Trivia
101
(76-100)
76. Hawaii features an annual Kona Festival, coffee picking contest. Each year the winner
becomes a state celebrity.
77. In Hawaii coffee is harvested between November and April.
78. Over 5 million people in Brazil are employed by the coffee trade. Most of those are
involved with the cultivation and harvesting of more than 3 billion coffee plants.
79. Before roasting, some green coffee beans are stored for years, and experts believe
that certain beans improve with age, when stored properly.
80. The vast majority of coffee available to consumers are blends of different beans.
81. Coffee is generally roasted between 400F and 425F. The longer it is roasted, the
darker the roast. Roasting time is usually from ten to twenty minutes.
82. After they are roasted, and when the beans begin to cool, they release about 700
chemical substances that make up the vaporizing aromas.
83. Over-roasted coffee beans are very flammable during the roasting process.
84. After the decaffeinating process, processing companies no longer throw the caffeine
away; they sell it to pharmaceutical companies.
85. Commercially flavored coffee beans are flavored after they are roasted and partially
cooled to around 100 degrees. Then the flavors applied, when the coffee beans' pores are
open and therefore more receptive to flavor absorption.
86. Studies tell us the human body will absorb only 300 milligrams of caffeine at a given
time. Additional amounts are cast off and will provide no additional stimulation. The
human body dissipates 20% of the caffeine in the system each hour.
87. Roasted coffee beans start to lose small amounts of flavor within two weeks. Ground
coffee begins to lose its flavor in one hour. Brewed coffee and espresso begins to lose
flavor within minutes.
88. The first coffee drinkers, the Arabs, flavored their coffee with spices during the
brewing process.
89. Iced coffee in a can has been popular in Japan since 1945.
90. Fruit-based flavors all mix well with coffee.
91. Irish cream and Hazelnut are the most popular whole bean coffee flavorings.
92. Latte' is the Italian word for milk. So if you request a latte' in Italy, you'll be
served a glass of milk.
93. Turkey began to roast and grind the coffee bean in the 13th Century, and
some 300 years later, in the 1500's, the country had become the chief distributor of
coffee, with markets established in Egypt, Syria, Persia, and Venice, Italy.
94. In the later part of the 1600's, a cafe in Venice began serving beverages made from
water and ice. It also served roasted coffee.
95. Coffee as a medicine reached its highest and lowest point in the 1600's in England.
Wild medical contraptions to administer a mixture of coffee and an assortment of heated
butter, honey, and oil, became treatments for the sick. Soon tea replaced coffee as the
national beverage.
96. In the book, Trip Through Happy Arabia, a Frenchman documented his travels through
Arabia. This was in the year 1716, and in it was one of the first documentations of the
history of coffee.
97. About 1885, a process by which natural gas heats a roasting chamber and hot air is the
only heating medium was developed, and this remains the best and most popular method of
roasting coffee.
98. Regular coffee drinkers have about one-third less asthma symptoms than those
non-coffee drinkers. So says a Harvard researcher who studied 20,000 people.
99. Australians consume 60% more coffee than tea, a sixfold increase since 1940.
100. The most widely accepted legend associated to the discovery of coffee is of the
goatherder named Kaldi of Ethiopia. Around the year 800-850 A.D., Kaldi was amazed as he
noticed his goats behaving in a frisky manner after eating the leaves and berries of a
coffee shrub. And, of course, he had to try them!
