With Chorleywood set to be the centre of coffee culture in West Herts I thought we`d look at one of the world’s favourite hot drinks.
Shepherds discovered coffee in Ethiopia, legend has it that 9th century goat herders noticed goats dancing after eating coffee berries, a local monk was the first to make a drink using the berries and realised that it kept him awake at night. In 1903 Ludwig Roselius accidentally stumbled upon decaffeination when his freight of coffee beans was soaked in sea water and lost much of its caffeine without losing much taste.
In 1652 Pasqua Rosee, servant of a merchant, opened the first London coffee house in Cornhill, London – these days it’s The Jamaica Wine House pub.
Coffee houses caught on and were used to trade in, by 1663 there were 84 in London and by the C18, 600. Lloyds of London began as Edward Lloyd’s coffee house on Tower Street around 1688 where underwriters of marine insurance met to do business together.
The coffee plant grows in high altitudes in over 50 countries within 1,000 miles of the equator, Brazil is the largest world producer with 40%, then Vietnam with 20%. Coffee is the second largest export in the world after oil.
Coffee boiled is coffee spoiled, when using a cafetiere, water temperature should be 93 degrees or less, any hotter and the natural sugars in coffee will burn.
Starbucks is named after Starbuck, the coffee-loving first mate in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Italian immigrant brothers Bruno and Sergio Costa founded a coffee roastery in Lambeth in 1971. Costa branched out to selling coffee in 1978, when its first store opened in Vauxhall Bridge Road, London. By 2018 there were 2,218 making Chorleywood a grand 2219.