Portal:Coffee
The Coffee Portal
Coffee | Drinks | Coffeehouses | Companies | Culture | Preparation | Production
Introduction
Coffee is a beverage brewed from roasted, ground coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It has the highest sales in the world market for hot drinks.
Coffee production begins when the seeds of the Coffea plant's fruits (coffee cherries) are separated to produce unroasted green coffee beans. The beans are roasted and then ground into fine particles. Coffee is brewed from the ground roasted beans, which are typically steeped in hot water before being filtered out. It is usually served hot, although chilled or iced coffee is common. Coffee can be prepared and presented in a variety of ways (e.g., espresso, French press, caffè latte, or already-brewed canned coffee). Sugar, sugar substitutes, milk, and cream are often added to mask the bitter taste or enhance the flavor. There are also various coffee substitutes.
Though coffee is now a global commodity, it has a long history tied closely to food traditions around the Red Sea. The earliest credible evidence of coffee drinking as the modern beverage appears in modern-day Yemen in southern Arabia in the middle of the 15th century in Sufi shrines, where coffee seeds were first roasted and brewed in a manner similar to how it is now prepared for drinking. The coffee beans were procured by the Yemenis from the Ethiopian Highlands via coastal Somali intermediaries, and cultivated in Yemen. By the 16th century, the drink had reached the rest of the Middle East and North Africa, later spreading to Europe. (Full article...)
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Coffee cupping, or coffee tasting, is the practice of observing the tastes and aromas of brewed coffee. It is a professional practice but can be done informally by anyone or by professionals known as "Q Graders". A standard coffee cupping procedure involves deeply sniffing the coffee, then slurping the coffee from a spoon so it is aerated and spread across the tongue. The coffee taster attempts to measure aspects of the coffee's taste, specifically the body (the texture or mouthfeel, such as oiliness), sweetness, acidity (a sharp and tangy feeling, like when biting into an orange), flavour (the characters in the cup), and aftertaste. Since coffee beans embody telltale flavours from the region where they were grown, cuppers may attempt to identify the coffee's origin. (Full article...)
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Indian filter coffee is a coffee drink made by mixing hot milk and sugar with the infusion obtained by percolation brewing of finely ground coffee powder with chicory in a traditional Indian filter. It has been described as "hot, strong, sweet and topped with bubbly froth" and is known as filter kaapi in India. (Full article...)
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Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that the city council of Bandung in the Dutch East Indies initially met at the site of a former coffee-packing factory?
- ... that a Vancouver TV station was intended to stop the "$1,500 cup of coffee"?
- ... that Arab Coffeehouse depicts Henri Matisse's visit to Tangier, where he saw its locals gaze for hours into fishbowls?
- ... that the Chronicle of the 20th Century was so heavy that it was said to be "the first coffee table book seriously to threaten the well-being of coffee-tables"?
- ... that the Claudia Quintet was born out of an incident at alt.coffee?
- ... that actor Tatsunari Kimura ate pancakes and drank coffee while talking for eight hours during the filming of the television drama Old-Fashioned Cupcake?
- ... that Franz Liszt's female admirers would fight over his cigar stubs and coffee dregs as souvenirs?
- ... that Bob Dylan poked Emmylou Harris when he wanted her to start singing during the recording of "One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)"?
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- WikiProject Agriculture
- WikiProject Beer
- WikiProject Food and Drink
- WikiProject Spirits (semi-active)
- Wikiproject Wine (semi-active)
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- WikiProject Breakfast (inactive)
- Wikiproject Bacon (inactive)
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Web resources
- World Coffee Research – a 501 (c)(5) nonprofit program of the international coffee industry. (Wikipedia article: World Coffee Research)
- Coffee Research Foundation – based in Kenya, and founded in 1908
- Central Coffee Research Institute – based in Chickmagalur District, India, and founded in 1915