You take a bean and heat it. Then you crush it into powder. You then filter hot water through the powder until there is a fluid unfused with the powder. You then extract out the used up powder. You drink the resulting liquid to trigger (usually) positive changes in your brain chemistry. You have literally brewed a potion like a wizard. Coffee is literally a potion. Thus, Coffee is Magic!
I can’t take credit for this observation. It’s based on something I saw online but I think it’s funny and true.
Like all magic potions, it’s even better with eye of newt and wing of bat. Sadly, Starbucks refuses to carry those add-ons.
[aside]
What is the right term for cream, sugar, cinnamon, etc., that someone might put into their coffee? Are those properly called add-ons? Mix-ins? Condiments? Adulterants, adjuvants, ingredients, accessories? Something else?
I’ve read a articles (sorry no cites) that said that black coffee was actually healthy for you. It’s all the stuff we add to it, such as sugar and milk, that make it unhealthy, at least for some people.
However, coffee isn’t as good for you as green tea, so I drink green tea in the morning, water throughout the day, and coffee in the evening, to get the best of all worlds health-wise. YMMV.
Yes.
Long ago, I participated in a Buddhist “retreat” with my mother, at the Omega Institute in New York State, with the late, great Thích Nhất Hạnh. He taught us walking meditation and such. We appreciated all his advice and aspired to follow most of it in our lives, but when he suggested we abstain from caffeine, I whispered to my mom, “He can take my coffee out of my cold, dead hands,” and she smiled in agreement.
I’ll agree that it’s “magic-ish” when you think about it like that.
What’s also amazing, to my way of thinking, is the idea that someone, somewhere, at some point in time, was the first person to make coffee. Now, this comes from a guy who hasn’t researched the history of coffee, but I doubt very much that this person just happened to look at a bowl of coffee beans and thought, “I wanna make a beverage out of that.” You just can’t get there from here, as far as I can tell. I’d suppose there were some intermediate steps along the way that gradually developed into the discovery that you could grind these things up and filter hot water through them and end up with something you’d want to drink. But still.
The excellent animated show The Dragon Prince has a character reference drinking her “hot brown morning potion,” and we regularly refer to coffee (or sometimes tea) by this name.
Little known fact, this is the etymology of the word ‘catastrophe.’ The first guy to discover this was distraught when he realized the civets had gotten into his stash of beans. He tracked them down, but they’d already pooped out the coffee. In desperation, he brewed them anyways, and then exclaimed 'What a cat ass trophy!"
Coffee is technically the pit or seed of a fruit and not a bean.
Finland has the highest consumption rate of coffee per capita.
Before being roasted and brewed, coffee “beans” were mixed with other fruits or meat and eaten by the East Africans who discovered this wonderful plant. This was around 800AD. BTW: Goats were responsible for showing that the coffee fruit was both edible and had the effect of making the goats energetic.
Caffeine has evolved independently in several groups of plants - coffee, cacao (chocolate), and tea. It serves as an insecticide deterring bugs from eating the plants, and the odor seems to attract pollinators.
Tea-like potions can be, and are, made from the sticky pithy part of the overall coffee berry. Termed a “coffee cherry” in the biz. That stuff tastes very little like ordinary coffee. But might well have been a gateway discovery on the way to roasting, grinding, and steeping the pits.
I’ve embraced the cold brew method of coffee alchemy. Every 3 or so days I brew up about a gallon of the stuff, which the Mrs. and I consume avidly each morning. The resultant product is much less bitter than that made by standard hot brewing.
The Mrs. and I do prefer it cold, over ice, even in cold weather most of the time. But we on occasion do warm it up for guests who prefer it that way. A brief period in the microwave suffices.
