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The alarm goes off, and your eyelids are still stuck together as you make your way to the kitchen for a cup of brew. The smell drives the taste buds dilly, and that first burning sip sets the morning on the right track. The people of the world, like you, love coffee. It is now a major commodity in the global markets with a booming coffee culture expanding from Ethiopia to Yemen, Europe and America and just about every place in-between. It’s part of just about everybody’s routine. But where did it all start?

It all started in Africa

Ever wonder where that coffee you make every morning comes from? Well, it’s quite an interesting story, actually. Apparently, it’s a story that can’t really be verified, but it’s romantic nonetheless. It’s said that an Ethiopian goatherd discovered coffee and its effects when he witnessed his goats go giddy after chewing red coffee berries. Not long after that there were coffee houses popping up all over the Arabic world due to traders travelling with the bean.

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At some point coffee houses became political brewing pots for dissidents and eventually were closed down until governments started taxing coffee. The bean, which now is second on the market only to commodities like petroleum, entered Europe in the early 1600s in the bags of Venetian traders around the same time tea arrived, and actually, one of the largest insurance markets in the world, Lloyd’s of London, started out as a coffee house. It wasn’t long before everyone started making coffee.

What’s to say about a cup a day?

In the beginning coffee was thought to be good for health, even containing mystical properties, but today it seems that a cup a day is good in some ways and bad in others.

Some recent research suggests that coffee can prevent dementia because it protects against damage caused by cholesterol. Some scientists fed rabbits fat for 12 days, washed down with the equivalent of a cup of coffee a day, and noticed that if Bugs Bunny drank a cup of coffee a day, while maintaining a strict high cholesterol diet, his blood brain barrier – the wall between his grey matter and his blood – would be in far better condition than that of his buddy who had the same diet, without the coffee. Coffee has been linked to lowering the risk of Alzheimer’s, which is weird because at the same time it has been linked to hallucinations, among other things. Both good and bad, it seems.

Pop around for a cup of coffee

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Every kitchen needs the fundamentals to making a good cup of coffee. There are so many home coffee machines around and amazing coffee brands to choose from that it should be easy to find a personal favourite. The perfect drink for the morning time, and even better after a nice long dinner with friends, and what’s great for the connoisseur who doesn’t like the coffee at work, a couple of cups can be on the run in portable thermos flasks. Once you get started on making coffee for quality, there’s no going back with so much to try from Arabia to Robusta and a huge range of home coffee machines from grinders to steamers and espresso machines.

Though freshly ground coffee beans, or espresso and filter coffee are the best, apparently there are instant coffee brands out there that are also very tasty. All you need is a kettle, then.

Tags: coffee, espresso machine