The Fabulous World Of Coffee

So, we are all fans of a cup of joe or that daily trip by the local java joint, but where did these terms come from? While modern coffee slang includes phrases like half-caff and venti latte, some coffee related terms predate today’s coffee obsessed culture. Coffee is more than just a beverage, and has now become a cultural phenomenon with its own slang, lingo and more.

Java specifically refers to coffee beans produced on the island of Java in Indonesia. Java coffee beans typically have a light, clean flavor. The Dutch first began growing coffee beans on the island of Java in the 17th century and exporting them from there. In Indonesia, the phrase kopi jawa refers to a strong sweet coffee brew with powdered grains added to it. Java began to be widely used as a nickname for coffee in 1850. The term coffee was occasionally applied to other brewed beverages, but java has always referred to coffee, albeit not necessarily good coffee.

Coffee history probably originated in the province of Kaffe, Ethiopia, but it is a hotly contended issue.  It seems that the African tribes knew of coffee since antiquity, grinding their grain and developed a paste used to feed animals and increasing the ’power’ of their warriors. The archaeological data available today suggests that coffee was not "domesticated" before the fifteenth century. In 1583, Leonard Rauwolf, a German doctor was the first westerner describe the beverage. According to coffee history timelines, the first coffee shop, Kiva Han, opened in 1475 in Constantinople.

Coffee reached Europe around the year 1600, thanks to the Venetian merchants, the drink was well received by monks because it helped them to keep awake and keep the ‘spirit clean’. In 1650, a Muslim pilgrim, Baba Budan travelled to India, and planted coffee in Mysore those plants descendants still exist today. Coffee was particularly popular with German Protestants, but they did not drink it, they took it as snuff. By 1611 some wealthy Germans launched campaign to ban its use, which lasted 100 years until Frederick II of Prussia decriminalized its use, but subjecting it to a heavy tax. In southern and western Europe there was greater tolerance. In the decade from 1650 it began to be very imported and consumed in England, and cafes opened in Oxford and London, the first in 1652.