Some interesting coffee facts

We listed some remarkable facts about coffee on this page.

 

Coffee Trivia

• 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.
• In December 2001 Brazil produced a scented postage stamp to promote its coffee - the smell should last between 3 and 5 years. 
• 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.