Z. Ah! Oh the coffee! You drive away all my troubles, you are the drink of the thinker's dreams. Coffee is a drink that is a friend of God. - Arabic poem Ode to Coffee (1511)
Why on earth would our husband be hot-headed, spending both time and money to drink so much black, thick, smelly and dirty muddy water? - Women's Anti-Coffee Petition (1674)
Coffee is nothing more than a small fruit with two seeds growing in pairs. From your point of view or according to your height, the coffee tree found under the canopy of the Ethiopian rainforest (where coffee originates) is nothing more than a small shrub that grows on a high hillside. The leaves of the coffee tree are evergreen, glossy oval in shape, and like the seeds, rich in caffeine.
However, coffee has made a huge industry, one of the most valuable agricultural products in the world, and what is even more surprising is that the caffeine rich in coffee is the most widely used psychotropic drug in the world. Coffee has come out of its African origins, circled the globe, and is widely grown in the plains and mountains between the Tropic of Cancer.
The beans are roasted, ground and then brewed into a hot drink, and finally presented to people a feast of sweet and bitter, a race of thinking and a comfortable social experience. In a variety of situations, people use coffee as an aphrodisiac, enema, neurostimulant, and even an elixir of immortality.
Globally, 125 million people depend on coffee in every form for their livelihoods. It is incredible that the coffee crop carries such a dense labor force. Coffee farmers sow coffee seeds with their rough hands, care for the coffee seedlings under the canopy of shady trees, then transplant the growing coffee trees onto the hillside, plant them in rows, then prune, fertilize, spray insecticides, irrigate, harvest, and finally drag 200 pounds of coffee cherries to the processing plant for money. Then, the workers of the processing plant according to the complex processing process, remove the pulp and mucus outside the coffee beans, and then spread the coffee beans, dry for several days, or heat and dry in the blower, the seed coat and silver skin on the coffee beans will fall off, which forms the coffee green beans, packaged into bags, can be transported, marketed worldwide, and then roasted, ground, and finally brewed a delicious cup of coffee drinks.
These repetitive workers, while most of them work in beautiful environments, make an average of $3 a day. Most of them live in poverty, lacking the most basic water, electricity, medical facilities, and lack of food. Yet the coffee they produce is found on breakfast tables, offices and high-consumption cafes in the United States, Europe, Japan and other developed countries, where consumers around the world pay for a cappuccino, usually as much as coffee workers in Third World countries earn for a day.
Coffee exporters, importers and roasters also make money from coffee, but do not need to stay in the country of origin of the coffee. Importers and exporters are crazy traders in coffee exchanges, they make all kinds of gestures and screams in the exchanges, they have never seen the most primitive form of coffee beans, but they price the coffee beans as a commodity. There are also professional coffee cup surveyors, just like sommeliers, who spend their time tasting coffee, taking a sip, and then letting the coffee flow in the mouth, tasting it with the tip of their tongue, staying for a few seconds and then spitting it out, and then seeing if there is any aftertaste in the mouth. In addition, there are retailers, coffee machine suppliers, marketers, advertising copywriters and consultants.
The quality of coffee depends first and foremost on the coffee tree species, the soil environment and the altitude at which it is planted. Everything from planting to production can be disrupted. Coffee beans easily absorb the smells and flavors of their surroundings. Excessive humidity can cause the coffee to mold. Too little roasting can lead to insufficient roasting of coffee and bitter taste; over-roasting, coffee will drink like coke. Roasted coffee that is not drunk within a week can quickly spoil and become fresh. The brewing temperature is too high, or the brewed coffee is heated at a high temperature, which will affect the taste of a good cup of coffee and make it taste like a cup of black bitter water juice.
How should the quality of coffee be evaluated? Coffee experts believe that the combination of four basic elements to make a perfect cup of coffee: aroma, alcohol thickness, acidity and flavor. We are all familiar with the aroma of coffee, and the aroma is crucial to coffee, and the aroma that smells often conveys the essence of a cup of coffee better than the taste taste. Alcohol thickness refers to the sensation of coffee in the mouth, sliding over the tip of the tongue, and falling into the throat, or the amount of coffee felt when it is in the mouth. Acidity is a vibrant, bright and intense taste that adds color to a cup of coffee. The last element is flavor, a very subtle taste after the entrance, fleeting, but it leaves a memory on the taste buds, which is endlessly evocative. Coffee experts become utter poets when describing these elements. For example, coffee fan Kevin Knox once wrote: "Sulawesi coffee is simply the perfect combination of butter caramel sweetness, local herbs and the unique flavors of the fertile land." ”
The taste experience of coffee may be poetic, but the history of coffee is full of controversies and political overtones. In Arab countries and Europe, coffee was banned as the initiator of the revolution. Later, some people came out and attacked coffee as the world's worst health killer, and some people praised coffee as a blessing from God to mankind. Through coffee, you can see that the hinterland of the Mayan Indians in Guatemala is constantly occupied, you can see the democratic traditions of Costa Rica, and you can also see the gradual development of the barren American West. When Ugandan dictator Idi Amin brutally killed Ugandan nationals, almost all of Uganda's foreign exchange came from coffee, and the Sandinista National Liberation Front had enough money to start the revolution after it seized the coffee plantations of Nicaraguan dictator Somoza.
At first, coffee was a refreshing medicinal drink for the elite; later it gradually became a fashionable refreshing drink for the blue-collar class to rest; middle-class housewives discussed parents in the kitchen for a short time, and coffee was also a combination of romantic love, and it was also the only bitter partner for people who had lost themselves. Cafes provide a place for people to plan revolutions, write poems, do business, and meet friends. Coffee has become an essential element in Western culture, unconsciously infiltrating into many popular songs, such as: "You are as sweet as the cream in coffee", "Drink another cup of coffee with me, eat another pizza", "I love coffee, I love tea, I love Javan swing dance, Java loves me", "Just love this ancestral black coffee".
The modern coffee industry arose in the United States at the end of the 19th century, in the Gilded Age of super-capitalism. At the end of the American Civil War, Jabez Burns invented the hot air coffee roaster for efficient use in industrial coffee roasting. The production of roads, telegraphs, and assembly lines changed the way goods were distributed and communicated, and the development of newspapers, magazines, and prints made large-scale advertising a reality. Brazilians frantically planted thousands of acres of coffee trees, which eventually led to a plummet in coffee prices, and American coffee tycoons took the opportunity to try to monopolize the coffee market. Since then, the world coffee market has begun a pattern of alternating booms and busts.
In the early 20th century, coffee became an important consumer product, and advertising spread throughout the United States. In the 1920s and 1930s, multinational companies such as Standard Brands and General Foods continued to merge with other big brands and advertise with the help of broadcasts. In the 1950s, coffee became the beverage of choice for the American middle class.
The modern coffee industry also deals with broader themes: the importance of advertising, the development of large-scale production lines, urbanization, women's issues, the concentration and consolidation of the national market, the rise of supermarkets, automobiles, radio, television, ephemeral pleasures, technological innovation, cross-border mergers, market segmentation, commodity control schemes and timely inventories. The history of coffee can also be seen how the entire coffee industry lost its core value, how those small coffee roasters who just started reshaped the quality of coffee and obtained profits, and then through a new round of consolidation and mergers, large companies swallowed small companies and opened a new round of ups and downs.
The coffee industry plays an important role in the world's economic, political and social structure, and even plays a role in shaping it. On the one hand, in order to meet the demand for coffee in the powerful cultural countries, the indigenous people were oppressed and expelled, and in order to export more coffee, the indigenous people had to abandon their inherent subsistence agricultural model and grow coffee on a large scale, which eventually led to excessive dependence on foreign markets, destruction of rainforests, and environmental degradation. On the other hand, coffee provides the necessary financial resources for peasant families living in difficulty, serves as the basis for the industrialization and modernization of the country, is a model of organic crops and fair trade, and provides an important habitat for migratory birds.
The saga of coffee is an astonishing social panorama that includes the clash and fusion of cultures, the lamentations of cheap laborers, the rise of national brands, and the sacrifice of coffee quality after World War II with the price wars and the commercialization of quality products. In this panorama, there are many deviant figures who are full of boundless enthusiasm for coffee. Anything about coffee is enough to make many coffee industry people (including more and more women with a foothold in the coffee industry) stubborn, arguing, and even paranoid. These coffee industry people deny almost everything, they will argue about which is the best coffee in Ethiopia or Antigua coffee in Guatemala, they also argue about the best method of coffee roasting, and even about whether the filter press or drip filter can make the best coffee.
Today, we are witnessing a global coffee renaissance: small coffee roasters are returning to the art of sophisticated coffee mixing, and customers are returning to appreciating freshly roasted, freshly ground freshly brewed coffee and tasting espresso made from quality coffees from around the world. More and more people are buying fair trade coffee and other certified coffee to draw attention to the unfairness in the world coffee trade.
Coffee culture around the world is as widespread as religion, with not only blogs and newsgroups about coffee, but also countless websites, starbucks stores competing with other cafes and coffee chains for the market, and there is a great momentum on every street corner. However, all this only stems from the fruit seed of a shrub in Ethiopia. That's coffee. Hopefully, while enjoying coffee, you can also have fun with its complex history.