By Jane M Bell
The goats, goatherds and monks responsible for the discovery of the new stimulant coffee, had no idea of just how popular their find would become. Before the 10th century coffee was commonly found growing wild in Arabia and Abyssinia (today called Ethiopia).
Word spread quickly amongst nomadic tribes of the region. At first the regional peoples would just chew on the bitter coffee leaves and/or eat the sweet fruit of the coffee cherries; seeds and all. They quickly became fond of the stimulating effects of coffee’s caffeine.
The Abyssinian and Arab natives soon invented the first coffee “to go.” Since the beloved coffee trees weren’t always growing in regions were they needed to travel, the creative coffee fans would take the ripe coffee cherries, mash them up and mix them with animal fat. This made a nice energy snack for them to take on their long trips. When not on the road, another way they would enjoy coffee came from crushing and cold brewing the coffee cherries.
Around AD 1000 Arabs discovered how to boil water. This opened up a lot of possibilities for coffee consumption. Tea was made by pouring boiling water over the cherries and leaves. The Fermentation of the coffee cherry pulp resulted in a “coffee” wine. And a sweet beverage called kisher was made by slightly roasting the coffee cherry husk and creating a drink from them.
As a matter of fact, it took some 600 years from Kaldi and his dancing goats for coffee to take on a form that we would find familiar today. Around the 16th century folks started roasting coffee beans. They would then crush them and brew up the coffee in boiling water. Coffee finally had a form that eventually would become common in every corner of the planet!
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