Come the 1700s and coffee not only spreads successfully in other parts of the world but continues to shape the face of history and influence cultures on a deep level.
Advertisement:
The next major discovery to coffee making after the discovery of coffee itself came from the French who developed a new way of making coffee. They grounded it, enclosed it in a linen bag and submersed it under hot water to infuse until the coffee came out a strong enough brew. This was one of the major coffee preparation breakthroughs off all times.
- Coffee starts to be prepared differently in 1710 in France. Others follow in the French men’s footsteps.
- In 1714 a coffee sampling from Java was planted in Paris in the royal Jardin des Plantes where King Louis XIV of France often stops to admire it.
- More than 2000 coffee houses are known to exist in and around London in 1715.
- The year is 1720 when Café Florian, open today still, starts catering to Venetians with a variety of coffee drinks.
- Ten years after the planting of the coffee sampling in the Jardin des Plantes, a French naval officer steals a sampling of the now full-grown tree and takes it to the Caribbean, from where the coffee plant spreads to various other islands, and also Central and South America.
- In 1725, the French naval officer’s treachery led to coffee harvests so successful that King Louis awards the thief and makes him governor of the Antilles.
- Coffee is brought to Brazil in 1727 by Colonel Francisco de Melo Palheta who seduces the wife of the French Guyana governor, who provides him with fertile coffee seedlings, thus helping Brazil become the largest coffee producer in the world in the following years, which it still is today.
- Jamaica knows coffee in 1730 when the British transport it here and cultivate the plant at the foothills of St. Andrew. This initial start eventually gave the world Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee.
- In 1732 Bach composes the humorous “Coffee Cantata”.
- In 1773 drinking of coffee over thrones drinking of tea and the first becomes something of a patriotic duty.
- Coffee plantation starts in Hawaii in 1817, although to no success, not until 1825.
- The first coffee percolator is invented in France in 1818.
- In 1822 an even bigger invention is promoted the espresso machine.
- The J. A. Folger Coffee Company is founded in 1860, pioneers of coffee and today among the 5 top selling coffee brands in the United States.
- In 1864 the original Burns coffee roaster is patented in the U.S.
- John Arbuckle becomes the largest importer of coffee in the world in the 1870s.
- In 1886 Maxwell House coffee hits America when Joel Cheek renames his new coffee blend after the Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee.
- In 1900 vacuum-packaged coffee is invented when R. W. Hills invents vacuum tins. Instant coffee also comes around the same time.
- Tipo Gigante, the first commercial espresso machine, is patented in 1901 to Luigi Bezzera who presumably invented it to speed up the coffee breaks of his employees.
- Decaffeinated coffee is discovered in 1903.
- In 1905 Desiderio Pavoni purchases the patent for Tipo Gigante and improves the machine, setting a new standard for all the other espresso machines manufactured thereon.
- The coffee filter is created in 1908 by Melitta Benz.
- In 1940 America imports 70% of the world’s coffee.
- In 1946 another espresso machine breakthrough is promoted. Achille Gaggia develops that which brings “crema” to the coffee and cappuccino to the world.
- In 1956 bohemian coffee shops and coffee houses in San Francisco and New York become home to free thinkers, intellectuals, and artists who set the stage for many of the 1960s cultural and political changes.
- Specialty coffee is introduced in America by Dutch-American citizen Alfred Peet.
- In 1971 the first Starbucks opens in Seattle, and it sells only fresh roasted coffee beans.
- The world’s best selling coffee maker – the automatic drip home coffee maker is invented in 1972.
- In 1987 Starbucks begins selling coffee-based drinks.
- Today coffee stands as the second most traded good in the world. The first is oil.