About Coffee

Coffee was said to have been discovered in Abyssinia in 850 A.D. by a goatherder who noticed his goats frolicking after eating the berries from a small tree.

The first coffee shop was called Kiva Han and was opened in Constantinople in 1475.

By the year 1630, Cairo, Egypt alone had over 1,000 coffeehouses in operation.

The famous insurance company, Lloyd's of London, started as a coffee house in 1688.

In the 1700's, coffeehouses in London were known as "penny universities" because a penny was the typical coast of a cup of coffee.

During the siege of Vienna, a Viennese named Georg Franz Kolschitzky living in Turkey slipped through the Turkish lines to lead Polish forces into Vienna. For his services, he claimed 500 sacks of coffee the Turks left behind and opened the Blue Bottle, Vienna's first coffeehouse.

The French were the first to filter coffee, and developed the café au lait as we know it.
— Chris Kilham, Psyche Delicacies

The coffee plant is in the genus Coffea, family Rubiaceaea and is an evergreen, 6 to 13 feet tall, which flourishes at high altitudes.

The coffee bean begins as a coffee cherry, which is red and when the outside covering is removed there are generally two beans found inside. (When only one bean is found, it is called a peaberry.)

The coffee industry employs approximately 20 million people across the globe.

Coffee beans are like wine grapes in that they take on attributes of their soils and environments.

More than 400 billion cups of coffee are consumed each year. (We at Coffee Jones like to think we contribute more than our share to that statistic.).

The human lethal dose of caffeine is approximately 10 grams, which can be found in almost seventy 5-oz. cups of coffee. — Chris Kilham, Psyche Delicacies