Interesting facts about Coffee and Caffeine

For those who want to learn a little more about their favorite drink, we have put together some extremely interesting facts about coffee. Thus, when it comes to facts about coffee, pretty much everyone has something to contribute because hardly any other drink has so many stories, myths, and facts. We have selected the most exciting facts and do not want to withhold them from you any longer:

Coffee was "discovered" by goats

You heard correctly: According to the legend, coffee was actually "discovered" by goats. In fact, it was a goat named Kaldi in the 9th century in Ethiopia. He watched his goats and saw how lovely the goats got after they ate the cherries from a coffee tree. So what could be more natural for Kaldi than to try the red cherries himself? Admittedly, the story wasn't written down until the 16th century, but it's nice and sounds kind of believable.

Black Ivory Coffee - the most exclusive coffee in the whole world

For a long time the famous Kopi Luwak, also known as cat coffee, was considered the most expensive and exclusive coffee in the world. The Kopi Luwak gets its special taste from the "manufacturing process": it is created by giving the Indonesian crawl cat coffee cherries to eat. These are digested by it and excreted again. The indigestible coffee beans are now extracted from the remains of the crawling cat. The very complex manufacturing process makes cat coffee extremely expensive.

The Black Ivory Coffee from Thailand is even more exclusive: There the idea came up to make coffee in a similar way, but with animals that can digest a “slightly” larger volume, namely with elephants!

The Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation operates a rescue and supply station in Thailand for around 30 abandoned and no longer operational working elephants. Coffee cherries are added to the feed of these elephants. The mahouts, as the local leaders of working elephants in Thailand call themselves, then look for the undigested coffee beans from the dung.

The Black Ivory Coffee created in this way is not available on the open market because it is sold exclusively to the Asian Anantara hotel chain. The elephant coffee is only available in five hotels in the Maldives and Thailand, where it can be enjoyed for just under 40 euros per cup.

The mild, lightly roasted coffee beans contain more caffeine than dark coffee beans

Contrary to popular belief, light, mild coffee roasts usually contain more caffeine than dark, hearty roasts. Why is it like that? The longer the coffee is roasted, the more caffeine dissolves from the bean under the heat. In principle, it is like cooking with wine. The longer you let it simmer, the less alcohol you will later have in your meal.

Espresso is not a bean

There is no such thing as a special espresso bean. Espresso is only the name for a certain type of preparation. To do this, you use dark roasted coffee beans and grind them very finely. Then hot water is pressed through the coffee grounds at high pressure. If you do it right, the result is a concentrated coffee with a thick, brown crema. Due to the long roast, espresso contains less caffeine than normal filter coffee.

Coffee is a cherry

That's right, red cherry fruits grow on coffee trees or bushes. Thus, the actual coffee bean is the seed that is in the cherry. If the coffee bean were not so desirable and tasty, then you could perhaps buy the coffee cherry as a whole fruit in the fruit store, because it is a delicious tart-sweet cherry that reminds a little of the taste of honey, peach, and watermelon.

Coffee was forbidden

Coffee has been banned several times in different cultures in the course of history. The governor of Mecca closed all coffee houses in 1511 because he saw them as places of moral decline. Only after thirty years of dispute between the scholars was the ban lifted by the Sultan of Cairo. 

In 1675 the English King Charles II tried to ban coffee and coffee houses. In doing so, he encounters great resistance from the population and triggers a rebellion, so that in the end he is unable to implement his plan. The Prussian King Frederick the Great finally banned the import of coffee in 1677. He feared that the rapidly growing coffee consumption at the time could displace traditional local products such as malt or barley. State propaganda tried to stigmatize coffee as a despicable fad and superfluous luxury.

George Washington invented instant coffee

You read that right, but it was not the first American president, but his Anglo-Belgian namesake George Constant Louis Washington who invented instant coffee.

Washington, who emigrated to New York in 1897, was not the actual inventor, but around 1908 he was the first to develop a process for producing instant coffee on an industrial scale. With that, he was very successful commercially. During the First World War, the US Army bought the "G. Washington Coffee Refining Company 'sells its entire instant coffee production. This ensured that the soldiers at the front in Europe did not have to do without their “Cup of George”.

The Japanese scientist Satori Kato from Chicago is considered to be the inventor of the first instant coffee. However, he never succeeded in developing his process, patented in 1901, into a commercially successful product.

There are over fifty different types of coffee

Normally we consumers only know two types of coffee: Arabica and Robusta, because only these are normally used for coffee production and together makeup practically 100% of the world market. In fact, over fifty different types of coffee are known. So if you ever get the very rare opportunity to try a coffee that is not made from the usual varieties, please make sure to take it!

Second most important commodity in the world

After crude oil, coffee is the most important commodity in the world. The coffee beans are grown in 80 countries around the world in a total area of around 11 million hectares. Around 25 million people work in the cultivation, processing, or distribution of coffee. Around 55 million sacks of 60 kilograms of green coffee are produced every year.