Recipe Articles - Coffee

Many people simply cannot start their morning without a cup of coffee. The country that consumes the most coffee is the United States. They import between 16 and 20 million bags of coffee annually. That is a lot of coffee, but not when you consider that almost 70% of the population drinks coffee and a typical coffee drinker has 3.5 cups a day.

Popularity

Coffee is so popular that Starbucks, undoubtedly the most popular coffeehouse in America, held its first annual National Coffee Break on March 15, 2006.

Who drinks coffe?

For two hours that morning, over 7,500 Starbucks stores served free coffee to customers. Did you know that all the coffee is grown around the equator between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn? Hawaii is the only state in America where coffee is grown for commercial use. Finding Kona coffee in stores may be difficult, but you may be able to purchase Kona Blends. This is a combination of Kona and a Brazilian or Columbian coffee.

Where and how?

It may take as long as five years for a coffee bean to flower. When it does, it produces what is called coffee cherries. Each usually contains two coffee beans, but if it only contains one, it is called a peaberry. The coffee cherries can be processed either through the wet method (where they set in water for 2 – 4 days to ferment and the skin and pulp are washed away) or through the dry method (where the skin and pulp are removed by hand). There are additional steps to processing that may be taken such as sorting, roasting, polishing, storing, aging, decaffeination (if the coffee is to be decaf), and grading. Coffee is graded based on three attributes: bean quality, quality of preparation, and size of bean.

Main coffee sellers

Some of the largest sellers of coffee in the United States are Nestle, Sara Lee, and Kraft Foods Inc. Kraft Foods Inc. produces Maxwell House, Sara Lee produces Superior Coffee, and Proctor and Gamble produce Folgers. Nestle was the producer of the first commercially victorious soluble coffee.

Choice of coffee

Once the coffee makes it to the stores, you have several choices. You can purchase ground coffee or you can purchase whole bean coffee and grind it yourself. The amount of time you grind the coffee determines its strength. For example, if you want a mild cup of coffee, grind the coffee beans between 5 and 10 seconds. Grinding the beans up to 25 seconds will produce a stronger cup of coffee.

Coffee has been consumed in some form since 600 AD and judging by America’s love affair with it, it will be consumed for many more years to come.