est moulu). L'achat d'une petite quantité qui répondra aux besoins immédiats est conseillé. Spécifier le type de cafetière auquel le café est destiné pour obtenir la mouture appropriée, car une mouture trop fine donne du café âcre et une mouture trop grosse du café sans saveur. Acheter le café en grains et le moudre seulement lors de la préparation permet d'en tirer le maximum de saveur.

Préparation

La préparation du café peut être très simple, si on utilise du café instantané, ou moins simple, si l'on fait son propre mélange de diverses variétés, si l'on moud son café pour convenir aux différents types de cafetière, etc.

La macération consiste à placer le café en présence d'eau froide ou chaude, pendant un certain temps, puis à se débarrasser du marc de café (résidu après infusion). Le café turc ou grec et les cafetières à piston Mélior ou Bodum utilisent cette méthode. 

La percolation consiste à faire passer de l'eau dans le café, soit par gravité soit par pression. Cette méthode est utilisée avec les cafetières Moka et espresso. La quantité de café moulu nécessaire pour obtenir une tasse de café dépend de la mouture, de la variété de café et du goût recherché ; selon la force désirée, on calcule de 1 à 3 c. à table de café pour 180 ml d'eau.

La mouture du café varie selon la cafetière utilisée car chaque procédé exige une mouture particulière. Plus la mouture est fine, plus le café est fort et plus il a de saveur ; plus il est économique aussi car une mouture fine nécessite moins de café par volume d'eau. Il existe divers modèles de cafetières qui fonctionnent selon des principes différents.

La cafetière-filtre existe en plusieurs variantes. Le procédé général consiste à verser de l'eau bouillante sur du café placé dans un filtre, eau qui s'égoutte ensuite lentement. Un panier conique dans lequel on place un filtre de papier ou de tissu et du café moulu pas trop finement est déposé au-dessus d'un contenant. Une mouture trop fine aura pour effet de boucher les pores du papier et empêchera l'eau de s'égoutter tandis qu'une mouture grossière donnera un café insipide.

La cafetière à pression fonctionne à la vapeur, c'est-à-dire que l'eau est poussée sous une forte pression à travers le café pendant 20 à 30 s. La cafetière comporte 2 compartiments superposés : une base munie d'une valve dans laquelle on verse l'eau, et une partie supérieure qui se visse à la base et où se loge l'eau après avoir remonté sous forme de vapeur en infusant le café finement moulu qu'elle contient. On place la cafetière sur la source de chaleur, on amène à ébullition et on réduit l'intensité. On retire la cafetière lorsque cesse le bouillonnement. Ce type de cafetière produit un café très dense qui concentre son goût et ses arômes.

La cafetière Moka ou « Cona » est une cafetière italienne composée de 3 parties hermétiques et superposées : la base contenant l'eau, le centre qui fait office de filtre et dans lequel on met le café et le haut qui recueille le café fini. L'eau est entraînée du bas vers le haut par la pression qui se crée à l'intérieur de la machine.

Le percolateur fonctionne par « lessivage » du café. Il donne un café plus ou moins savoureux et souvent amer. Le café moulu moyennement est déposé dans un récipient placé au sommet d'un petit cylindre dans lequel monte de l'eau portée à ébullition. Cette eau arrose le café puis retombe en s'égouttant lentement ; comme le processus se répète de 7 à 10 min, le café risque de bouillir, avec comme conséquence une perte d'arôme et une grande extraction des tanins.

La cafetière à piston (Bodum ou Mélior) est en verre, pourvue d'un piston que l'on presse pour retenir le marc ; le café est infusé puis filtré. On verse d'abord de l'eau bouillante dans la cafetière pour la chauffer ; on jette cette eau et on met le café moulu finement ; on ajoute de l'eau bouillante et on remue une fois puis on laisse infuser 5 min. On presse le piston juste avant de servir. Cette cafetière donne un café riche ayant beaucoup de corps et dont la force varie selon la quantité d'eau utilisée.

L'ibrik est une cafetière à base large et de forme conique servant à préparer le café turc, un café très corsé qu'il vaut mieux siroter si on ne veut pas avaler le marc (beaucoup d'amateurs consomment aussi le marc). Jeter du café moulu en poudre extrêmement fine dans de l'eau frémissante avec une quantité presque égale de sucre et porter à ébullition trois fois en ajoutant un peu d'eau froide à chaque fois ; en dernier lieu on ajoute quelques gouttes d'eau froide pour précipiter le marc au fond et on sert le café brûlant aussitôt dans de petites tasses sans le filtrer.

Pour les amateurs, la préparation d'un bon café est un art régi par des règles bien précises dans le but d'extraire le maximum de caféine et de substances responsables de l'arôme et du goût, tout en limitant l'extraction des tanins. Les Finlandais consomment en moyenne plus d'un litre de café par jour, tandis que les Américains consomment un peu moins de la moitié de cette quantité et les Canadiens, seulement 450 ml par jour.

Pour préparer un bon café, il faut :

1. Moudre le café au dernier moment. 

2. Utiliser de l'eau fraîche qui n'a pas été chauffée et la laisser frémir (90 à 95 °C) en évitant l'ébullition car elle perd ainsi de l'oxygène et devient plate ; éviter l'eau trop calcaire, trop chlorée ou goûtant le soufre ou le fer, car ces goûts se transmettront au café.

3. Minuter le temps d'infusion car la concentration de tanins augmente s'il se prolonge ; une infusion de 2 min est considérée suffisante si la température se situe entre 85 et 95 °C et si l'eau entre en contact avec toute la mouture en même temps.

4. Ne pas laisser bouillir le café ni le réchauffer ; la température d'infusion devrait se situer entre 85 et 95 °C afin d'extraire le maximum des substances solubles sans toutefois extraire une trop grande quantité des substances responsables de l'amertume.

5. Ne pas utiliser de cafetières ni de tasses en métal qui altèrent le goût du café ; le servir dans une tasse de grès ou de faïence car elle conserve mieux la chaleur que le verre.

6. Bien laver la cafetière pour enlever l'huile laissée par le café, huile qui peut rancir et transmettre un goût désagréable au café ; bien la rincer pour faire disparaître toute trace de savon.

Utilisation

Le café peut être bu nature ou agrémenté de sucre, de lait, de crème, d'alcool, de graines de cardamome, de poudre de chocolat ou de cannelle. Il est très utilisé en confiserie et en pâtisserie pour confectionner gâteaux moka, éclairs, glaçages et crèmes glacées ainsi que le café liégeois (entremets composé de café mélangé avec de la crème et le tout, glacé). Pour que les aliments dans lesquels on l'ajoute aient plus de goût, on le prépare très fort en diminuant de moitié la quantité d'eau habituelle.

Le café sert aussi en distillerie où il aromatise diverses liqueurs.

Conservation

La conservation du café est délicate puisque la perte de saveur commence dès la torréfaction et devient plus importante lorsque le café est moulu. Le café doit être placé dans un contenant en verre opaque et hermétique, à l'abri de l'air et de la lumière.

À l'air ambiant : moulu, 7 à 10 jours.

Au réfrigérateur : moulu et non moulu, plusieurs mois.

Au congélateur : moulu, 1 mois.

Nutritional Information
Le café est pauvre en protéines, en glucides et en matières grasses. Les substances les plus importantes dans les grains de café sont la caféine, des tanins (dont l'acide chlorogénique), des huiles et des matières azotées. La caféine est un stimulant qui fait partie des xanthines.

Propriétés : diurétique. La caféine stimule le système nerveux central et le système respiratoire, dilate les vaisseaux sanguins, accélère le rythme cardiaque, accroît le travail des muscles striés et retarde la fatigue cérébrale et musculaire, augmente la vigilance durant les périodes de fatigue. Des personnes habituées à un apport élevé de caféine peuvent éprouver des symptômes de sevrage après un temps d'abstinence (maux de tête, irritabilité, tensions musculaires et nervosité). Ces symptômes disparaissent avec l'ingestion 
de caféine.

La quantité maximale de café à ingérer quotidiennement varie selon la variété de café, le mode de préparation, la tolérance personnelle et l'ingestion ou non d'autres substances contenant de la caféine, telles que le thé (thé fort de 78 à 108 mg de caféine par 180 ml), le cacao, des boissons gazeuses (colas) (28 à 64 mg de caféine par canette de 355 ml) et certains médicaments (diurétiques, analgésiques et plusieurs médicaments contre le rhume). Une tasse moyenne de café ordinaire (180 ml) contient de 108 à 180 mg de caféine avec du café filtre, de 72 à 144 mg avec du café au percolateur, de 60 à 90 mg avec du café instantané et moins de 6 mg avec du café décaféiné instantané. On conseille de limiter la consommation de café à l'équivalent de 4 tasses par jour.

Les études effectuées jusqu'à maintenant ne concluent pas que l'ingestion de caféine soit liée à l'hypertension, au cancer ou à certaines malformations congénitales. Toutefois, la modération dans la consommation de caféine est recommandée au cours de la grossesse et de l'allaitement car la caféine traverse le placenta et se retrouve dans le lait maternel. L'effet de la caféine sur le sommeil est indéniable. La qualité du sommeil est affectée durant les 4 premières heures après l'ingestion de café.

Browse other coffee, tea and herbal teas: Introduction | Tea | Herbal tea | Coffee

Browse other foods: Vegetables | Legumes | Fruits | Nuts and Seeds | Seaweeds | Mushrooms | Cereals and Grains | Fish | Crustaceans | Mollusks | Herbs, Spices and Seasonings | Meats | Variety Meats | Delicatessen Meats | Poultry | Dairy Products | Sugars, Cocoa and Carob | Fats and Oils | Binders and Leavenings | Coffee, Tea and Herbal Teas

For more information on coffee, visit Britannica.com.

Background

Coffee is a beverage made by grinding roasted coffee beans and allowing hot water to flow through them. Dark, flavorful, and aromatic, the resulting liquid is usually served hot, when its full flavor can best be appreciated. Coffee is served internationally—with over one third of the world's population consuming it in some form, it ranks as the most popular processed beverage—and each country has developed its own preferences about how to prepare and present it. For example, coffee drinkers in Indonesia drink hot coffee from glasses, while Middle Easterners and some Africans serve their coffee in dainty brass cups. The Italians are known for their espresso, a thick brew served in tiny cups and made by dripping hot water over twice the normal quantity of ground coffee, and the French have contributed café au lait, a combination of coffee and milk or cream which they consume from bowls at breakfast.

A driving force behind coffee's global popularity is its caffeine content: a six-ounce (2.72 kilograms) cup of coffee contains 100 milligrams of caffeine, more than comparable amounts of tea (50 milligrams), cola (25 milligrams), or cocoa (15 milligrams). Caffeine, an alkaloid that occurs naturally in coffee, is a mild stimulant that produces a variety of physical effects. Because caffeine stimulates the cortex of the brain, people who ingest it experience enhanced concentration. Athletes are sometimes advised to drink coffee prior to competing, as caffeine renders skeletal muscles less susceptible to exhaustion and improves coordination. However, these benefits accrue only to those who consume small doses of the drug. Excessive amounts of caffeine produce a host of undesirable consequences, acting as a diuretic, stimulating gastric secretions, upsetting the stomach, contracting blood vessels in the brain (people who suffer from headaches are advised to cut their caffeine intake), and causing overacute sensation, irregular heartbeat, and trembling. On a more serious level, many researchers have sought to link caffeine to heart disease, benign breast cysts, pancreatic cancer, and birth defects. While such studies have proven inconclusive, health official nonetheless recommend that people limit their coffee intake to fewer than four cups daily or drink decaffeinated varieties.

Coffee originated on the plateaus of central Ethiopia. By A.D. 1000, Ethiopian Arabs were collecting the fruit of the tree, which grew wild, and preparing a beverage from its beans. During the fifteenth century traders transplanted wild coffee trees from Africa to southern Arabia. The eastern Arabs, the first to cultivate coffee, soon adopted the Ethiopian Arabs' practice of making a hot beverage from its ground, roasted beans.

The Arabs' fondness for the drink spread rapidly along trade routes, and Venetians had been introduced to coffee by 1600. In Europe as in Arabia, church and state officials frequently proscribed the new drink, identifying it with the often-liberal discussions conducted by coffee house habitués, but the institutions nonetheless proliferated, nowhere more so than in seventeenth-century London. The first coffee house opened there in 1652, and a large number of such establishments(café;s) opened soon after on both the European continent(café derives from the French term for coffee) and in North America, where they appeared in such Eastern cities as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia in the last decade of the seventeenth century.

In the United States, coffee achieved the same, almost instantaneous popularity that it had won in Europe. However, the brew favored by early American coffee drinkers tasted significantly different from that enjoyed by today's connoisseurs, as nineteenth-century cookbooks make clear. One 1844 cookbook instructed people to use a much higher coffee/water ratio than we favor today (one tablespoon per sixteen ounces); boil the brew for almost a half an hour (today people are instructed never to boil coffee); and add fish skin, isinglass (a gelatin made from the air bladders of fish), or egg shells to reduce the acidity brought out by boiling the beans so long (today we would discard overly acidic coffee). Coffee yielded from this recipe would strike modern coffee lovers as intolerably strong and acidic; moreover, it would have little aroma.

American attempts to create instant coffee began during the mid-1800s, when one of the earliest instant coffees was offered in cake form to Civil War troops. Although it and other early instant coffees tasted even worse than regular coffee of the epoch, the incentive of convenience proved strong, and efforts to manufacture a palatable instant brew continued. Finally, after using U.S. troops as testers during World War II, an American coffee manufacturer (Maxwell House) began marketing the first successful instant coffee in 1950.

At present, 85 percent of Americans begin their day by making some form of the drink, and the average American will consume three cups of it over the course of the day.

Raw Materials

Coffee comes from the seed, or bean, of the coffee tree. Coffee beans contain more than 100 chemicals including aromatic molecules, proteins, starches, oils, and bitter phenols (acidic compounds), each contributing a different characteristic to the unique flavor of coffee. The coffee tree, a member of the evergreen family, has waxy, pointed leaves and jasmine-like flowers. Actually more like a shrub, the coffee tree can grow to more than 30 feet (9.14 meters) in its wild state, but in cultivation it is usually trimmed to between five and 12 feet (1.5 and 3.65 meters). After planting, the typical tree will not produce coffee beans until it blooms, usually about five years. After the white petals drop off, red cherries form, each with two green coffee beans inside. (Producing mass quantities of beans requires a large number of trees: in one year, a small bush will yield only enough beans for a pound of coffee.) Because coffee berries do not ripen uniformly, careful harvesting requires picking only the red ripe berries: including unripened green ones and overly ripened black ones will affect the coffee taste.

Coffee trees grow best in a temperate climate without frost or high temperatures. They also seem to thrive in fertile, well-drained soil; volcanic soil in particular seems conducive to flavorful beans. High altitude plantations located between 3,000 and 6,000 feet (914.4 and 1,828.8 meters) above sea level produce low-moisture beans with more flavor. Due to the positive influences of volcanic soil and altitude, the finest beans are often cultivated in mountainous regions. Today, Brazil produces about half of the world's coffee. One quarter is produced elsewhere in Latin America, and Africa contributes about one sixth of the global supply.

Currently, about 25 types of coffee trees exist, the variation stemming from environmental factors such as soil, weather, and altitude. The two main species are coffea robusta and coffea arabica. The robusta strain produces less expensive beans, largely because it can be grown under less ideal conditions than the arabica strain. When served, coffee made from arabica beans has a deep reddish cast, whereas robusta brews tend to be dark brown or black in appearance. The coffees made from the two commonly used beans differ significantly. Robusta beans are generally grown on large plantations where the berries ripen and are harvested at one time, thereby increasing the percentage of under- and over-ripe beans. Arabica beans, on the other hand, comprise the bulk of the premium coffees that are typically sold in whole bean form so purchasers can grind their own coffee. Whether served in a coffee house or prepared at home, coffee made from such beans offers a more delicate and less acidic flavor.

The Manufacturing
Process

Drying and husking the cherries

• First, the coffee cherries must be harvested, a process that is still done manually. Next, the cherries are dried and husked using one of two methods. The dry method is an older, primitive, and labor-intensive process of distributing the cherries in the sun, raking them several times a day, and allowing them to dry. When they have dried to the point at which they contain only 12 percent water, the beans' husks become shriveled. At this stage they are hulled, either by hand or by a machine.
• In employing the wet method, the hulls are removed before the beans have dried. Although the fruit is initially processed in a pulping machine that removes most of the material surrounding the beans, some of this glutinous covering remains after pulping. This residue is removed by letting the beans ferment in tanks, where their natural enzymes digest the gluey substance over a period of 18 to 36 hours. Upon removal from the fermenting tank, the beans are washed, dried by exposure to hot air, and put into large mechanical stirrers called hullers. There, the beans' last parchment covering, the pergamino, crumbles and falls away easily. The huller then polishes the bean to a clean, glossy finish.

Cleaning and grading the beans

• The beans are then placed on a conveyor belt that carries them past workers who remove sticks and other debris. Next, they are graded according to size, the location and altitude of the plantation where they were grown, drying and husking methods, and taste. All these factors contribute to certain flavors that consumers will be able to select thanks in part to the grade.
• Once these processes are completed, workers select and pack particular types and grades of beans to fill orders from the various roasting companies that will finish preparing the beans. When beans (usually robusta) are harvested under the undesirable conditions of hot, humid countries or coastal regions, they must be shipped as quickly as possible, because such climates encourage insects and fungi that can severely damage a shipment.
• When the coffee beans arrive at a roasting plant, they are again cleaned and sorted by mechanical screening devices to remove leaves, bark, and other remaining debris. If the beans are not to be decaffeinated, they are ready for roasting.

Decaffeinating

• If the coffee is to be decaffeinated, it is now processed using either a solvent or a water method. In the first process, the coffee beans are treated with a solvent (usually methylene chloride) that leaches out the caffeine. If this decaffeination method is used, the beans must be thoroughly washed to remove traces of the solvent prior to roasting. The other method entails steaming the beans to bring the caffeine to the surface and then scraping off this caffeine-rich layer.

Roasting

• The beans are roasted in huge commercial roasters according to procedures and specifications which vary among manufacturers (specialty shops usually purchase beans directly from the growers and roast them on-site). The most common process entails placing the beans in a large metal cylinder and blowing hot air into it. An older method, called singeing, calls for placing the beans in a metal cylinder that is then rotated over an electric, gas, or charcoal heater.

  Regardless of the particular method used, roasting gradually raises the temperature of the beans to between 431 and 449 degrees Fahrenheit (220-230 degrees Celsius). This triggers the release of steam, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and other volatiles, reducing the weight of the beans by 14 to 23 percent. The pressure of these escaping internal gases causes the beans to swell, and they increase their volume by 30 to 100 percent. Roasting also darkens the color of the beans, gives them a crumbly texture, and triggers the chemical reactions that imbue the coffee with its familiar aroma (which it has not heretofore possessed).

• After leaving the roaster, the beans are placed in a cooling vat, wherein they are stirred while cold air is blown over them. If the coffee being prepared is high-quality, the cooled beans will now be sent through an electronic sorter equipped to detect and eliminate beans that emerged from the roasting process too light or too dark.
• If the coffee is to be pre-ground, the manufacturer mills it immediately after roasting. Special types of grinding have been developed for each of the different types of coffee makers, as each functions best with coffee ground to a specific fineness.

Instant coffee

• If the coffee is to be instant, it is I V brewed with water in huge percolators after the grinding stage. An extract is clarified from the brewed coffee and sprayed into a large cylinder. As it falls downward through this cylinder, it enters a warm air stream that converts it into a dry powder.

Packaging

• Because it is less vulnerable to flavor and aroma loss than other types of coffee, whole bean coffee is usually packaged in foil-lined bags. If it is to retain its aromatic qualities, pre-ground coffee must be hermetically sealed: it is usually packaged in impermeable plastic film, aluminum foil, or cans. Instant coffee picks up moisture easily, so it is vacuum-packed in tin cans or glass jars before being shipped to retail stores.

Environmental Concerns

Methylene chloride, the solvent used to decaffeinate beans, has come under federal scrutiny in recent years. Many people charge that rinsing the beans does not completely remove the chemical, which they suspect of being harmful to human health. Although the Food and Drug Administration has consequently ruled that methylene chloride residue cannot exceed 10 parts per million, the water method of decaffeination has grown in popularity and is expected to replace solvent decaffeination completely.

Where To Learn More

Books

Davids, Kenneth. Coffee. 101 Productions, 1987.

Pamphlets

"More Fun With Coffee." National Coffee Association.

"The Story of Good Coffee from the Pacific Northwest." Starbucks Coffee Company.

Periodicals

"From Tree to Bean to Cup," Consumer Reports. September, 1987, p. 531.

Globus, Paul. "This Little bean is Big Business," Reader's Digest (Canadian), March, 1986, p. 35.

[Article by: Catherine Kolecki]

A tropical evergreen shrub or small tree of the genus Coffea (Rubiaceae), a native of northeast Africa and adjacent southwest Asia. The beverage known as coffee is made by the hot-water extraction of solubles from the ground roasted beans (seeds) of the shrub. Coffea grows mainly between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn at elevations of 2000–6000 ft (600–1800 m) above sea level, at temperatures near 70°F (21°C), and with annual rains near 60 in. (150 cm).

Annual international commerce is about 75 million bags (standard of 130 lb or 60 kg per bag) of green coffee beans, that is, coffee beans that have been cultivated, harvested, and are ready for commercial processing. The supply generally is a third each from Brazil, Africa, and all other countries. The United States and Europe consume 85% of all world exports. Coffee beverage has no nutritive value and is consumed for its flavor and stimulating effects. The stimulating ingredient in coffee is caffeine. The two main coffee varieties are Arabica with about 1.1% caffeine and Robusta with 2.2%. See also Caffeine.

The coffee plant is a shrub or relatively small tree, often controlled to a height of 15–18 ft (4.5–5.5 m). Coffea arabica (milds) accounts for 69% of world production; C. canephora (robustas), 30%; and all others, 1%. Each species includes several varieties.

After the spring rains, the plant produces white flowers. About 6 months later the flowers are replaced by fruit the size of a small cherry. The cherries can be selectively picked to harvest only ripe ones, or strip-picked to yield mostly ripe but also some over- or underripe fruit. The green coffee beans are the two halves of the seed derived from the processed cherries.

Coffee cherries are processed by either dry or wet methods. In the dry method, the cherries from strip picking are spread on open drying ground and turned frequently to permit thorough drying by the sun and wind. Some producing areas use hot air, indirect steam, and other machine-drying devices. When the coffee cherries are thoroughly dry, they are transferred to hulling machines that remove the skin, pulp, parchment shell, and silver skin in a single operation. In the wet method, freshly picked ripe coffee cherries are fed to a tank for initial washing and removal of stones and other foreign material. The cherries are then transferred to depulping machines that remove the outer skin and most of the pulp, although some pulp mucilage clings to the parchment shells that encase the coffee beans. This is removed in fermentation tanks, usually containing water. The beans are then dried, either in the sun or in mechanical dryers. After drying, the coffee is further processed in machines that remove silver skins, producing green coffee beans. The coffee beans are then machine graded. After processing, the green beans have 10–12% moisture and maintain acceptable quality for about a year.

A series of basic bean processing steps is required to produce the major types of commercial coffee products. First, the green beans are weighed and cleaned, and then they are stored in silos, each containing a single bean type. Green coffee beans to be used for decaffeinated coffee products are processed separately to remove the required amount of caffeine (usually 97% in the United States) and then stored in special silos before further processing.

Roasting and grinding are key steps in producing all coffee products. The roasting step is the most important operation in defining the final product characteristics. Roasting is usually conducted by use of hot combustion gases in rotating cylinders or fluidized-bed systems. When the bean temperature reaches 375–475°F (190–246°C), roasting is terminated by rapidly adding a water quench. The final roast temperature is the critical control point that fixes the flavor and color of the product, and it must be consistent for good quality control. The quenched beans are air cooled and conveyed to storage bins for moisture and temperature equilibration prior to grinding. Residual foreign material (mostly stones) that has passed through the initial cleaning step is removed in transit to the storage bins by means of a high-velocity air lift, which leaves the heavier debris behind. Grinding of the roasted coffee beans is tailored to the requirements of the intended beverage preparation. For example, only coarse cracking of the beans is needed for instant coffee, whereas finer grinds are required for packaged roast and ground coffee. The most commonly used grinder is a multistep steel roll mill. Particle size is controlled by regulation of roll separation.

Instant coffee comprises the dried solids made from water extraction of the soluble solids in roasted and partially ground (cracked) coffee. The extraction process follows the same principle as home brewing using a filter-drip percolator, except that it is much more efficient and results in very high solid-extraction yields. The coffee extract is concentrated from about 20–35% to 50% by using multiple-effect vacuum evaporators or freeze concentration, or a combination of both. The flavor of the final dry product can be enhanced by recovering the aroma and flavor compounds prior to, or as part of, the concentration process and then introducing these to the concentrated extract just before drying. The method of drying defines the instant coffee as either spray dried or freeze dried. Spray drying involves spraying the concentrated aroma-enhanced extract into a concurrently flowing stream of hot combustion gases. Freeze drying uses special high-vacuum equipment to remove water from the frozen extract by sublimation. Freeze-dried coffee is more expensive to produce and requires a much higher investment than the spray-dried product. See also Drying; Extraction.

Decaffeinated coffees represent about 18% of the total coffee consumption in the United States. Decaffeinated coffee was commercially developed in Europe about 1900. The early process involved direct contact of water-moistened beans with a solvent. The principle of moisturizing green coffee before decaffeination remains a key process step for all decaffeination processes, because it facilitates transport of caffeine through the cell walls. A water extraction process was developed in the United States in 1943 which provided a decaffeinated coffee with improved flavor and with very low solvent residues. Natural decaffeination processes were invented and commercialized from the mid-1970s through the 1980. Three processes for natural decaffeinated products are commercially available. The water process is in many ways the same as the earlier water extraction process. However, instead of using a solvent to remove caffeine from a green coffee extract, the extract is decaffeinated by adsorption using activated carbon. The supercritical CO₂ processes use carbon dioxide (CO₂) above its critical temperature (supercritical CO₂) to remove caffeine from green coffee beans. Other so-called natural processes are similar to older solvent processes but use solvents (such as ethyl acetate) considered to be natural, based on the designation “generally regarded as safe” (GRAS) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. See also Activated carbon; Adsorption.

---

A beverage produced by roasting the beans from the berries of two principal types of shrub: Coffea arabica (arabica coffee) and C. canephora (robusta coffee); Liberian coffee (C. liberica) grows in tropical regions, but quality is inferior and it accounts for less than 1% of world coffee trade. Reputedly discovered in the ninth century in southern Ethiopia by a goatherd whose goats became frisky after eating the berries. Niacin is formed during the roasting process, and coffee can contain 10-40 mg of niacin per 100 g, depending on the extent of roasting, thus making a significant contribution to average intakes of niacin.

Instant coffee (invented by Satori Kato of Chicago, 1901) is dried coffee extract which can be used to make a beverage by adding hot water or milk. It may be manufactured by spray-drying or freeze-drying. Coffee essence is an aqueous extract of roasted coffee; usually about 400 g of coffee/L.

Coffee contains caffeine. Decaffeinated coffee is coffee beans (or instant coffee) from which the caffeine has been extracted with solvent (e.g. methylene or ethylene chloride), carbon dioxide under pressure (supercritical CO₂), or water. Coffee decaffeinated by water extraction is sometimes labelled as ‘naturally’ decaffeinated. The first decaffeinated coffee was introduced by German coffee importer Ludwig Roselius, who received a shipment of beans that had been soaked by seawater during a storm, under the trade name of Sanka (from the French sans caffeine), 1903.

Ethiopia is thought to be the motherland of the first coffee beans, which, throughout the ages, found their way to Brazil and Colombia-the two largest coffee producers today. Coffee plantations abound throughout other South and Central American countries, Cuba, Hawaii, Indonesia, Jamaica and many African nations. There are hundreds of different coffee species but the two most commercially viable are coffea robusta and coffea arabica. The sturdy, disease- resistant coffea robusta, which thrives at lower altitudes, produces beans with a harsher, more single-dimensional flavor than the more sensitive coffea arabica, which grows at high altitudes (3,000 to 6,500 feet) and produces beans with elegant, complex flavors. The coffee plant is actually a small tree that bears a fruit called the "coffee cherry." Growing and tending these coffee trees is a labor-intensive process because blossoms, unripe (green) and ripe red cherries can occupy a tree simultaneously, necessitating hand-picking the fruit. The coffee cherry's skin and pulp surround two beans enclosed in a parchmentlike covering. Once these layers are discarded, the beans are cleaned, dried, graded and hand-inspected for color and quality. The "green" beans (which can range in color from pale green to muddy yellow) are then exported, leaving the roasting, blending and grinding to be done at their destination. Coffee can be composed of a single type of coffee bean or a blend of several types. Blended coffee produces a richer, more complex flavor than single-bean coffees. The length of time coffee beans are roasted will affect the color and flavor of the brew. Among the most popular roasts are American, French, Italian, European and Viennese. American roast (also called regular roast) beans are medium-roasted, which results in a moderate brew-not too light or too heavy in flavor. The heavy-roasted beans are French roast and dark French roast, which are a deep chocolate brown and produce a stronger coffee, and the glossy, brown-black, strongly flavored Italian roast, used for espresso. European roast contains two-thirds heavy-roast beans blended with one-third regular-roast; Viennese roast reverses those proportions. Instant coffee powder is a powdered coffee made by heat-drying freshly brewed coffee. Freeze-dried coffee granules (or crystals) are derived from brewed coffee that has been frozen into a slush before the water is evaporated. Freeze-dried coffee is slightly more expensive than regular instant coffee, but is also reputed to be superior in flavor. Coffee concentrate is a liquid extract of freshly brewed coffee that's diluted with water. It comes in many forms including regular, decaffeinated and flavored (vanilla, chocolate, and so forth) and can be found in most supermarkets. Coffee, tea and cocoa all contain caffeine, a stimulant that affects many parts of the body including the nervous system, kidneys, heart and gastric secretions. With the exception of the Madagascar coffee species-Mascarocoffea vianneyi-which actually grows beans that are decaffeinated, coffee beans must go through a process to produce decaffeinated coffee. The caffeine is removed by one of two methods, either of which is executed before the beans are roasted. In the first method, the caffeine is chemically extracted with the use of a solvent, which must be completely washed out before the beans are dried. The second method-called Swiss water process-first steams the beans, then scrapes away the caffeine-rich outer layers. Though there was once concern about the safety of solvent residues, research has found that the volatile solvents disappear entirely when the beans are roasted. Coffee, whether ground or whole-bean, loses its flavor quickly. To assure the freshest, most flavorful brew, buy fresh coffee beans and grind only as many as needed to brew each pot of coffee. Inexpensive grinders are available at most department and discount stores. Store whole roasted beans in an airtight container in a cool, dry place for up to 2 weeks. For longer storage, freeze whole beans, freezer-wrapped, up to 3 months. Since room- temperature ground coffee begins to go stale within a couple of days after it's ground, it should be refrigerated in an airtight container and can be stored up to 2 weeks. See also café au lait; café brulot; café macchiato; café mocha; caffé americano; caffé latte; cappuccino; espresso; greek coffee; irish coffee; thai coffee; turkish coffee; viennese coffee.

The coffee plant attracted human interest and consumption as early as 800 A.D. in the Kaffe region of Ethiopia. By the fifteenth century the plant was cultivated in Yemen and a beverage made from its beans was sold in Arabian coffeehouses. Constantinople's first coffeehouses had opened by the middle of the sixteenth century. The beverage spread eastward to India and via Mocha on the Arabian Peninsula back to Holland. Venice had a coffeehouse by 1645. The students of Oxford soon follow suit, discovering by 1650 the academic advantages of a beverage that sharpens the wits. Before 1800 much of Europe had coffeehouses and also had witnessed governmental attempts to close them as sources of sedition. Those same governments soon taxed rather than prohibited coffee consumption. Coffeehouses became social and business centers where merchants and shippers gathered to exchange information and make deals. By the late 1660s coffee consumption had spread to North America; New York City's first coffeehouse, The King's Arms, opened in 1696.

Arab coffee cultivators and merchants attempted to monopolize the trade by preventing export of the coffee plant, but by the seventeenth century, the Dutch had acquired coffee plants that they planted in Ceylon. Other Europeans planted coffee in East Asian and, later, Latin American colonies. In the early twenty-first century, milder arabica beans are grown primarily in Latin American and the Caribbean, while more bitter robust a beans come primarily from African and Asian producing countries. Green coffee beans are among the highest-value commodities legally traded in today's world. The Green Coffee Association of New York City formed in 1923 to encourage standard contracts. Much of the product is traded on the Coffee, Sugar, and Cocoa Exchange, now a subset of the New York Board of Trade, and on the London, Tokyo and Brazilian commodity exchanges.

New processing techniques eased preparation of the beverage in the field during the U.S. Civil War. Military demand again hastened easy preparation when Maxwell Coffee developed an instant beverage in 1941, building on Swiss producer Nestle's Nescafe, which that the company had created for Brazilian growers in 1938. In modern production, the exported green beans are precisely roasted and blended in importing countries to produce the flavor that consumers desire; because oxidation causes bitter flavor, the processed coffee must be used quickly or packaged carefully.

Price inelasticity of demand for coffee leads to sharp price fluctuations. To counter these fluctuations, producing countries established the International Coffee Association in 1963 primarily to control price through export quotas; price stability, however, has not been achieved.

With economies of scale in production and distribution, a few firms and their brands dominated U.S. and world production of roasted coffee in the second half of the twentieth century. These companies have distributed their brands primarily through grocery stores. Per capita consumption has fallen in traditional coffee markets, but is rising in such nontraditional markets as Japan and, more recently, China and South Korea; there, as in Great Britain, instant coffee is making inroads into the tea market. In the 1970s specialty coffee producers began to challenge the preeminence in traditional markets of the multinationals and have constituted the most rapidly growing segment of the coffee market in mature economies. These specialty forms of coffee, sold primarily through coffeehouses and gourmet shops, are relatively expensive, differentiated blends processed on a smaller scale. This development echoes the early days of coffee consumption; an increasingly affluent middle class is willing to spend on luxury beverages consumed in inviting shops.

Bibliography

Commodity Research Bureau. The CRB Commodity Yearbook 2001. New York: Wiley, 2001.

Dicum, Gregory, and Nina Luttinger. The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry from the Crop to the Last Drop. New York: New Press, 1999.

Paige, Jeffry, Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.

—Ann Harper Fender

---

A drink popular in the Middle East and worldwide.

The first mention of coffee appears to be from a tenth-century pharmacological work by the Persian physician Rhazes (Muhammad ibn Zakariyya alRazi). The coffee bean (the seed from pods of the Coffea arabica tree) is believed to have originated in Ethiopia, traveling to Yemen by way of Arab trade routes. The Yemeni town of Maqha gave its name to a type of coffee, mocha. It had arrived in Mecca by 1511 when it was forbidden by the authorities, and by 1615 it had reached Venice. The popularity of coffee spread throughout the Islamic world, where it gave rise to the coffee houses that have enduring popularity in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Arabic or Turkish-style coffee is always prepared to order. The coffee beans are roasted in large frying pans and ground very fine. The ground coffee and water are brought to a gentle boil in small long-handled pots called rakweh. The coffee is poured into demitasse cups without handles. After the grounds have settled, the coffee is drunk without being stirred. Sugar, cardamom, orange-blossom water, rose water, or saffron may be added to the coffee during the brewing process. Coffee is always served as part of social interactions in the Middle East.

— CLIFFORD A. WRIGHT

Coffee refers to both a plant and to the hot and cold beverages made from the pit or "bean" of its fruit. Coffee contains significant amounts (between 0.8 percent and 2.5 percent) of the stimulant alkaloid caffeine (trimethylxanthine) as well as protein and carbohydrates. The coffee shrub or bush grows as two species, Coffea arabica and C. canephora, and is indigenous to Africa, specifically to the Kaffa region of Ethiopia. The word "coffee" is derived from the Turkish word kahveh, which is rooted in the Arabic word kahwah, meaning wine, this indicating the use of the beverage as a replacement for alcoholic beverages that are forbidden under strict Muslim religious law.

The coffee plant is an evergreen with elliptical, dark shiny green leaves that yields a red husked berry containing a seed pit or "bean." Coffee belongs to the Rubiaceae family and, depending on which of two species from which it is harvested, propagates differently. Coffea arabica is grown principally in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Coffea canephora (also known as Coffea robusta) is grown in Africa (mostly in the Congo), India, and Vietnam, which is its leading producer. The arabica is self-pollinating, while the canephora or robusta needs cross-pollination to fruit. After planting, the shrub requires four to five years of growth before it will fruit. When harvested, the ripe red husk is removed from the berry, and the fresh seed can be planted to generate seedlings or dried for planting at a later time. (It is this seed that is the coffee bean as it is commonly understood.)

Processing the beans requires two steps. In the first step, usually in the country of origin, the husk of the berry is left to ferment and soften, which facilitates the extraction of the seed or bean. The beans are then dried and shipped "green" or unroasted to a destination where they are roasted either for local consumption or for packaging and transshipping to other markets. The roasting process has a substantial effect on the color and flavor of the bean and the beverage it will produce. The darker the roast, the stronger the flavor. It is also the roasting process that eliminates water, making the bean more brittle and easier to grind.

Coffea arabica produces the "Arabica," also known as "Brazilian," varieties, which are often preferred for their balanced aroma and rich flavor. The best, rarest, and most sought after arabica types are harvested in Indonesia, Jamaica, Hawaii, and Colombia, where they are grown on small production farms at a relatively slow and steady growth rate, developing flavorful berries. (In this way they may be said to parallel wine production.) Coffea canephora, or robusta, tends to be strong and bitter. Because Coffea canephora can resist frost and disease and can sustain warmer climates and lower elevations, it experiences faster growth patterns and higher fruit yields. This generally results in beans that contain more caffeine than arabica types but that lack subtlety and flavor. The canephora bean is said by experts to be neutral by comparison to arabica.

Table 1

TOTAL COFFEE PRODUCTION					TOTAL EXPORTS OF ALL FORMS OF COFFEE
By the top 15 producing countries					The top 15 producing countries
Crop years 1999/00 to 2001/02					Calendar years 1999 to 2001
(in thousands of bags)					(in thousands of bags)
Crop year commencing		1999	2000	2001	Calendar year	1999	2000	2001
Brazil	(A/R)	32,345	32,204	33,549	Brazil	23,139	18,016	23,172
Vietnam	(R)	11,648	14,775	12,600	Vietnam	7,742	11,619	13,946
Colombia	(A)	9,398	10,532	11,500	Colombia	9,996	9,175	9,944
Indonesia	(R/A)	5,432	6,733	6,446	Indonesia	5,065	5,194	4,992
Mexico	(A)	6,442	5,125	5,500	Cote d'Ivoire	2,406	6,110	4,174
India	(A/R)	5,457	4,611	5,293	Guatemala	4,681	4,852	4,110
Côte d'Ivoire	(R)	6,321	4,587	4,100	India	3,613	4,441	3,769
Ethiopia	(A)	3,505	2,768	3,917	Mexico	4,358	5,304	3,408
Guatemala	(A/R)	5,201	4,700	3,900	Uganda	3,841	2,513	3,060
Uganda	(R/A)	3,097	3,205	3,250	Peru	2,407	2,362	2,663
Peru	(A)	2,663	2,596	2,747	Honduras	1,987	2,879	2,392
Costa Rica	(A)	2,404	2,246	2,364	Costa Rica	2,195	1,964	2,018
Honduras	(A)	2,985	2,667	2,300	El Salvador	1,890	2,536	1,533
El Salvador	(A)	2,835	1,717	1,630	Ethiopia	1,818	1,982	1,376
Cameroon	(R/A)	1370	1,113	1,500	Nicaragua	984	1,345	1,365
All other producers	13,935	13,043	12,742		All other producers	9,302	8,708	8,313
(A) Arabica producer
(R) Robusta producer
(A/R) Produces both types. Predominantly Arabica
(R/A) Produces both types. Predominantly Robusta					SOURCE: International Coffee Organization

It is believed that the earliest producers of coffee, the Ethiopians, did not brew coffee as it is recognized in the twenty-first century from the roasted beans but made drinks from the bitter berries, combined the roasted beans with butter or animal fat (most likely that of mutton), or chewed roasted beans as a mild stimulant. Numerous tales on the subject of coffee and its discovery exist. One of the most persistent is of a ninth-century Ethiopian goat herder intrigued by his intoxicated, hyperactive flock. Having grown curious, he sampled berries his goats had been eating and felt similarly stimulated.

No extensive or significant use of the coffee crop has developed among Ethiopia's indigenous peoples, and it became an exotic crop for them, exported first to Yemen, then to other Arab nations. It is noteworthy that coffee production did not develop in Africa until the twentieth century and that consumption there is minor. (The berries are sometimes used to enhance teas, which are generally preferred as beverages there.)

A primitive approach to making the coffee beverage may have originated at the beginning of the eleventh century in Ethiopia, however, this was likely learned through Arab traders who ground roasted beans into a fine powder and stirred it into hot water. Most scholars believe the antecedents of modern brewed coffee drinks were developed in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries in Yemen and accredit the processing of the beans—roasting, grinding, and ultimately brewing the pungent hot drink—to a sheik of the Sufi order. Irrespective of the drink's origins, wild coffee plants may have been cultivated as early as the sixth century, but it was not until the fifteenth century that the coffee bush, Coffea arabica, is believed to have been domesticated, developed as an agricultural product, and spread throughout Muslim nations from Southwest Asia to Southeast Asia, including the Indonesian archipelago.

When first brought into widespread use, coffee was usually taken as a dark, bitter drink. Sugar was rarely used in the Arabian beverage, perhaps for fear that it would overstimulate the mind. The spice cardamom was often added to the brew for a naturally sweet flavor, and perhaps to counterbalance or mediate its bitter essence. Cardamom-flavored coffee is most commonly associated with the beverage known as Turkish coffee, as is the eleventh-century approach to boiling the grounds as a brewing technique. (Sugar is often added in this version as well.)

Historically coffee was the subject of frequent controversy and confusion, and its rise—much like tea—parallels the development of international trade and economic interdependencies. Coffee was perceived, for example, early in its development to have medicinal benefits, including as a curative for mange, sore eyes, dropsy, and gout. However, it was also feared that, when mixed with milk, coffee caused leprosy. Coffee was often at the center of political turmoil, especially through the development of coffeehouses in the Ottoman Empire and throughout Europe, where people could congregate and discuss ideas in an atmosphere conducive to (literally) stimulated conversation. Coffeehouses were associated with the plotting of insurrection in the Ottoman Empire and of both the American and French Revolutions, for example.

Coffee is one of the most common delivery systems for drugs in the world. Its caffeine stimulates the brain, improving one's focus. It is also a diuretic, washing out the kidneys. When taken in large quantities, the stimulant causes irregular heartbeat, uncontrollable shaking, and dehydration. Despite—or because of—these characteristics, by the beginning of the sixteenth century coffee drinking was widespread in the Middle East. Its powerful physical effects, however, were such that some Muslim scholars interpreted it as being contradictory to the spirit of the Koran and tried to forbid it. Others opposed its banishment and ironically included the beverage in religious worship. (Records of the period indicate that coffee was drunk inside the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, in present-day Saudi Arabia.) Early accounts exist of coffee drinking, ostensibly for the purpose of staying awake to pray and chant, during the evenings of the one-month fasting of Ramadan.

Coffee is also associated with superstitions and rituals. For example, not unlike tea leaf reading by Chinese fortune tellers, Turkish fortune tellers use the finished cup of coffee—which contains both liquid and grounds—turning it onto the saucer until cool. The cup is then turned back up, and any coffee grounds remaining in the cup are "read" as a basis for predicting the future.

From roughly the fifteenth century to the eighteenth century, coffee trade was monopolized by the Yemenis. The English and the Dutch traded with the Arabs at the major trading port of Mocha in Yemen for nearly half a century before they found a way to break the Arab monopoly. Ultimately Dutch smugglers stole beans from Mocha, carrying them to colonial Java in Indonesia for propagation. Through the Dutch act of pilferage, Indonesian coffee plantations came to produce an arabica bean popularly known as "Java." (Eventually this bean was described by connoisseurs as among the finest arabica available.) The Dutch also sent beans back to Amsterdam for propagation in greenhouses. In short order coffee propagation and drinking spread rapidly throughout the Western Hemisphere and the European colonies. In an act of repilferage, for example, the French king Louis XIV engineered the theft of plants from Amsterdam, and these plants eventually were responsible for the development of coffee plantations in French colonial Martinique. In 1723 the coffee business was born of a coffee bush originating in Martinique and eventually engendered a New World coffee industry that by the twentieth century was responsible for 90 percent of coffee production internationally.

The early to mid-seventeenth century saw the rapid spread of coffee consumption throughout Europe, especially northern Europe, resulting in a significant demand. The possibility of financial fortunes along with the possibilities of lucrative taxes and perceived medical benefits made for both free market and government-encouraged spread of cultivation in tropical and subtropical climes across the globe.

Cultivation spread throughout Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and Brazil. The first Brazilian coffee bush was planted in 1727, for example, and it was cultivated by slave labor. While the crop experienced a somewhat slow beginning there, by the end of the nineteenth century Brazil's coffee-growing industry was profitable. By the early twenty-first century Brazil was the world's largest coffee exporting nation with Vietnam running second.

Coffee and its patterns of consumption were historically linked to politics as well as perceived curative and stimulant benefits. Originally coffee was enjoyed almost exclusively in coffeehouses, which were founded as specialty shops for the purpose of selling coffee by enticing traders to try the new beverage. The first coffeehouse (or café) opened in Constantinople in 1555, and within a few years the city counted hundreds of such establishments. In rapid turn the coffeehouse became a place for socializing. Paralleling the social patterns of teahouses in China, coffeehouses became meeting places for casual conversation and business and political discussions, including revolutionary strategies. The empire's rulers quickly became concerned with the popularity of such places, where discontented commoners and intellectuals alike could gather and political uprising could be discussed. (Restaurants either did not exist or were forbidden.) Ottoman coffeehouse proprietors were subject to harsh punishments, including being sewn in a bag and thrown in the Bosporus.

Political mechanisms proved inadequate to stem rising enthusiasm for coffee and coffeehouses, however. Great profit centers, coffeehouses were often built in extravagant styles, imparting a social caché to the beverage. Spread by war and commerce, coffeehouses opened in European capitals throughout the early to late seventeenth century, increasing the beverage's popularity and supporting demand.

While coffee was a sort of luxury beverage at first, by the eighteenth century even less-fortunate Europeans could enjoy it (or some adulterated version of it) through sales by street hawkers. Innkeepers also made it part of their family-style menus, and some food historians link the introduction of coffee to creating the sequencing of a meal. In the mid–to late eighteenth century North American colonials drank coffee increasingly as a sort of protest against high British taxes on tea. Free to trade after independence (1776), Americans imported coffee initially from Haiti and Martinique, then Portugal and Brazil. By the mid-nineteenth century Americans consumed an average of over six pounds per capita annually. To a large extent the commercialization, mechanization, marketing, and democratization of coffee in North America evolved the beverage in modern times. The nineteenth century also saw the introduction of the drink in various styles, including Italian espresso (a concentrated one-ounce liquid), cappuccino (a "long" espresso with frothed milk), French café au lait or Spanish café con leche (strong coffee with plenty of hot milk), or iced coffee with or without milk. Other popular combinations are Irish coffee, which includes whiskey and Baileys Irish Cream, and Vietnamese or Thai coffees, in which sweet condensed milk is added.

Coffee can be "pure," using either the arabica or robusta bean, or it can be a blend of the two. One of the oldest blends simply combines various proportions of robusta and arabica beans, making the resulting item either more smooth or more bitter. Some of the more innovative blends include hazelnut and vanilla flavorings, these tied to the late twentieth-century, principally American interest in "gourmet" coffees. While for hundreds of years coffee consumers in Europe purchased a brewed cup of the beverage for quick consumption, in the United States green beans generally were sold in bulk for home roasting. This shift from public coffeehouse to domestic brewing had a profound effect on the industry and psychology of coffee consumption. The American development essentially stripped coffee of its political import, making it a modern commodity.

In other North American developments, at the end of the American Civil War, San Francisco's Folger's Coffee company gave customers a choice, offering both traditional green coffee beans and the more efficient and time-saving roasted beans. A new industry was born, and the tendency toward efficiency and rapid brewing was exacerbated. The Maxwell House company soon followed in Folger's footsteps, and in 1901 the first Maxwell House "instant" coffee came to market. This instant coffee was made by extracting water from brewed coffee and freeze-drying the remains. Other innovations followed. Decaffeinated coffee, which has significantly reduced amounts of caffeine, was made by steaming unroasted beans or by using a solvent, usually chlorine, to remove the caffeine. Because this process also removes some of the flavor from the beans, the stronger robusta variety is usually employed for decaffeinated coffees.

While coffee was added to a pot of water and boiled to produce the earliest versions of the beverage, Arab producers eventually filtered the brew through herbs to hold back the sediment. In eighteenth-century France, coffee was filtered through muslin bags, an innovative but ultimately inadequate process. The expatriate American inventor Benjamin Thompson—also known as Count Rumford—developed the broadly successful metal "drip pot," and a number of other inventors developed variations on coffee-brewing devices, many of which have remained in use in the twenty-first century. In 1819, for example, the percolator was invented in which hot water rises through a tube and into an upper container and infuses coffee. The early twentieth century saw the advent of true coffee filtering devices, particularly through the development of paper filters by the German Melitta Bentz Company in 1908.

The espresso machine (from Italian caffè espresso, literally, "pressed-out coffee") is usually associated with Italy, but it was pioneered in the early nineteenth century in German and French machines that used steam to push steam through coffee grounds. The modern espresso machine, patented in Italy in early-twentieth-century Italy, was developed by Desidero Pavoni (who bought the rights to the espresso machine patent in 1905), and was dramatically improved in Italy after World War II. The hiss of the espresso machine was a common sound in the Italian caffés of San Francisco's North Beach and in New York City's Greenwich Village decades before espresso and cappuccino became fashionable around the 1980s.

The difference in machines and grounds is important in the outcome of any coffee brew. For example, the espresso machine uses twice the amount of coffee as a percolator, a much finer ground of coffee, and much less water (actually steam), resulting in a dark, strong, bitter extraction. Different grinds exist for different styles of brewing. Coarse grounds are used to make filtered coffee, fine grounds are used to make Italian espresso, and even finer grounds resembling the consistency of flour are used to make boiled Turkish coffee.

Harvested, roasted, traded worldwide, and consumed by people from different walks of life, coffee has created significant social crossroads for centuries. Once a luxurious beverage, coffee is enjoyed internationally by a diverse populace. Most often a morning beverage, its popularity has soared as both an afternoon and an afterdinner beverage. Variations abound. Aside from flavored and decaffeinated coffees, bottled coffees, coffee sodas, and other drinks are available.

Embracing this trend, and operating over 5,500 stores internationally (over four thousand in the United States alone), Starbucks is the leading coffeehouse chain of the twenty-first century. It sells coffees with multiple options (would you like a slice of banana nut loaf with your iced, decaf mocha java?) at the elevated average price of $3.50 per cup in a lounge setting, and has pastries (and sometimes, sandwiches) available for purchase. This creates a comfortable atmosphere for conversation and reading, without any pressure to make a purchase and leave. Thus, since the early 1990s Starbucks has created a coffeehouse culture for the masses. With its appeal extending from corporate executives to students and housewives, it has brought the former aristocratic atmosphere into the mainstream. In this way it typifies the late-twentieth-, early-twenty-first-century "mass-class" and "leisure-time entertainment" marketing strategies. The success of Starbucks is also bolstered by its ability to extend the brand by selling T-shirts, travel mugs, and other coffee-related accessories in its stores. Starbucks also sells coffee beans and ice cream.

Coffee is not only a modern beverage but also an ingredient in desserts, including coffee ice creams, coffee gelati, and coffee-flavored cakes. Variations include the American "chimney sweep" recipe, in which vanilla ice cream is topped with powdered coffee and drizzled with a shot of whiskey. Italian tiramisu has lady fingers soaked in espresso coffee and set in a whipped mascarpone cream. In addition, an American classic dish called "Black-eyed steak" employs coffee to deglaze a cast-iron pan in which a slice of salt-cured Virginia Smithfield ham has been pan-fried; the bitter and salty jus is poured over the meat prior to serving.

Bibliography

Bramah, Edward. Tea and Coffee: A Modern View of 300 Years of Tradition. 2d ed. London: Hutchinson, 1972.

Filho, Olavo B. A fazenda de cafe em Sao Paulo. Rio de Janiero: Ministerio da Agricultura, 1952.

Guyer-Stevens, Stephanie, et al. "Starbucks: To Drink or Not to Drink?" Whole Earth, Summer (2002): 15.

Hattox, Ralph S. Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988.

Heise, Ulla. Kaffee und Kaffeehaus [Coffee and the coffee house]. Hildeshiem, Germany: Olms Presse, 1987.

Kiple, Kenneth F., and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas. The Cambridge World History of Food. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. New York: Scribners, 1984.

Poole, Buzz. "Café Culture." Whole Earth Summer (2002): 10.

Samrowski, Dietrich. Geschichte der Kaffeemuehlen [History of coffee grinders]. Munich, Self-published, 1983.

Schoenholt, Donald N. "The Economy of Coffee, Supply Glut, Crashing Prices, Desperate Farmers: What's the Solution?" Whole Earth, (Summer 2002): 12–14.

Tannahill, Reay. Food in History. New, fully revised, and updated edition. New York: Crown, 1989. Original edition 1973.

Thurber, Francis B. Coffee: From Plantation to Cup. New York: American Grocer Publishing, 1881.

Toussaint-Samat, Maguelonne. History of Food. Translated by Anthea Bell. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1993.

Windridge, Charles. The Fountain of Health: An A–Z of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Consulted and edited by Wu Xiaochun. Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1994.

—Corinne Trang

Description	Quantity	Energy (calories)	Carbs (grams)	Protein (grams)	Cholesterol (milligrams)	Weight (grams)	Fat (grams)	Saturated Fat (grams)
brewed	6 fl oz	0	0	0	0	180	0	0
instant, prepared	6 fl oz	0	1	0	0	182	0	0

IN BRIEF: A dark brown drink made by brewing the roasted and ground seeds of a tropical plant in boiling water.

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. — Ann Lindbergh.

LearnThatWord.com is a free vocabulary and spelling program where you only pay for results!

sign description: Two S-hands, one over top of the other move in a grinding motion with the bottom hand remaining stationary.

---

For regular coffee drinkers, this could simply be a reflection of one's everyday life experience in one's dreams. A social ritual; friendship. Alternatively, it might mean something we thirst for. A common idiom is to "wake up and smell the coffee," meaning to give something more attention.

---

Read More Description Chemical Composition Pharmacology & Biological Activities Commercial Preparations Uses Toxicology

Source: Coffea arabica L., C. canephora Pierre ex Froehner (syn. C. robusta Linden ex De Wild.), and other Coffea species, varieties or hybrids (Family Rubiaceae).

Common/vernacular names: Arabica, Arabian, Colombian, or Santos coffee (C. arabica); and robusta coffee (C. robusta).

Evergreen shrubs to small trees with two-seeded, deeply crimson fruits (berries) that are commonly called "cherries"; C. arabica up to 6 m and C. canephora to 8 m high; believed to be native to Ethiopia; now extensively cultivated in tropical and subtropical countries. Parts used are the roasted seeds, commonly called "beans".

During the production of coffee beans the freshly picked ripe cherries are either sun dried (requiring 2–3 weeks), followed by mechanical removal of the dried husk (pulp, skin, etc.) and seed coat, or they are placed in water and subjected to pulping machines to remove most of the pulp, followed by fermentation (requiring up to several days), drying, and mechanical removal of the silver skin. The former method is called the dry process, and the latter is called the wet process, producing respectively the so-called natural and washed coffees. The dried beans at this stage are known as green coffee and are exported.

Arabica coffee is produced mostly in South and Central America, particularly Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Guatemala, while robusta coffee is produced mainly by African countries (Ivory Coast, Uganda, Angola, etc.).

In the United States, Colombian and Central American coffees are preferred over Brazilian and African coffees.

To develop the characteristic coffee aroma and taste, the green coffee is roasted to the required time at temperatures up to about 220°C, depending on the types of coffee beans to be produced. During roasting, the beans acquire their typical flavor, at the same time turning dark and slightly increasing in size (swelling) as well as losing weight (due to loss of moisture, carbon dioxide, and other volatile compounds from pyrolysis). Coffee beans are often blended before or after roasting to produce various commercial grades or brands.

Decaffeinated coffee is produced by removing most of its caffeine content while at the green coffee stage, generally by extraction of the whole beans with organic (e.g., chlorinated) solvents. The beans are then rid of solvent and roasted.

Instant coffee is produced by extracting ground-roasted coffee with hot water, often under pressure. The extract is concentrated and freeze-dried or spray-dried to produce a granular or powdered product. For instant coffee manufacture, robusta coffees are more commonly used due probably to their higher contents of soluble materials and thus giving higher yields.

Coffee extracts for flavoring purposes are prepared by extracting roasted coffee with water or water–alcohol mixtures.

Previous:	Codonopsis
Next:	Comfrey

---

For a list of words related to coffee, see:

• Shrubs
• Beverages
• Farming and Crops - coffee: beans of coffee tree, grown in tropical highland regions, used to make beverage

---

See words rhyming with "coffee."

  See crossword solutions for the clue Coffee.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - kaffe

idioms:

• coffee bar    kaffebar
• coffee break    kaffepause
• coffee house    cafe
• coffee mill    kaffemølle
• coffee morning    formiddagskaffemøde
• coffee pot    kaffekande
• coffee shop    cafeteria, kaffebar
• coffee table    sofabord
• coffee-table book    pragtbind lagt på sofabord

Nederlands (Dutch)
(kopje) koffie, koffieplant/-boon, koffiekleur(ig)

Français (French)
n. - café

idioms:

• coffee bar    bar-café, café
• coffee break    pause-café
• coffee house    café
• coffee mill    moulin à café
• coffee morning    réunion entre amies pour boire le café et discuter
• coffee pot    cafetière
• coffee shop    café, brûlerie
• coffee table    table basse
• coffee-table book    beau livre (sorti en grand format)

Deutsch (German)
n. - Kaffee

idioms:

• coffee bar    Café
• coffee break    Kaffeepause
• coffee house    Kaffeehaus
• coffee mill    Kaffeemühle
• coffee morning    Morgenkaffee (als Wohltätigkeitsveranstaltung)
• coffee pot    Kaffeekanne
• coffee shop    Café, Kaffeegeschäft
• coffee table    Couchtisch
• coffee-table book    (Luxus)bildband

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - καφές, (φυτολ.) καφέα, καφεόδενδρο

idioms:

• coffee bar    καφέ μπαρ
• coffee break    διάλειμμα εργασίας (για καφέ)
• coffee house    καφενείο
• coffee mill    μύλος (άλεσης) του καφέ
• coffee morning    φιλανθρωπική συνάντηση κατά την οποία σερβίρεται καφές
• coffee pot    δοχείο σερβιρίσματος του καφέ, καφετιέρα
• coffee shop    καφετερία
• coffee table    χαμηλό τραπεζάκι
• coffee-table book    εικονογραφημένο πολυτελές βιβλίο

Italiano (Italian)
caffè

idioms:

• coffee bar    banco del caffè
• coffee break    sosta del caffè
• coffee house    caffè
• coffee morning    mattinata di beneficenza
• coffee pot    caffettiera
• coffee shop    caffè
• coffee table    tavolino da salotto
• coffee-table book    libro illustrato
• instant coffee    caffè solubile

Português (Portuguese)
n. - café (m) (Bot.), cafeeiro (m) (Bot.)

idioms:

• coffee bar    café (m)
• coffee break    hora (f) do café (coloq.)
• coffee house    café (m)
• coffee mill    moedor (m) de café
• coffee morning    reunião matutina de caridade
• coffee pot    cafeteira (f)
• coffee shop    café (m)
• coffee table    mesinha (f) de centro
• coffee-table book    livro (m) de mesa de centro
• instant coffee    café (m) solúvel

Русский (Russian)
кофе

idioms:

• coffee bar    буфет
• coffee break    кратковременный перерыв
• coffee house    кафе
• coffee mill    кофемолка
• coffee morning    дружеская встреча за чашкой кофе
• coffee pot    кофейник
• coffee shop    кафе, буфет
• coffee table    низкий столик
• coffee table    низкий столик
• coffee-table book    роскошно изданная книга
• instant coffee    растворимый кофе

Español (Spanish)
n. - café

idioms:

• coffee bar    cafetería
• coffee break    pausa del café
• coffee house    café, cafetería
• coffee mill    molinillo de café
• coffee morning    reunión benéfica que tiene lugar por la mañana
• coffee pot    cafetera
• coffee shop    café, cafetería
• coffee table    mesita baja, mesa de centro
• coffee-table book    libro lujoso, ilustrado, para adornar

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - kaffe

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
咖啡, 咖啡色

idioms:

• coffee bar    咖啡馆
• coffee break    喝咖啡的休息时间
• coffee house    咖啡厅
• coffee mill    磨咖啡机
• coffee morning    咖啡早茶会
• coffee pot    咖啡壶
• coffee shop    咖啡店
• coffee table    矮茶几
• coffee-table book    茶几上的书籍

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 咖啡, 咖啡色

idioms:

• coffee bar    咖啡館
• coffee break    喝咖啡的休息時間
• coffee house    咖啡廳
• coffee mill    磨咖啡機
• coffee morning    咖啡早茶會
• coffee pot    咖啡壺
• coffee shop    咖啡店
• coffee table    矮茶几
• coffee-table book    茶几上的書籍

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 커피, 커피 딸린 경양식, 커피색

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - コーヒー, コーヒーノキ, コーヒー豆

idioms:

• coffee bar    軽食堂
• coffee break    お茶の時間, コーヒーブレーク
• coffee house    コーヒーハウス
• coffee mill    コーヒーひき
• coffee morning    朝のコーヒーパーティ
• coffee pot    コーヒーポット
• coffee shop    コーヒーショップ, 喫茶軽食の店, コーヒー豆を売る店
• coffee table    ティーテーブル

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) قهوة, بن‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮קפה, ספל קפה‬

If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.

Some good "coffee" pages on the web: