Photos by Jennifer Olson

One practice trumps all others: drinking that first cup of coffee

I recently made a list of my most essential daily practices ― the ones I can’t live without. Several came to mind, including dinner with my family, exercising, reading before bed and doing meaningful work.

But one practice trumps all others: drinking that first cup of coffee.

After water, the nectar of the bean is our nation’s most consumed beverage, with 64 percent of people drinking at least one cup per day. Coffee is available on street corners, in offices and homes, on islands and mountains, in deserts and jungles ― even in airplanes traveling at 30,000 feet. How did this bitter liquid get us all so hooked?

I recently made a list of my most essential daily practices ― the ones I can’t live without. Several came to mind, including dinner with my family, exercising, reading before bed and doing meaningful work.

But one practice trumps all others: drinking that first cup of coffee.

After water, the nectar of the bean is our nation’s most consumed beverage, with 64 percent of people drinking at least one cup per day. Coffee is available on street corners, in offices and homes, on islands and mountains, in deserts and jungles ― even in airplanes traveling at 30,000 feet. How did this bitter liquid get us all so hooked?

A Goat’s Discovery

According to some, coffee first emerged in ancient Ethiopia, where a herdsman noticed his goats became extremely animated after eating berries from a certain tree. They were so amped up, in fact, they couldn’t sleep all night, or so the story goes. The goatherder shared his discovery with the abbot of a nearby Sufi monastery who, in turn, tried creating a drink with the berries. He was delighted to find the brew kept him awake through evening prayer.

Coffee didn’t stay a secret for long; from Ethiopia, news of the stimulating berries made its way to the Middle East, where the coffee plant would be cultivated and sold throughout Yemen, Persia, Syria, Egypt and Turkey by the 16th century.

The tradition of drinking coffee started, in many ways, as a social practice. Early coffee houses appeared across the Arabian Peninsula, providing a community space for discussion, entertainment and good old-fashioned gossip, not unlike coffee shops of today.

Cheating the Devil

One thousand years after it spread through the Middle East, coffee made its way to Europe via Venetian merchants. Interestingly, the Catholic Church did not welcome the drink. (Imagine Italians disdaining coffee!) In fact, the Pope’s councilmen went so far as to call coffee “the bitter invention of Satan.” But Pope Clemente VIII gave it a try before issuing his official papal decree on it. The outcome?

“This devil’s drink is so delicious,” he said, “we should cheat the devil by baptizing it.” There have been several other attempts to ban coffee across the world, including in Mecca, Constantinople, Sweden and Prussia. The Mormon prophet Joseph Smith also declared that hot drinks like coffee and tea “are not for the body or belly.”

Across the continent, once again, coffee had the effect of bringing people together in social spaces. It also perked up those accustomed to starting the day with beer or wine — both common breakfast drinks at the time. Over 300 coffee houses sprang up by the mid-17th century in London alone. Coffee soon moved west to the New World. But if it weren’t for a certain event in Boston Harbor, it may never have become the dominant American drink it is today.

Tea had been the preferred drink of the American colonies until King George III placed an outsized tax on its import. In rebellion, the colonists axed open 340 crates and dumped 92,000 pounds of British East India Company tea over the side of the Beaver, Dartmouth and Eleanor ships on December 16, 1773. Inadvertently, that act forever sealed the United States’ fate as a coffee-drinking nation; as soon as a half-century later, Thomas Jefferson would proclaim coffee “the favorite drink of the civilized world.”

A Crop of Colonization

The story of the spread of many crops is often, sadly, the story of one country’s dominance over another. The cultivation of coffee is no different. Though Arab countries had farmed coffee beans since the 1500s, Dutch traders brought the practice to the rest of the world via their colonies in the Dutch East Indies. (The word coffee, in fact, derives from the Dutch word koffie, which came from the Italian caffé, originally adapted from the Arabic word qahwa. The etymology of that Arabic word isn’t obvious, but some historians believe it refers to something repellent or unappetizing.)

In the late 17th century, Dutch ships brought coffee seedlings to the islands of Java and Sumatra, where the plants thrived. At the start of the next century, the Mayor of Amsterdam gifted a coffee seedling to the King of France, Louis XIV, who had it planted in the Royal Botanical Gardens in Paris. Less than 10 years later, a naval officer would bring one of its seedlings to the French colonies on the Caribbean island of Martinique. That plant is credited as the sire of over 18 million coffee trees on Martinique, as well as that of all coffee plants across the Caribbean, Central America and South America.

Of course, coffee has moved far beyond those borders; today, the production of coffee encircles the globe and has grown to become, by some accounts, the world’s most traded commodity after petroleum. To be sure, many nations’ economies rise and fall with the health of their coffee crop.

Riding the Waves

In recent American history, coffee has transitioned through three distinctly different eras, referred to as “waves.”

The first wave of coffee was defined by accessibility. Until the early 19th century, coffee had been a luxury product, available only from local roasteries. As happened with so many foods in the 19th century, innovations in mass production and transport allowed coffee to be packaged, preserved and priced for nearly all budgets. With products like Folgers and Maxwell House, coffee became no longer a luxury but a household good. Instant coffee was also developed during the first wave. As for coffee-making equipment at this time, the humble percolator bubbled on the stovetop. Drip coffee machines would also soon follow.

Coffee’s second wave came with the proliferation of espresso drinks as brought from Italy to the States by Starbucks in Seattle and Peet’s Coffee in Berkeley. Foreign specialties like the cappuccino, macchiato and americano proliferated, as did flavored coffees and dark roasts. The environment for coffee also changed: whereas the first wave brought coffee into the home, the second wave encouraged going out for coffee. Starbucks called their cafés “The Third Space,” referring to a public, social meeting ground, outside of the home and the workplace. (All of this became canonized by the television show “Friends,” which takes place in a New York City café, its characters hanging out over endless cups of coffee and espresso drinks.) The peak of technology for preparing coffee during the second wave? The espresso machine and milk steamer. This is also when cafés started putting air pots of vanilla and hazelnut-flavored coffee out for customers to punch and squeeze.

The third wave of coffee is, most agree, the wave we find ourselves in now, set apart by precision farm sourcing and light roasts that allow for more nuanced aromas and flavors. Along with careful sourcing and roasting, this era is marked by an abundance of equipment and methods: pour-over, French press, Chemex, gooseneck kettles, etc. Keurig machines also appeared during the third wave, though these, like coffee’s first wave, prize speed and access over flavor and quality.

Central Coast Roasts

San Luis Obispo County is home to multiple roasters that proffer the devil’s delicious drink.

Called “scientifically perfect” by food science authority Alton Brown, the beans from HoneyCo Coffee are a good example of third-wave sourcing and roasting. The roastery is helmed by Jon Peterson who, along with his wife and championship-winning barista Sara Peterson, also owns Scout Coffee in San Luis Obispo. The roastery supplies Scout’s two café locations with a seasonal menu of beans purchased through direct relationships with growers in places like Ethiopia, Kenya and Guatemala. As Alton Brown suggests, the Petersons pride themselves on precision roasting using cutting-edge software and equipment. HoneyCo coffee is shipped across the country via online orders.

In North County, Dark Nectar Coffee roasts coffee one bag at a time. Owner Danny Jones sources his beans from across the world via San Francisco, which has the mild and consistent temperature to store beans safely before he receives them. Rather than purchase the same lots of beans every shipment, Jones favors exploration over consistency: while some roasters might set their roasting setting on autopilot for different regions of beans (e.g., a dark roast for Ethiopia, a light roast for Kenya), Dark Nectar tests every bag on several roasts to find the one that best suits the bean. As such, visitors to Dark Nectar’s caféin Downtown Atascadero will rarely find the same coffee on their menu twice. Dark Nectar also supplies a number of restaurants and hotels on the Central Coast with coffee blends.

In Templeton, Joebella Coffee Roasters relies on just a handful of importers to source green coffee (i.e., the raw beans that get roasted for the coffee we grind and brew). These importers supply cupping notes and samples before owners Joseph and Isabel Gerardis choose their beans. Often, Joebella will offer wholesale customers and visitors to their Joebella café a seasonal selection to keep exploring new beans. The Gerardises lean on years of roasting experience to decide how far to roast each bean; depending on the farm, co-op or region, they coax out each bean’s best qualities and flavors. Joebella sources only Certified Organic and regularly partners with local organizations for fundraising, such as Atascadero High School’s Lighthouse Coffee, which raises support for students battling addiction. Their most popular coffee? The Double Dark blend, which is roasted so deeply as to terrify the Pope’s councilmen ― and do Pope Clemente VIII proud.