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Read more about European coffee in part 4
By now, we've taken a brief tour of the history of coffee and its origins. Among our findings, we've learned about the many times that men attempted to ban coffee with their positions of power. We've discovered how consuming coffee went from being a religious pursuit to, later, a political act, as well as its tendency to incite gender wars with accusations of its effects on fertility. We've waded in the espresso that is European coffee culture, and now, we've arrived at the final part of our History of Coffee series - American Coffee.
Today, Americans drink about 400 million cups of coffee per day out of the 2.25 billion consumed globally. But, coffee wasn't always popular in the United States. Even after the Boston Tea Party, it took time for Americans to train their palates to replace tea with coffee. The Civil War helped increase coffee consumption, as soldiers relied on caffeine for a much-needed energy boost. While Americans' love for coffee may have started much later than the majority of the world, they adore coffee just as much, if not more, considering the United States is the number one importer of coffee today.
Experimental “cakes” of instant coffee were rationed to soldiers during the Civil War, thus creating an instance of the first instant coffee. A Japanese-American chemist named Satori Kato created the first successful method of instant coffee in 1901 before the Belgian-born American inventor, George Constant Louis Washington, came up with his own process. Washington made it commercial in 1910. Instant coffee was popular during the first and second world wars, well into the 1960s, as its flavors and processes expanded.
Coffee had become a global commodity by the late-1800s. Entrepreneurs were looking for new ways to profit from the pick-me-up. In 1864, brothers John and Charles Arbuckle purchased Englishman Jabez Burns’ recent invention, the self-emptying coffee bean roaster. The Arbuckle brothers began selling pre-roasted coffee in paper bags by the pound, finding great success with the cowboys of the American West. It wasn’t long before James Folger followed suit, selling coffee to the California gold miners, leading the way for several other big-name coffee producers, including Maxwell House.
President Theodore Roosevelt was rumored to consume a gallon of coffee each day! Additionally, he is credited for having coined Maxwell House’s famous “Good to the Last Drop” slogan after drinking it at Andrew Jackson’s home in Tennessee.
An awareness for specialty coffee grew, inspiring the opening of the first Starbucks in Seattle in 1971. Today, the grassroots coffee movement continues to develop with the steady opening of independently-owned cafés boasting sustainable, locally roasted, fair-trade coffee beans. Coffee has become an artistic craft, valued for its complexity and variety. Much like wine, terroir and climate heavily influence coffee flavors.
What Americans drink their coffee out of has become almost as important as how it tastes and where it's roasted. While America has no qualms with disposable, on-the-go coffee containers, some swear that coffee tastes better when drunk from their favorite mug.
The Victor Insulator Company of New York designed the traditional coffee mug as we know it today. Wartime called for strong, thick-walled cups with insulation and extra weight to prevent falling while being used on warships. The bottoms, too, were made extra rough to prevent sliding. As a result, this iconic diner mug became the gold standard.
Whether your go-to is an 8 oz ceramic mug etched with one's favorite saying, a stainless steel travel mug for those particularly rough commutes, or an Art Deco-inspired work of art with a wooden handle and a lid, American coffee connoisseurs take their java and its paraphernalia seriously. And why shouldn't they? It took long enough for the beans to reach the New World, after all. This historical fact might be the catalyst for why American coffee culture is associated with speed and quantity rather than relaxation and enjoyment.
Today, America's approach to coffee seems to resemble early morning "self-medication" rather than a casual drink. We all know that one person who can't seem to function properly without their first cup of Joe. We might even be that person. Some would argue that this is a culprit brought on by an overworked capitalist-centric society, and others would say it's merely due to coffee's chemically addictive nature. No matter how you look at it, American coffee culture differs greatly from that of Europeans, and it's sure to evolve like those berries eaten by an Ethiopian shepherd's goats.
