- When shopping for perfume, take some coffee with you in your bag and have a good sniff in between smelling each perfume to refresh your nose!
- Sprinkle spent coffee grounds around the base of your garden plants and it will stop snails and slugs from munching them!
- A mixture of coffee grounds and sugar, fed to a pot plant and watered regularly, will revive houseplants that have turned yellow in winter.
- Some of the worlds most powerful business, including Lloyds of London and the New York Stock Exchange, started life as a coffee houses.
|
![]() |
- Vincent Van Gogh was a big frequenter of the café society and famously said “I have tried to show the café as a place where one can go mad.”
- Pope Clement VIII loved coffee and authorised its use.
- Revolutions have been planned in coffee houses, namely the French and the American Revolutions.
- At the end of the 16th century records show there were at least 500 cafes in Istanbul alone. The first European cafes were opened by immigrants from Asia around 1650.
- A coffee tree has a lifespan of about 50 to 70 years.
- The coffee cherries turn from yellow to orange and then bright red, 6 – 8 months after flowering.
- When it is in bloom, the coffee tree is covered with 30,000 white flowers which begin to develop into fruit after 24 – 36 hours.
- A coffee tree can flower eight times in any one year – depending on rainfall.
- There are 900 different flavours of arabica. Complex and very volatile, they deteriorate if exposed to air and light.
- The aromas in coffee develop at the 10th minute of roasting.
- Coffee increases in volume during roasting by 18.60%.
Coffee is…
- The second most widely used product in the world after oil.
- It was worth 6 million tonnes per year in the mid 90’s.
- It is worth €30 billion per year to the producing countries.
- It is a living to more than 100 million people.
- It is consumed at the rate of 1400 million cups per day.
- The world’s second most popular drink after water.
Where did the word ‘coffee’ originate?
Kaffa? A province in Ethiopia where it was first discovered.
Kaaba? The holy building in Mecca.
Kavus Kai? A Persian king who was able to defy gravity and levitate by drinking coffee.
Kahwe? Meaning roasted in Turkish.
Cahouah? A hunger curing drink in Arabic.
Cohuet? Meaning strength or vigour in Arabic.
What the dictionary has to say about the word „Coffee”:
cof·fee
- Any of various tropical African shrubs or trees of the genus Coffea, especially C. arabica,widely cultivated in the tropics for their seeds that are dried, roasted, and ground to prepare a stimulating aromatic drink.
- The beanlike seeds of this plant, enclosed within a pulpy fruit.
- The beverage prepared from the seeds of this plant.
- A moderate brown to dark brown or dark grayish brown.
- An informal social gathering at which coffee and other refreshments are served.