The roasting ceremony changes from brown to black: a new way of drinking coffee

The early "baking" in the Arab region was a simple program, and although we do not have enough historical data to reproduce the baking program, it should be roughly similar to the baking program still used in the Arab region today. Another European historian, William Uilliam Palgrave, wrote "A Journey to the Arab Middle East" and "Narrative of a Year's Journey Through Central and Eastern Arabia" in 1863. There is a passage like this:

…… Without hesitation, Soverin began to prepare to bake coffee beans. It took him about five minutes to start a fire with a hairdryer and adjust the position of the charcoal fire to the most suitable place to generate enough heat. Then he took out an old cloth bag tied with rope from the next niche. After lifting the rope, pour out three or four handfuls of unbaked coffee raw beans (all with a pulp shell), and then visit the raw beans on a large straw plate. Carefully pick out blackened coffee seeds and other foreign objects (usually mixed with such strange things in the same batch of coffee cherries they buy). After careful cleaning, he poured the raw coffee beans into a large iron spoon with a handle, then moved the spoon to the mouth of the fire, using a hair dryer to stabilize the firepower and repeatedly stirring the coffee beans in the spoon until it cracked, the color turned red, and white smoke came out. Finally, carefully remove the tablespoon from the fire before the coffee beans turn into black charcoal, and then cool the coffee beans on a straw platter in an incorrect ancient Turkish or European way.

In the situation in the Arabian Peninsula, the processes of baking, crushing, brewing and drinking coffee are all carried out in a leisurely gathering. The two steps of baking and brewing are carried out on the same fire. The coffee beans are roasted with a previously flat metal rod. After cooling, the roasted beans are thrown into a mortar and crushed into a coarse powder. Then brew the coffee in boiling water, usually with some cardamom or saffron, filtered again, and then poured into the cup. Drink directly without sugar.

There are many versions of similar coffee rituals, which can be found in East Africa and the Middle East, among them from Ethiopia and Eritrea, a region bordering the Red Sea in northeastern Africa. Immigrants, formerly an Italian colony and now an independent province of Ethiopia, introduced one of the ritual versions to the United States because similar devices can be found in the kitchens or living rooms of some suburban families in the United States.

From Brown to Black: a New way of drinking Coffee

If you pay a little attention, you will find that in Pargrave's description, the Arabs roasted the coffee beans to a light brown color depth. It is recorded in the early historical materials before about 1600 AD that a completely different method of making coffee was developed in Turkey, Syria and Egypt. They bake the coffee beans to a very deep, near-black degree, grind them into a very fine powder with a grindstone or metal grinder that grinds the leaves, boil the powder, add sugar and then quote it, but without adding any spices and without filtering. Because when drinking this sweet cup of coffee, you will also drink the fine coffee powder floating on the liquid surface; in addition, the drink is poured into a cup smaller than the cup used by Arabs.

The reasons for the different roasting patterns, brewing methods and drinking methods are unknown, but it can be seen that as long as the coffee beans are roasted deeper, it is easier to grind them into fine powder, while the lighter roasted coffee beans win relatively much, so it is not easy to grind them into fine powder. In addition, sugar originating in India is also widely grown in the Middle East, and this easily accessible crop is used to suppress the bitterness of deep-roasted coffee and enhance the sweetness of the coffee. So far, new technological inventions (bean grinders with metal grinding leaves) and a new deep baking mode, coupled with the convenience of sucrose, have created this new way of drinking coffee-Turkish coffee.

Why is it called "Turkish" instead of "Egiptian" or "syrian"? This is because the Europeans were first introduced into central Europe through the northern part of Ottoman, and then from the Balkans and Werner. Early Europeans followed the Turkish drinking method by roasting coffee beans to a very deep level. boil to tons of water and add sugar to drink.

Coffee goes through all over the world

From the 17th century to the early 18th century, the habit of drinking coffee spread from Europe, from the west to the whole of Europe, and eastward to India and present-day Indonesia. As for coffee as a growing crop, the Islamists brought the seeds from Yemen to India, and then Europe introduced the seeds to Ceylon and Java. Seeds were brought from Java to indoor botanical gardens in Amsterdam and Paris, and then to the Caribbean and South America to become cash crops. in a short period of a few decades, millions of coffee trees were planted in large quantities in the garden, becoming a money-making tool for farm owners and businessmen. It is also the spiritual source of many philosophers and thinkers who gather in cafes in London, Paris, Verna and other places.

Coffee was a brand-new commercial cash crop in the global trade of the 17th and 18th centuries. in the global trade commodities at that time, there was always a weight-dependent partnership with sugar, both of which were sister cash crops from the tropics. They are very close partners in coffee shops all over the world and in every cup of coffee. However, coffee trees are recognized as far less destructive to nature and harvesting than sugar, so coffee trees must grow under other higher shades, instead of opening up fields on a large scale like sugar cane to destroy the original ecological environment; on the other hand, self-employed farmers who grow coffee trees can still have better money income, while sugar cane farmers are not so lucky!

However, the coffee industry has brought another kind of global irony. It has become a symbol of oppression and liberation. In the tropics, coffee has developed into a social and economical profit-making tool, and it is a very outstanding money-making crop, but it is also based on squeezing the labor of the black people. at the same time, it has become one of the main reasons for the European enlightenment and the French and American political revolutions. At that time, coffee and coffee shops were inextricably linked to major cultural and political changes on a certain level.

In addition, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Europeans discovered the second important companion of coffee-milk. For example, the latte (Caffe Latte) made from favorite hot milk and espresso comes from Werner. In 1683, Werner was surrounded by Turks. When the Turkish army withdrew from Werner, they left some coffee beans, which were brought by a man named Franz Kolschitzky to open Werner's first coffee shop. In order to keep the Werner away from the habit of drinking warm beer for breakfast, he had to change the coffee and not drink it in the Turkish way, so he developed a new kind of coffee with milk.

Werner changed the Turkish habit of drinking with dregs to filtering out coffee grounds and adding milk, which quickly spread throughout Europe. At this point, the distinction between drinking methods became more obvious: Europeans in the 17th century drank Turkish coffee with suspended coffee grounds and sugar, while Europeans in the 18th century filtered out the coffee grounds and added milk to drink. It also corresponds to the differences in drinking habits between the Ottoman Turkish Empire and the Catholic regions of Europe. In terms of distance: Europeans secretly or in Italy tend to filter dregs and add milk, while in the Balkans (still part of the Ottoman Turkish territory until the 19th century), most people still prefer to drink coffee in the Turkish way.