20 Fascinating Facts About Coffee

If you love coffee, you probably ensure that you experience that distinctive taste every day. You will know exactly how you like to take your coffee and which coffee roast you prefer.

But have you ever wondered when coffee was discovered, just how much coffee is drunk around the world or who invented instant coffee?

Here are 20 fascinating facts about coffee that might surprise you:

1. It is thought that coffee was first discovered by 9^th century goat herders. It is said that the goats behaved strangely after eating berries from a previously unidentified shrub. Those berries turned out to be coffee beans. They were eaten by people before they were used to make drinks and those that ate them felt full of beans in every possible way!
2. Brazil is the biggest producer of coffee in the world. The country is responsible for roughly one third of all the coffee produced globally. Vietnam and Colombia are the second and third biggest producers.
3. Coffee funded the Brazilian Olympic team in 1932. The Brazilian government did not have sufficient funds to send their athletics team to the games. So, they loaded an entire ship with coffee beans to sell in California.
4. Coffee beans are technically fruits. That sounds weird, doesn’t it? Coffee beans have become known as beans due to their appearance, but they are actually the seeds of the bush.
5. There are two types of coffee bean used for crafting drinks: Robusta and Arabica. The latter boasts lower acidity and a smoother taste. Robusta delivers a more bitter flavour.
6. Simply smelling coffee can wake you up. Research suggests that the just aroma of coffee can wake you up or keep you awake for longer. You don’t actually need to drink the coffee but once you have smelt it, how could you resist? The power of coffee’s aroma did not inspire the phrase “wake up and smell the coffee”. That was the brainchild of Nescafé marketers and featured in an advertising campaign. The phrase was further popularized by Ann Landers, an advice columnist.
7. Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world after petroleum. It is thought that 25 million farmers and workers are involved in global coffee production.
8. Up to 500 billion cups of coffee are consumed around the world every year. Many of these drinks are purchased as takeaways this leads to billions of paper cups ending up in landfill.
9. The people of Finland drink the most coffee! They drink an amazing 1,680 cups each every year. 12kg of coffee would be required to produce that many drinks.
10. The world’s most expensive coffee is that excreted by Indonesian animals called luwaks. Apparently, the digestive process of a luwak removes the bitterness from the beans and create a unique flavour. But a cup of this coffee will cost you up to $100!
11. It is possible to fatally overdose on coffee. This might sound like incredibly bad news, but you would need to consume around 100 cups of coffee to fatally poison yourself. The water in that coffee alone would be enough to kill you should you decide to drink it all at once.
12. The French philosopher Voltaire is believed to have drunk 50 cups of coffee a day. He must have spent more time drinking than philosophising!
13. Beethoven also loved his coffee. He is said to have suffered from coffee OCD and so used exactly 60 beans in every cup, counting the beans himself.
14. There could be caffeine in your decaf. For a coffee to be classed as decaf, it needs to contain less than 0.3% caffeine.
15. Caffeine from coffee features in soft drinks. When caffeine is extracted from coffee to produce decaf, that caffeine is then sold to soft drink manufacturers for use in sodas.
16. Instant coffee was invented in the UK in 1771. It was known as coffee compound but wasn’t commercially available. In 1890, New Zealander David Stang developed a ‘soluble instant coffee’ but instant coffee wasn’t offered to the public until Constant Louis Washington created his version which was frankly unpleasant. After World War I, Brazil experienced a coffee surplus and worked with Nestlé to develop an instant coffee with the aim of enhancing the appeal of the drink. So, you could say that Nescafe was the first marketable instant coffee.
17. Adding cold cream to coffee keeps the drink hotter for longer. There are several reasons why. Firstly, black coffee loses heat quicker than white coffee because of its colour. Secondly, adding cream makes coffee more viscous and so it evaporates at a slower rate. Much heat is lost through evaporation. Finally, the hotter the surface of a liquid is, the faster it radiates heat. This is known as the Stefan-Boltzmann law.
18. Coffee came close to being banned in many countries. Back in the 18^th century, several governments considered banning coffee because it was thought to inspire radical thinking. In Sweden, coffee really was banned in 1746 along with coffee-related accessories including cups and saucers!
19. The biggest cup of coffee ever made contained 22,739.14 litres of the beverage. The enormous brew was made in Colombia in 2019. It took fifty people more than 4 weeks to create the coffee. It was and remains a Guinness World Record.
20. The tongue of the coffee taster at Costa Coffee has had his tongue insured! It is insured for £10 million! He must have a very discerning and unique tongue!

So, there you have it. There’s a lot to know about coffee and it turns out that those little beans, or should we say seeds, are more interesting that you might think.  Keep visiting our blog to discover more about coffee and how to enjoy it.