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Fact:  Coffee is consumed more than any beverage, anywhere in the world.

What made coffee the coveted drink that it is today? And where, or rather what ancient land, first figured out that coffee was such a great thing?  Who were the original coffee geeks? Who made the first great cup of coffee? When and where did the first coffee shop open its doors?

Let me rain on your parade immediately: No one knows the a lot of the facts, exactly but we have a pretty good idea. However, that original fact holds true:  Coffee is the most consumed beverage in the world.

The First Coffee Geeks: Humble Beginnings

Coffee popped in traces and some evidence in Abyssinia and the Red Sea area around 700 A.D. Some African people were also using the coffee berry (bean) pulp very early in history for native rituals and constitution.  (That’s health if you have never played Dungeons and Dragons.)

Then something great happened for coffee.  People of the Arabian peninsula started cultivate it around 1100 A.D.  Boom!  Coffee’s popularity explosion takes root! How did it get there in the first place?  Ships probably…who the hell really knows.  Why does it matter?  It got there, didn’t it?

Arabs began to brew a drink that they called “gawha”–again, it doesn’t matter–which was used to fight drowsiness by roasting and boiling the bean. The first caffeine rush! It became the Arabian signature drink of the native peoples.  It’s a great thing we’re experiencing here.

Around 1200 A.D. someone figured out you could make a delicious drink out of the beans.  Instead of being used for rituals and medicine it started to become a leisure beverage. And coffee’s popularity grew and grew and grew.

Arabs started to travel with the drink and it caught on almost everywhere it went. It eventually ended up in India, North Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, and around 1400 A.D. Yemen began to heavily cultivate it. However, the Arabs didn’t want another people to cultivate the bean because they saw the lucrative possibilities in this new drink. But, c’mon, you can’t keep a bean hostage forever.

Eventually, the beans were smuggled out by some keen ploy.  Yuck…wonder where they hid them?

Ancient Coffee Shops Sprout Up

Constantinople, 1475 A.D.-The first coffee shop, which we know was called “Kiv Han”.  Then in 1554 A.D. two more pop up in Turkey. It worked out well.  People started to gather in these places to chill out with each other, listen to music, play games and drink the coffee!

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