It would take several decades of experimentation, but eventually, these farming villagers would discover the basics of coffee making that we all recognize. The berries must be picked, stripped of their flesh, roasted, ground down into a grainy form of kernels or particles, and then steeped briefly in hot water. After the steeping, they should be filtered out of the fluid. That is how you make coffee! That is the way it has been done for centuries, and it is still the way we do it today. The specific tools that we use to make our coffees, however, are something the first drinkers of the brew would never have imagined.

The first people to bring coffee to the rest of the world were the Arabs. They developed what is still served as Turkish coffee today, employing beans ground into a powder and a special brewing pot called an ibrik. Turkish coffee always leaves a thick sludge in the bottom of the ibrik and the drinker’s cup, but as if to compensate, the drink always has a delicious foam at the top. If you have a fascination for ancient technology, it is now fairly easy to find and purchase ibriks online for between 25 to 50 dollars.

The Turks and Arabs introduced coffee to Italy just as Columbus was opening up new worlds to the Europeans. In short order the brew was known everywhere. When the English Colonies became the United States, they were cut off from their tea suppliers, and coffee was soon the foremost beverage in the nation. As the United States developed an awareness of international cuisines during the last few decades, cappuccino became a fun way to enjoy coffee. Starbucks emerged, along with other coffee franchises, and today consumers all over North America have the option of dozens of different coffee brews at any time of the day.

Today coffee is an important cash crop for many Third World nations. We import huge shipments of the roasted beans, which are actually seeds. Unroasted and green coffee seeds are also imported by roasteries, and there is also a small trade in raw, unprocessed coffee berries. This expansion of raw materials has been accompanied by an explosion in coffee technology. As the Italians invented expresso, they invented the large, industrial expresso machine, made to turn out multiple cups of expresso and cappuccino in cafes. Today, expresso machines designed specifically to grind and percolate single portions of the brew in small household kitchen can be found in most large department stores and mall stores specializing in coffee. The world has embraced coffee in the home and work place. Why not make a brew that suits your own style? Anything is possible!