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Coffee History
Coffee has a very interesting historical timeline. The primary species of coffee, Coffea arabica, originated in Ethiopia and migrated to the rich coffee belts of Brazil, Columbia and other countries located between latitudes of 25 degrees North and 30 degrees South. The word coffee is most likely derived from its early shipping point, Kaffa.
The coffee percolator comes to us from England, however "drip pot" was a term in the American language since the late 1800's.
James Sanborn and Caleb Chase produced the first commercially available ground coffee in sealed cans in 1878.
Standard American coffee blends came to us from the Maxwell House hotel in Nashville, TN, where it became extremely popular in the 1880's.
The Maxwell House slogan "good to the last drop" came from President Theodore Roosevelt's declaration in 1907.
Powdered coffees date back to the eighteenth century, but did not become popular until 1901 when instant coffee was introduced by Satorie Kato at the Buffalo Pan American Exposition. It was later marketed as Nescafé® in 1939.
The decaffeination process was developed by Dr. Ludwig Roselius of Bremen, Germany. The process requires either water processing or chemical solvents like ethyl acetate to remove caffeine. The General Foods company first put the push behind decaffeinated coffee in the 1930s with their Sanka® product, named from the french sans (meaning without) caffeine. Today, about 22% of coffee consumed in America is decaffeinated.
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