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Since the Boston Tea Party, Americans have been crazy for coffee, choosing it as their caffeine fix. But obviously that’s not the origin of java. Naturally, the history of coffee goes back much earlier.

A video clip that goes back to the very first mug of coffee brewed and sipped, and afterwards it traces the expansion of coffee around the world. We all know the Ethiopian legend which claims the goat herdsman Kaldi discovered the power of the coffee beans. However what happened after that?

So get out your Chemex, grind some beans, boil some water, and sit down to watch this history of coffee with a cup of your own.

Full story - the history of coffee

According to the tale, the invigorating effects of the coffee bean were first uncovered by a goat herdsman called Kaldi, that lived on the Ethiopian plateau during the 9th century.

One day Kaldi observed that after his heard had grazed on the cherry of the coffee plant they appeared to possess limitless power, certainly more than the rest of his animals. As the story goes, this left them also invigorated to fall asleep in the evening, as their packages of energy had them bounding everywhere.

A short background

After Kaldi observed how "spirited" his goats became after consuming the coffee berries, he went to the local monastery to let the monks know. A monk created a brew from the berries and managed to keep up a lot later praying.

News of this brand-new brew spread into Egypt and into the Arabian peninsula, where coffee traveled east and west, lastly getting in southeast Asia and the Americas. And it's been popular since.

But if we are to consider facts only, and not legends, the earliest substantiated proof of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree is from the early 15th century, in the Sufi abbeys of Yemen, spreading quickly to Mecca and Medina. By the 16th century, it had actually gotten to the remainder of the Middle East, South India (Karnataka), Persia, Turkey, the Horn of Africa, and north Africa. Coffee after that spread to the Balkans, Italy, and to the remainder of Europe, along with Southeast Asia and in spite of the bans enforced during the 15th century by spiritual leaders in Mecca and Cairo, and later on by the Catholic Church.

Etymology

It turns out the term "coffee" originate from Arabic. The word entered the English language in 1582 via the Dutch koffie, borrowed from the Ottoman Turkish kahve, consequently borrowed from the Arabic qahwah.

There is an even more intriguing hypothesis of the beginning of the word, which you can check out on Wikipedia here.

Modern Coffee Background

The contemporary times race for comfort and performance recognized that people are "wasting" too much time preparing coffee. This is how instant coffee was developed. David Strang, a New Zealander developed it in 1889. Freeze-dried coffee was invented in 1938.

Decaffeinated coffee was created by Ludwig Roselius in 1903, filling a need for individuals who are hypersensitive to caffeine.

The coffee filter, the foundation of one of the most popular coffee brewing technique, the drip coffee, was created by Melitta Bentz in 1908.

Achille Gaggia created the modern-day espresso device in 1946. The initial pump-driven espresso machine was made in 1960.

Today coffee is still among the world's most preferred drinks. Brazil is still the globe's largest producer of coffee.