Drive down just about any street in the United States and you will spot people holding coffee cups walking into their place of employment or just on a lazy morning stroll. With specialty coffee shops strategically tucked in our business districts, one would think coffee has always been in the United States, but this ever growing trend is not an original American idea.
It is believed that the first coffee trees were found in Ethiopia. Several urban legends surround the discovery of the coffee bean the most familiar being a farmer who watched his goats eating the beans, and out of curiosity, ingested one and was impressed with the surge of energy the bean produced – but cannot be substantiated. But what we do know is that coffee beans found its way through the Arabian Peninsula that led to Yemen and Arabia. Yemen was the first area to cultivate the coffee bean. From there, it made its way to Turkey, where coffee beans were first roasted and then crushed and boiled in water, producing a very primitive version of the coffee we drink today.
Trade merchants brought coffee to Europe, and it quickly took off. Coffee houses popped up rampantly, and were the sites of...