Blog :: Brewing Coffee a short history part one

We believe that the first coffee 'drink' was not even made from the beans but from the outer cherry but this is not well documented and forms part of legend rather than fact.

It was in Arabia that coffee was first roasted and ground and enjoyed in the way we understand today. Here is Britain we heard reports from various travellers and adventurers of this drink:

" They have in Turkey, a drink called Coffa, made of a berry of the same name, as black as soot, and of a strong scent, but not aromatical; which they take, beaten into powder, in water, as hot as they can drink it: and they take it, and sit at it in their coffa houses, which are like our taverns. This drink comforteth the brain and heart, and helpeth digestion." From Sylva Sylvarum: or A Natural History in 10 centuries whereunto is newly added the history of naturall and experimental of life and death or of the prolongation of life. Written by Francis Bacon and published in 1658, after his death.

By the time this was published London already had its first coffee houses where the great and the lowly could mingle prompting a series of anonymously written accounts on "The Character of a Coffee House"

"A Coffee-House is a lay-conventicle, good fellowship turn'd puritan, ill husbandry in masquerade, whither people come, after toping (drinking alcohol) all day, to purchase, at the expence of their last penny, the repute of sober companions; a rota room that (like Noahs Ark) receives animals of every sort..."

The writer has even less regard for the coffee than its clientele:

"that liquor, which by its looks and taste you may reasonably guess to be Pluto's diet drink, that witches tipple out of dead mens skulls, when they ratify to Belezebub their sacremental vows"

A witches brew could aptly describe the scene in these coffee houses with a cauldron boiling away over the fire. In The Domestick Coffee-man by Humphrey Broadbent, 1722, a more straightforward description of the method:

"The common way of making this liquor in our coffee houses is to put an ounce of powder to a quart of water and so let it boil till the head is boyled down; but this is a very silly way for it is manifest by daily experience that if coffee be but very little too much boiled it is spoiled, and grows either flat or sour"

the author goes on to recommend how to make it at home:

"put the quantity of powder you intend into your pot...then pour boiling hot water upon the aforesaid powder, and let it stand to infuse five minutes before the fire. This is an excellent way, and far exceeds the common one of boiling, or this way it will sometimes remain thick and troubled after it is made, except you pour in a spoonful or two of cold water, which precipitates the more heavier parts at the bottom and makes it clear enough for drinking."

We certainly don't recommend boiling your coffee but the author's thoughts on water are interesting to say the least: " some make coffee with spring water, but it is not so good as river or Thames water because the former makes it hard, and distasteful, and the other makes it smooth and pleasant"

Whether you use spring or tap water may well depend on your location. Certainly the hard water scales up the modern coffee machine quite quickly but the first coffee making devices had yet to be developed in 1722.

In part two we will discover the first patented percolators of the 18th and 19th Centuries.

Posted on Friday, 18th November 2011

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