How Puritans and the Middle Class Fell for Coffee

Before coffee became the fuel of the modern worker, it had to win a cultural and physiological battle against beer — the everyday drink of European life, even at breakfast. But by the 1600s, as work became more structured and society more regulated, people started looking for something that wouldn’t leave them foggy-headed. That something turned out to be coffee. But how and why did it replace beer as the daytime drink of choice for Protestants and the emerging middle class?

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