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Thursday, December 19, 2013

Coffee: Fun Facts About This Popular Beverage

By Debrah Elliot


For coffee lovers, there is nothing better than their cup of fresh morning coffee. This rich drink, whether it is served up black or mixed with cream and sugar, is one of the most popular beverages on Earth. Here are a few fun facts about coffee that might be of interest to you.

It's worth noting that coffee beans are not actually beans at all and, in fact, they grow on trees. The trees produce red berries, the green seeds in the middle of the berries are removed, and these seeds are roasted and the end result are the "beans" that we grind and use to make our daily cup of coffee. Hawaii is the only state in the United States that produces coffee, and all of the world's coffee trees grow in areas in between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer.

Coffee is known by many interesting slang terms, some of the funniest include go juice and legal addictive stimulant, but some of the most common nicknames are Joe and Java. The etymology of Joe is subject of much debate, although many historians believe Joe is an amalgam of Java and Mocha, two areas where coffee is grown. Java is an island in Indonesia, and while Brazil is the world's biggest producer of coffee, Java was perhaps the most popular coffee producer during the 1700s and 1800s, so calling coffee "Java" became popular during this time, even if the coffee came from another region.

Some songs are about love, others about losing love, and still others are about coffee. That's right, there are many songs about coffee, sung by some of the biggest names in the history of modern music, including Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. But even classical music has its own share of coffee-centric tunes. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote an entire cantata about his love of coffee, and among the lyrics Bach discusses his thought that without three cups of coffee each day, he will most certainly shrivel up like a roasted goat. That might seem a bit extreme, but the man really loved his coffee.

Many of the world's great authors and statesman have been huge fans of coffee. Thomas Jefferson believed that it was the finest drink in the civilized world, and Theodore Roosevelt drank about one gallon of coffee each day. Voltaire was said to consume a huge amount of coffee each day, as many as 40 or more cups. When he wasn't writing poems about old cats and the end of the world, T.S. Eliot drank coffee. Eliot drank so much coffee that he mused that his life was measured with coffee spoons.

If you are searching for the best cup of coffee in Los Angeles, consider taking a trip to Culver City and visiting Island Monarch Coffee. The proprietors take coffee very seriously, shipping in fresh green beans directly from Kona, Hawaii and South America. The beans aren't roasted until they reach Los Angeles, and each coffee drink features freshly ground beans and water that has been filtered seven times to ensure purity.




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