How Humanity Got Hooked on Coffee: An Animated History

in Food & Drink, History | March 7th, 2024

Few of us grow up drink­ing cof­fee, but once we start drink­ing it, even few­er of us ever stop. Accord­ing to leg­end, the ear­li­est such case was a ninth-cen­tu­ry Ethiopi­an goatherd named Kal­di, who noticed how much ener­gy his rumi­nant charges seemed to draw from eat­ing par­tic­u­lar red berries. After chew­ing a few of them him­self, he expe­ri­enced the first caf­feine buzz in human his­to­ry. Despite almost cer­tain­ly nev­er hav­ing exist­ed, Kal­di now lends his name to a vari­ety of cof­fee shops around the world, every­where from Addis Aba­ba to Seoul, where I live.

His sto­ry also opens the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed video above, “How Human­i­ty Got Hooked on Cof­fee.” We do know, explains its nar­ra­tor, that “at some point before the four­teen-hun­dreds, in what’s now Ethiopia, peo­ple began for­ag­ing for wild cof­fee in the for­est under­growth.” Ear­ly on, peo­ple con­sumed cof­fee plants by drink­ing tea made with their leaves, eat­ing their berries with but­ter and salt, and — in what proved to be the most endur­ing method — “dry­ing, roast­ing, and sim­mer­ing its cher­ries into an ener­giz­ing elixir.” Over the years, demand for this elixir spread through­out the Ottoman Empire, and in the full­ness of time made its way out­ward to both Asia and Europe.

In no Euro­pean city did cof­fee catch on as aggres­sive­ly as it did in Lon­don, whose cof­fee hous­es pro­lif­er­at­ed in the mid-sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry and became “social and intel­lec­tu­al hotbeds.” Lat­er, “Paris’ cof­fee hous­es host­ed Enlight­en­ment fig­ures like Diderot and Voltaire, who alleged­ly drank 50 cups of cof­fee a day.” (In fair­ness, it was a lot weak­er back then.) Pro­duc­ing and trans­port­ing the ever-increas­ing amounts of cof­fee imbibed in these and oth­er cen­ters of human civ­i­liza­tion required world-span­ning impe­r­i­al oper­a­tions, which were com­mand­ed with just the degree of cau­tion and sen­si­tiv­i­ty one might imag­ine.

The world’s first com­mer­cial espres­so machine was show­cased in Milan in 1906, a sig­nal moment in the indus­tri­al­iza­tion and mech­a­niza­tion of the cof­fee expe­ri­ence. By the mid-nine­teen-fifties, “about 60 per­cent of U.S. fac­to­ries incor­po­rat­ed cof­fee breaks.” More recent trends have empha­sized “spe­cial­ty cof­fees with an empha­sis on qual­i­ty beans and brew­ing meth­ods,” as well as cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for cof­fee pro­duc­tion using “min­i­mum wage and sus­tain­able farm­ing.” What­ev­er our con­sid­er­a­tions when buy­ing cof­fee, many of us have made it an irre­place­able ele­ment of our rit­u­als both per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al. Not to say what we’re addict­ed: this is the 3,170th Open Cul­ture post I’ve writ­ten, but only the 3,150th or so that I’ve writ­ten while drink­ing cof­fee.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

How Caf­feine Fueled the Enlight­en­ment, Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion & the Mod­ern World: An Intro­duc­tion by Michael Pol­lan

The Curi­ous Sto­ry of London’s First Cof­fee­hous­es (1650–1675)

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

“The Virtues of Cof­fee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethar­gy, Scurvy, Drop­sy, Gout & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

J.S. Bach’s Opera, “The Coffee Cantata,” Sings the Praises of the Great Stimulating Drink (1735)

in Food & Drink, Music | January 17th, 2024

From the time that a name­less genius in either Ethiopia or Yemen decid­ed to dry, crush and strain water through a berry known for mak­ing goats ner­vous and jumpy, cof­fee has been loved and wor­shiped like few oth­er bev­er­ages. Ear­ly Arab doc­tors pro­claimed the stuff to be a mir­a­cle drug. Thor­ough­ly caf­feinat­ed thinkers from Voltaire to Jonathan Swift to Jack Ker­ouac debat­ed lit­er­a­ture, phi­los­o­phy and every­thing in between at cof­fee hous­es. Author Hon­oré Balzac even report­ed­ly died because of exces­sive cof­fee drink­ing (it was either that or the syphilis.)

Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1685–1750) was also appar­ent­ly a cof­fee enthu­si­ast. So much so that he wrote a com­po­si­tion about the bev­er­age. Although known most­ly for his litur­gi­cal music, his Cof­fee Can­ta­ta (AKA Schweigt stille, plaud­ert nicht, BWV 211) is a rare exam­ple of a sec­u­lar work by the com­pos­er. The short com­ic opera was writ­ten (cir­ca 1735) for a musi­cal ensem­ble called The Col­legium Musicum based in a sto­ried Zimmerman’s cof­fee house in Leipzig, Ger­many. The whole can­ta­ta seems very much to have been writ­ten with the local audi­ence in mind.

Cof­fee Can­ta­ta is about a young viva­cious woman named Aria who loves cof­fee. Her killjoy father is, of course, dead set against his daugh­ter hav­ing any kind of caf­feinat­ed fun. So he tries to ban her from the drink. Aria bit­ter­ly com­plains:

Father sir, but do not be so harsh!
If I could­n’t, three times a day,
be allowed to drink my lit­tle cup of cof­fee,
in my anguish I will turn into
a shriv­eled-up roast goat.

Ah! How sweet cof­fee tastes,
more deli­cious than a thou­sand kiss­es,
milder than mus­ca­tel wine.
Cof­fee, I have to have cof­fee,
and, if some­one wants to pam­per me,
ah, then bring me cof­fee as a gift!

The copy­writ­ers at Star­bucks mar­ket­ing depart­ment couldn’t have writ­ten it any bet­ter. Even­tu­al­ly, daugh­ter and father rec­on­cile when he agrees to have a guar­an­teed three cups of cof­fee a day writ­ten into her mar­riage con­tract. You can watch it in its entire­ty below, or get a quick taste above. The lyrics in Ger­man and Eng­lish can be read here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

The Cof­fee Pot That Fueled Hon­oré de Balzac’s Cof­fee Addic­tion

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

The Hertel­la Cof­fee Machine Mount­ed on a Volk­swa­gen Dash­board (1959): The Most Euro­pean Car Acces­so­ry Ever Made

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Coffee Can Make Concrete 30% Stronger, a New Study Finds

in Food & Drink, Technology | October 4th, 2023

The Romans fash­ioned their build­ings with con­crete that has endured for 2,000 years. Their secret? Some researchers think it’s how the Romans heat­ed lime. Oth­ers think it’s how they used poz­zolan­ic mate­r­i­al such as vol­canic ash. Nowhere does cof­fee fig­ure into the equa­tion. Too bad.

Hap­pi­ly, researchers at the Roy­al Mel­bourne Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (RMIT) Uni­ver­si­ty have dis­cov­ered that “con­crete can be made 30% stronger by replac­ing a per­cent­age of sand with spent cof­fee grounds, an organ­ic waste prod­uct pro­duced in huge amounts that usu­al­ly ends up in land­fills,” writes New Atlas. Rajeev Roy­c­hand (above), the lead author of a study in the Jour­nal of Clean­er Pro­duc­tion, notes: “The dis­pos­al of organ­ic waste pos­es an envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenge as it emits large amounts of green­house gasses includ­ing methane and car­bon diox­ide, which con­tribute to cli­mate change. The inspi­ra­tion for our work was to find an inno­v­a­tive way of using the large amounts of cof­fee waste in con­struc­tion projects rather than going to landfills—to give cof­fee a ‘dou­ble shot’ at life.” If Roy­chand’s research find­ings endure, archae­ol­o­gists and mate­ri­als engi­neers might enjoy puz­zling over the mys­ter­ies of cof­fee and con­crete anoth­er two mil­len­nia from now.

You can read his study, “Trans­form­ing spent cof­fee grounds into a valu­able resource for the enhance­ment of con­crete strength” here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved: Why Has Roman Con­crete Been So Durable?

How to Devel­op Pho­tographs with Cof­fee

Is Cof­fee Good for You?: A Cof­fee Con­nois­seur Reviews the Sci­en­tif­ic Research

How Caf­feine Fueled the Enlight­en­ment, Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion & the Mod­ern World: An Intro­duc­tion by Michael Pol­lan

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

Coffee Connoisseur James Hoffmann Reviews a $20,000 Espresso Maker

in Food & Drink | September 13th, 2023

It costs rough­ly $20,000, weighs near­ly 100 pounds, and looks like a high-end micro­scope. Hand­made in Switzer­land, the MANUMENT Leva Machine makes espres­so. How well does it make espres­so? How do the shots taste?: Accord­ing to cof­fee expert James Hoffmann–he’s the author of The World Atlas of Cof­fee–the shots have a tex­ture that is “very enjoy­able.” The tex­ture is “silky, but­tery and soft.” That ver­dict is sand­wiched in the mid­dle of a 20-minute review of the machine, which you can watch above.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

Under­stand­ing Espres­so: A Six-Part Series Explain­ing What It Takes to Pull the Ide­al Shot

Cof­fee Col­lege: Every­thing You Want­ed to Know about Cof­fee Mak­ing in One Lec­ture

How to Make Cof­fee in the Bialet­ti Moka Pot: The “Ulti­mate Techique”

“The Virtues of Coffee” Explained in 1690 Advertisement: The Cure for Lethargy, Scurvy, Dropsy, Gout & More

in Uncategorized | September 11th, 2023

Accord­ing to many his­to­ri­ans, the Eng­lish Enlight­en­ment may nev­er have hap­pened were it not for cof­fee­hous­es, the pub­lic sphere where poets, crit­ics, philoso­phers, legal minds, and oth­er intel­lec­tu­al gad­flies reg­u­lar­ly met to chat­ter about the press­ing con­cerns of the day. And yet, writes schol­ar Bon­nie Cal­houn, “it was not for the taste of cof­fee that peo­ple flocked to these estab­lish­ments.”

Indeed, one irate pam­phle­teer defined cof­fee, which was at this time with­out cream or sug­ar and usu­al­ly watered down, as “pud­dle-water, and so ugly in colour and taste [sic].”

No syrupy, high-dol­lar Mac­chi­atos or smooth, creamy lattes kept them com­ing back. Rather than the bev­er­age, “it was the nature of the insti­tu­tion that caused its pop­u­lar­i­ty to sky­rock­et dur­ing the sev­en­teenth and eigh­teenth cen­turies.”

How, then, were pro­pri­etors to achieve eco­nom­ic growth? Like the own­er of the first Eng­lish cof­fee-shop did in 1652, Lon­don mer­chant Samuel Price deployed the time-hon­ored tac­tics of the moun­te­bank, using adver­tis­ing to make all sorts of claims for coffee’s many “virtues” in order to con­vince con­sumers to drink the stuff at home. In the 1690 broad­side above, writes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate, Price made a “litany of claims for coffee’s health ben­e­fits,” some of which “we’d rec­og­nize today and oth­ers that seem far-fetched.” In the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry are asser­tions that “cof­fee-drink­ing pop­u­la­tions didn’t get com­mon dis­eases” like kid­ney stones or “Scur­vey, Gout, Drop­sie.” Cof­fee could also, Price claimed, improve hear­ing and “swoon­ing” and was “exper­i­men­tal­ly good to pre­vent Mis­car­riage.”

Among these spu­ri­ous med­ical ben­e­fits is list­ed a gen­uine effect of coffee—its relief of “lethar­gy.” Price’s oth­er beverages—“Chocolette, and Thee or Tea”—receive much less empha­sis since they didn’t require a hard sell. No one needs to be con­vinced of the ben­e­fits of cof­fee these days—indeed many of us can’t func­tion with­out it. But as we sit in cor­po­rate chain cafes, glued to smart­phones and lap­top screens and most­ly ignor­ing each oth­er, our cof­fee­hous­es have become some­what pale imi­ta­tions of those vibrant Enlight­en­ment-era estab­lish­ments where, writes Cal­houn, “men [though rarely women] were encour­aged to engage in both ver­bal and writ­ten dis­course with regard for wit over rank.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

How Caf­feine Fueled the Enlight­en­ment, Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion & the Mod­ern World: An Intro­duc­tion by Michael Pol­lan

The Hertel­la Cof­fee Machine Mount­ed on a Volk­swa­gen Dash­board (1959): The Most Euro­pean Car Acces­so­ry Ever Made 

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Is Coffee Good for You?: A Coffee Connoisseur Reviews the Scientific Research

in Food & Drink, Health | June 23rd, 2023

Accord­ing to NPR, “Caf­feine is the most wide­ly con­sumed drug in the world. Here in the U.S., accord­ing to a 2022 sur­vey, more than 93% of adults con­sume caf­feine, and of those, 75% con­sume caf­feine at least once a day.” Giv­en the preva­lence of cof­fee world­wide, it pays to ask a sim­ple ques­tion: Is cof­fee good for you? Above, James Hoff­mann, the author of The World Atlas of Cof­fee, pro­vides an overview of research exam­in­ing the rela­tion­ship between cof­fee and var­i­ous dimen­sions of health, includ­ing the gut/microbiome, sleep, can­cer, cog­ni­tion, mor­tal­i­ty and more. If you want to explore this sub­ject more deeply, Hoff­mann has cre­at­ed a list of the research papers reviewed here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

How Cof­fee Affects Your Brain: A Very Quick Primer

Why Cof­fee Naps Will Perk You Up More Than Either Cof­fee, or Naps, Alone

Paul Gia­mat­ti Plays Hon­oré de Balzac, Hopped Up on 50 Cof­fees Per Day

How to Develop Photographs with Coffee

in Food & Drink, Photography | April 5th, 2023

James Hoff­mann knows some­thing about cof­fee. He’s authored The World Atlas of Cof­fee and runs a pro­lif­ic YouTube chan­nel, where he cov­ers every­thing from mak­ing cof­fee with the Aero­Press and MokaPot, to brew­ing the per­fect espres­so and also pro­vid­ing basic cof­fee mak­ing tips & tricks. Pret­ty bread and but­ter stuff, if you can use that expres­sion when talk­ing about cof­fee. But he also cov­ers some sub­jects at the mar­gins of the cof­fee world–like how to devel­op pho­tographs with cof­fee. Above, Hoff­mann intro­duces you to Caf­fenol, a process where­by pho­tographs can be devel­oped with cof­fee and some­times Vit­a­min C. To take a deep­er dive into the sub­ject, you’ll want to explore PetaPix­el’s primer, Caf­fenol: A Guide to Devel­op­ing B&W Film with Cof­fee.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know about the Bialet­ti Moka Express: A Deep Dive Into Italy’s Most Pop­u­lar Cof­fee Mak­er

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

Deep Fried Cof­fee: A Very Dis­turb­ing Dis­cov­ery

Coffee College: Everything You Wanted to Know about Coffee Making in One Lecture

in Food & Drink | February 8th, 2023

No mat­ter how much cof­fee you drink, you nev­er drink the same cof­fee twice. Cof­fee-drinkers under­stand this instinc­tive­ly, even those who only drink their cof­fee at home using the same beans and the same brew­ing process day in and day out. For even in the most con­trolled cof­fee-mak­ing con­di­tions we can achieve in our every­day lives, vari­a­tions have a way of creep­ing in. End­less scruti­ny of those vari­a­tions is all in a day’s work for some­one like Matt Perg­er, who’s come out on or near the top of sev­er­al barista cham­pi­onships, and who found­ed the online cof­fee-edu­ca­tion ser­vice Barista Hus­tle and its asso­ci­at­ed Youtube chan­nel.

In the chan­nel’s most pop­u­lar video by far, Perg­er deliv­ers an 80-minute lec­ture on “advanced cof­fee mak­ing” at Assem­bly Cof­fee in Lon­don. After cov­er­ing the adjec­tives used to describe the fla­vor of cof­fee in gen­er­al — from “weak,” “del­i­cate,” and “tea-like” to “lus­cious,” “bit­ter,” and “over­whelm­ing” — he moves on to the vocab­u­lary of extrac­tion.

The most impor­tant stage in the cof­fee-mak­ing process as far as the result­ing taste is con­cerned, extrac­tion is accom­plished by putting hot water through cof­fee grounds, in whichev­er man­ner and with whichev­er device you may choose to do it. Weak­er meth­ods of extrac­tion result in “salty” or “veg­e­tal” tastes, and stronger meth­ods in “astrin­gent” or “pow­dery” ones.

As in so many pur­suits, the most desir­able out­comes lie in the mid­dle of the spec­trum.  Just how to achieve that per­fect­ly “trans­par­ent,” “nut­ty,” “bal­anced,” and even “sweet” cup of cof­fee con­sti­tutes the dri­ving pro­fes­sion­al ques­tion for Perg­er and baris­tas like him. Clear­ly pos­sessed of a taste for rig­or, he explains the effects of every­thing from the design of roast­ers and grinders to the tech­niques of brew­ing and pour­ing while cit­ing the find­ings of exper­i­ments and blind taste tests — and even acknowl­edg­ing when pieces of expen­sive cof­fee-mak­ing gear yield no demon­stra­ble quan­ti­ta­tive ben­e­fit. True cof­fee afi­ciona­dos who have an end­less appetite for this kind of talk may find them­selves tempt­ed to sign up for Barista Hus­tle’s online cours­es, but even more so to brew anoth­er cup for them­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Every­thing You Want­ed to Know About Cof­fee in Three Min­utes

How to Make Cof­fee in the Bialet­ti Moka Pot: The “Ulti­mate Techique”

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

Your Burn­ing Ques­tions About Cof­fee Answered by James Hoff­mann

10 Essen­tial Tips for Mak­ing Great Cof­fee at Home

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How to Make Coffee in the Bialetti Moka Pot: The “Ultimate Techique”

in Food & Drink | December 12th, 2022

In Italy, rough­ly 70% of house­holds have a Bialet­ti Moka Pot. And chances are you have one too. But are you using it the right way? Prob­a­bly not, says James Hoff­mann, the author of The World Atlas of Cof­fee. Above, he sets the record straight, demon­strat­ing the best tech­nique for mak­ing a great cup of cof­fee. Enjoy this pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment and use it well.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Bialet­ti Moka Express: The His­to­ry of Italy’s Icon­ic Cof­fee Mak­er, and How to Use It the Right Way

Deep Fried Cof­fee: A Very Dis­turb­ing Dis­cov­ery

Life and Death of an Espres­so Shot in Super Slow Motion

The Birth of Espres­so: How the Cof­fee Shots The Fuel Our Mod­ern Life Were Invent­ed

An Espres­so Mak­er Made in Le Corbusier’s Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­tur­al Style: Raw Con­crete on the Out­side, High-End Parts on the Inside

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

Deep Fried Coffee: A Very Disturbing Discovery

in Food & Drink | November 30th, 2022

Deep fried cof­fee. Yes, it’s a thing, and cof­fee con­nois­seur James Hoff­mann decid­ed to give it a go. How did it turn out? We won’t spoil it for you–other than to say, don’t be sur­prised if deep fried cof­fee makes its way into a future edi­tion of Hoff­man­n’s book, The World Atlas of Cof­fee.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: An Ad for London’s First Cafe Print­ed Cir­ca 1652

Jim Henson’s Com­mer­cials for Wilkins Cof­fee: 15 Twist­ed Min­utes of Mup­pet Cof­fee Ads (1957–1961)

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know about the Bialet­ti Moka Express: A Deep Dive Into Italy’s Most Pop­u­lar Cof­fee Mak­er

The Bialet­ti Moka Express: The His­to­ry of Italy’s Icon­ic Cof­fee Mak­er, and How to Use It the Right Way

Life and Death of an Espres­so Shot in Super Slow Motion