Meridian Coffee House

Did You Know….

27% of U.S. coffee drinkers and 43% of German drinkers add a sweetener to their coffee?
Germany is the world’s second largest consumer of coffee in terms of volume at 16 pounds per person.
Up until the 1870’s most coffee was roasted at home in a frying pan over a charcoal fire. It wasn’t until recent times that batch roasting became popular.

An acre of coffee trees can produce up to 10,000 pounds of coffee cherries. That amounts to approximately 2,000 pounds of beans after hulling or milling.

When coffee reached Rome., priests attacked it and forbid it consumption. The priests believed that the coffee was the drink of the devil and that Satan had invented the drink for the Moslem infidels as a substitute for the wine they were forbidden to drink. Since wine in the Western Christian world was sanctified by Christ and used in Holy communion, coffee must then be of the Anti-Christ.  If a Christian drank this devil brew they would risk eternal damnation is how the argument went.

In the late 1500’s, Pope Clement VIII settled the dispute. He asked that the brew be brought before him. Intrigued by its powerful aroma, he sipped the coffee. It was delicious. The Pope blessed the coffee, and baptized it on the spot. He reasoned that banishing this drink from the Christian world would be a larger sin. With the Pope’s blessing, imports of coffee to Italy and the Western world came flooding in paving the way for the first western coffee houses.

The first coffee plant of economic importance was Coffea Arabica. It grows to the height of 7-8 meters but the cultivated plants are cut to the height of 2-4 meters to get more width. The leaves of the coffee are 10-15 cm long ellipsoids, lustrous dark green with lighter underside. The flowers emerge from the branches together with the leaves.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 10:46 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.