The Stimulating Magical Powers Of Coffee Actually Began As A Food

Coffee has not always been served as a beverage. African tribes
crushed the ripe cherries from wild coffee trees, mixed with
animal fat, and rolled them into round balls. These “coffee
balls” were served at their war parties. The result of eating
these coffee balls was:

1.fat combined with raw coffee’s high protein content provided
the African tribes with nourishment
2.the considerable caffeine content of the mixture was of course
a “stimulant” that stirred the warriors on to greats heights of
warrior abilities

I guess one could sort of compare those African tribe coffee
balls to the cans of spinach Popeye use to consume to become
mighty and strong enough to battle with Pluto for the quest of
Olive Oil’s love!

When coffee appeared as a beverage in Africa it appeared not in
the form as we know it, but as a wine that was made from
fermented juice of the ripe cherries mixed with cold water.

Later in around 1000 A.D. the Arabs learned to boil coffee. This
is when coffee became a hot drink.

From coffee’s first discovery the new drink was surrounded by
mystery, and thought to have magical properties. The first
coffee drinkers described experiences of sensations ranging from
exhilaration to religious ecstasy.

Legends about how coffee could create great physical and mental
feelings of well-being created a mythical status that spread
throughout the Arab world. It was at first consumed only on the
advice of a physician or a beloved priest. Coffee as a beverage
became rapidly popular. Doctors accepted coffee as beneficial
and prescribed it to their willing patients.

Dervishes provided coffee at night-long religious services in
Aden, Yemen, Cairo and Mecca. They passed huge jars of coffee
around and chanted prayers until the new day arrived. Lawyers,
artists and those who worked at night discovered the benefits of
coffee for staying awake for long hours. Soon doctors no longer
had to prescribe coffee. Coffee was becoming a permanent staple
of the civilized Eastern world.

As the demand for coffee continued to grow, the Arabs developed
an effective form of cultivation. They started coffee plants in
nurseries from seed and transferred the young plants to
plantations in the foothills of nearby mountains. They irrigated
the plants using a system of pebble-lined trenches that
distributed water from the mountain streams throughout the young
coffee tree plants. Shade poplars protected them from the sun.
As popularity of coffee grew methods of preparation became more
sophisticated.

People started preparing coffee as a decoction from the dried
hulls of the bean. Then someone got the idea of roasting the
hulls over charcoal fire. Further advances in preparation
included whole beans roasted on stone trays, then on metal
plates. Next, the roasted beans were pulverized with a mortar
and pestle and the powder was combined with boiling water. For
over 300 years, this decoction that included ground and all was
consumed, as the main method of coffee preparation.