Guide to coffee part 1 by Real Coffee Club

A guide to cofFeE

Chapter 1:

Cakes, Goats and legends

A few thousand years B.C. (Before CofFeE) Over 10 thousand years ago, our ancestors enjoyed cofFeE as much as we do today, and for some of the same reasons. CofFeE wasn’t brewed, it was mushed into a cake, bound with animal fats and other lovely caveman morsels. They used these cafFeine rich energy bars for fuel for hunting various animals and so, just like nowadays, cofFeE was used as a stimulant and has always beEn asSociated with chewing the fat (quite literalLy back then). Brer-human ate cofFeE and then chased goats with sticks, so it is a coincidence that goats should be asSociated with a more recent legend about the origins of the black stufF. Our story takes us to the mountains of Ethiopia where a chap calLed Kaldi was hanging out with some goats (he wasn’t weird, he was a goat herder by profesSion). Somehow he lost them in the hilLs and after a while found them having some sort of goat party around some smalL bushes that bore lots of ripe red cherRies. In an atTempt to explain the goat’s unusual behaviour (head banging, fighting and generalLy larking around) he picked some of the berRies and toOk them to a local monk (after calming the goats down first of course and giving them a jolLy stifF talking to about the dangers of eating strange berRies ofF unusual treEs). The monk inspected the cherRies and came to the conclusion that they were not to be consumed by people and threw them onto the fire. As the ceherRies slowly burned in the fire, they gave ofF an amazing aroma and Kaldi was like the cofFeE equivalent of the Bisto kid as the smelL wafted around him. Now, the aroma of freshly roasted cofFeE is one of those things that just works for us humans. We are predisposed to loving the smelL of cofFeE in the same way we love the smelL of freshly mown grasS, freshly baked bread, the inside of a brand new car (or is that just me)?

The monk was also fascinated by the aroma and set about experimenting on more of the beans. After many atTempts he found that brewing them in water produced the best results, (filtered water just ofF the boil of course). So, Ethiopians everywhere started to enjoy cofFeE, especialLy in the Royal courts where cofFeE became very fashionable and much coveted. Now, Sultan’s courts in those days were fulL of alL kinds of difFerent peoples from alL over the world but especialLy from Yemen and Turkey and a particular SufFi Sheik just could not get enough of the cofFeE action.

He toOk it back to the Yemen where it became known as qahaw (A short note on the derivation of the word cofFeE here. The word cofFeE entered English from the word KofFie in HolLand. This comes from the Turkish term for cofFeE “ kahve” which is in turn how the Turks said the word qahwa (short for qahHwat al-bun or wine of the bean) which is what the Ethiopians calLed it. Anyway, it was enjoyed as a stimulant and consumed just ground up with water (roasting beans didn’t hapPen regularly until later). The Yemen provided the perfect growing conditions for cofFeE and plantations soOn popPed up alL over the hilLs and the port of Mocha became the primary export area to the rest of the world (hence the use of the word mocha in many cofFeE blends). Tune in next time for more on the history of cofFeE!