215 Fun Facts About Coffee

In coffee's best-known origin legend, which animals did the herder Kaldi see turn frisky after eating red berries?

Goats star in the tale, which first appears in a Latin treatise of 1671, some eight centuries after it is supposedly set; the herder has no name there, and 'Kaldi' was added later.

Which spice traditionally flavours Arabic coffee, the brew that hosts across the Gulf pour for their guests?

Cardamom powder goes in generously as the coffee brews; by custom the host keeps refilling a guest's cup until the guest signals, with a shake of the cup, that they have had enough.

What is the outermost skin of a coffee cherry called?

The exocarp is the cherry's thin outer skin; it turns from green to red or yellow as the fruit ripens, which is how pickers on selective harvests know which cherries to take.

Which country was the world's largest producer of coffee in 2023?

Brazil grew about 31% of the world's coffee in 2023, a share so large that a hard frost in its growing regions can push up coffee prices around the world.

Which processing method cures the whole cherry, fruit pulp and all, in the sun?

Natural (dry) process coffees are dried as whole cherries with the fruit still on the bean, which often gives a fuller body and sweeter, fruitier notes.

What is the golden-brown foam that forms on top of a freshly brewed espresso shot?

Crema forms because the machine's high pressure dissolves gas trapped in freshly roasted coffee, which foams out with the coffee's oils; early steam machines made too little pressure to raise it.

Which brewing method steeps coarse grounds in room-temperature water for 12 to 24 hours?

Cold brew coffee is made by steeping coarsely ground coffee in cold or room temperature water for 12 to 24 hours. This method results in a concentrate that is often less acidic and smoother than hot-brewed coffee.

What penalty did Ottoman sultan Murad IV impose on people who defied his 1630s ban on coffeehouses and tobacco?

Execution: Murad IV shut the coffeehouses and wine shops as nests of sedition and had violators put to death; he is said to have prowled the streets in disguise to catch them himself.

Which of these is a common method for decaffeinating coffee beans?

The Swiss Water Process decaffeinates with water and activated-carbon filters instead of chemical solvents; the Burnaby, British Columbia company behind it launched commercially in 1988.

What nickname for coffee comes from the island where the Dutch planted it in the 17th century?

Java, the Indonesian island where the Dutch East India Company planted coffee in the 1690s, shipped so much of Europe's coffee that its name became a byword for the drink.

Which Italian dessert soaks ladyfinger biscuits in espresso and layers them with mascarpone?

Tiramisu, Italian for 'pick me up', is younger than it looks: no cookbook mentions it before the 1960s, and Le Beccherie, a restaurant in Treviso, claims to have created it around 1970.

What is the audible pop called when roasting beans shed moisture and start to swell?

First crack is the popcorn-like snap as steam bursts out of the swelling bean; a quieter second crack follows only if the roast is taken darker.

Which brewer steeps grounds in hot water, then traps them under a mesh plunger?

The French Press owes its modern form to Italy: a plunger with a sprung filter was patented there in 1928 for Attilio Calimani and Giulio Moneta, long after two Frenchmen patented a cruder press in 1852.

Coffee 'beans' are the seeds of a stone fruit like a cherry or peach, a type botanists call what?

A drupe wraps its seed in a hard inner layer, which in coffee is thin enough to be called parchment; the seeds are only called beans for their shape, since coffee is no legume.

Which tissue makes up most of the coffee bean itself, rather than a layer of the cherry?

Endosperm is the seed's food store, holding the carbohydrates, proteins and oils that roasting turns into flavour; the cherry's own layers are the skin, pulp and parchment.

Which protest against a British tax made coffee the patriotic drink of the American colonies?

The Boston Tea Party made tea look disloyal: months later an innkeeper told John Adams her town had 'renounced all tea' and served him coffee, and he wrote home that he 'must be weaned'.

What is the common name for the dried fruit of the coffee plant, often used to make a herbal tea?

Cascara, Spanish for 'husk' or 'peel', is brewed from cherry skins that mills usually throw away; Salvadoran grower Aida Batlle began selling them as a tea after noticing their floral scent at a tasting.

Which city is traditionally credited with Europe's first coffee house outside the Ottoman Empire, opened in the 1640s?

Venice's merchants traded with Egypt and the Ottoman world and brought coffee home as a costly luxury; coffee houses reached England, France and Austria in the decades that followed.

What is the handled basket that holds the coffee grounds in an espresso machine called?

The portafilter is the handled metal basket that locks into the machine's group head; the dose is tamped flat inside it before the shot is pulled.

What is the small cup traditionally used to serve a shot of espresso called?

A demitasse, French for 'half cup', holds roughly 60 to 90 ml, about half a standard coffee cup; Turkish coffee is served in a similar small cup called a finjan.

What is the standard water pressure used to brew a shot of espresso?

About 9 bar is the pressure in the Italian Espresso National Institute's standard; the steam machines used before the 1940s managed only about 1.5 bar and took nearly a minute to pull a shot.

Hypothenemus hampei, the 2 mm 'coffee berry borer' rated the crop's most harmful pest, is what kind of insect?

A beetle native to Africa that drills into the cherries to lay its eggs; insect-eating birds such as the yellow warbler have been shown to halve its numbers on Costa Rican plantations.

Which Italian dessert, its name meaning 'drowned', pours a shot of hot espresso over a scoop of vanilla gelato?

Affogato settles the after-dinner choice between coffee and dessert by being both at once: the hot espresso runs down the gelato and pools at the bottom of the glass.

England's first coffeehouse is traditionally dated to 1650 in which university city?

Oxford's coffeehouse at the Angel inn is credited to a man known as Jacob; London's first, opened by Pasqua Rosée in St Michael's Alley, followed in 1652.

The majority of the world's coffee is grown in a geographical region often referred to by what name?

The Bean Belt, also called the coffee belt, is the band between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn whose climate and altitude suit coffee plants.

Which kind of frost kills a coffee tree outright, costing growers the three to four years a replacement takes to fruit?

A black frost freezes the plant's tissue until it blackens and dies, whereas a milder white frost kills only the flowers, costing a single harvest before the tree blooms again.

Which fungal disease, caused by Hemileia vastatrix, reached Brazil in 1970 and swept Latin America?

Coffee Leaf Rust does not kill the tree outright but strips its leaves and chokes its yield; some 70% of Central America's farms were hit in the outbreak that began in 2012.

Brewing water well below the recommended 91–96 °C tends to leave a cup of coffee tasting how?

Sour and weak: coffee's acids dissolve first, and cooler water pulls out too little of the sugars and deeper flavours that balance them, so the cup comes out thin and sharp.

The 1952 'Give yourself a Coffee-Break' slogan was a campaign by a growers' bureau from which region?

The Pan-American Coffee Bureau's 1952 adverts urged Americans to 'Give yourself a Coffee-Break'; the mid-morning pause itself was older, but the campaign is what made the phrase popular.

Which gas is infused into cold brew to give it a creamy, stout-like head?

Nitrogen, forced in under pressure and poured through a stout-style tap, gives nitro cold brew its cascading bubbles and creamy head, much like a nitro beer.

The coffee break is said to have begun among Norwegian immigrant wives in Stoughton, in which US state?

Stoughton, Wisconsin, says the coffee break began when Norwegian immigrant wives agreed to staff its tobacco warehouses only if they could go home twice a day for chores and coffee.

What does roasting a coffee bean darker do to the total amount of caffeine in that bean?

Barely changes it: caffeine survives roasting almost untouched, so each bean keeps what it had; beans swell as they darken, though, so a scoop of dark roast holds fewer of them and slightly less caffeine.

The Faema E61 of 1961 was a landmark espresso machine because it pressurized the water using what?

An electric pump replaced the barista's lever arm in the Faema E61, which drew its water straight from the mains and was named after the solar eclipse of 1961.

Which milky coffee drink is named after an order of friars, for the brown colour of their hooded robes?

Cappuccino comes from the Capuchin friars, whose brown habits matched the drink; the name began in 18th-century Austria as 'Kapuziner', coffee with a little cream, long before steamed milk.

Which German writer gave chemist Friedlieb Runge the coffee beans from which he isolated caffeine in 1819?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, impressed when Runge used belladonna to dilate a cat's pupil, handed him a box of rare beans and suggested he analyse them; Runge found caffeine in them soon afterwards.

A fungal blight ruined the coffee estates of which British island colony in the late 1800s, turning its planters to tea?

Ceylon was one of the world's largest coffee producers when the disease struck in the late 1860s; by 1890 nine-tenths of its coffee land had been abandoned, and the island turned to tea.

Blue Mountain coffee, long prized by buyers in Japan, is grown on which Caribbean island?

Jamaica sent Japan a record shipment of coffee on 9 January 1967, a date Japan now marks as Blue Mountain Coffee Day; Japanese buyers take most of the Blue Mountain coffee exported.

Which manual brewing method usually starts with a 'bloom', a first splash of water that makes fresh grounds swell and bubble?

Pour-over brewers pause after that first splash because roasting leaves gas trapped in the beans; letting it bubble away first helps the rest of the water soak the grounds evenly.

Which coffee roast retains more of the bean's original flavor and tends to have higher acidity?

Light roasts leave the heat sooner, so more of the bean's own acids and origin character survive; by the darkest roasts the taste of roasting has taken over and origins are hard to tell apart.

By the chronicler Ibrahim Peçevi's account, which Ottoman city got its first coffeehouse in the mid-1550s?

Istanbul's first coffeehouse opened in the Tahtakale district, run by two Syrians, Hakam of Aleppo and Shams of Damascus; the Islamic year Peçevi gives straddles 1554 and 1555.

What is the primary way the 'washed' method separates coffee beans from the fruit?

Fermenting in water tanks to remove mucilage follows depulping machines that strip skin and pulp; microbes break down the sticky layer, then it is washed off.

Vietnamese iced coffee is brewed by dripping hot water through a small metal filter known by what name?

The phin is a small metal drip filter that sits on the glass; its slow drip of dark-roast coffee lands on sweetened condensed milk, adopted when fresh milk was scarce.

Which TV series has FBI agent Dale Cooper praise a 'damn fine cup of coffee'?

Twin Peaks fans keep 24 February, the date Cooper arrives in town, as Twin Peaks Day and toast it with coffee and cherry pie; two Washington towns where the series was filmed made the day official in 2018.

Which English king tried to ban coffeehouses in 1675, fearing sedition, only to withdraw the order after a public outcry?

Charles II's proclamation called coffeehouses the resort of 'idle and disaffected persons' who spread false and scandalous reports about his government.

Which city's coffeehouse legend begins with beans abandoned by the retreating Ottoman army in 1683?

Vienna's legend credits Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki, a hero of the 1683 siege, with brewing the beans the Ottomans left behind; records point instead to an Armenian, Johannes Diodato, who opened the city's first coffeehouse in 1685.

Which coffee processing method sits between the washed and dry methods, blending body and acidity?

The honey process depulps the cherry but leaves some sticky mucilage on the parchment while it dries, giving syrupy body, sweetness and rounded acidity between washed and natural coffees.

What nickname did 17th-century English coffeehouses earn for their stimulating conversation?

Penny Universities got the name because a penny bought admission and a cup of coffee, and with it hours of news, debate and learned company.

Which stovetop brewer pushes hot water up through a bed of coffee grounds using vapor pressure?

The Moka Pot went on sale in 1933 as Alfonso Bialetti's Moka Express, but relatively few were sold until his son Renato's advertising push after the Second World War.

On which Caribbean island did Gabriel de Clieu plant a coffee seedling he had carried from France in the 1720s?

Martinique got the seedling that Gabriel de Clieu, by his own account, kept alive on the crossing by sharing his water ration; coffee was in fact already growing in Saint-Domingue and Dutch Surinam.

The process of removing the parchment layer from a dried coffee bean is called what?

Hulling is one of the last steps at the mill: the machine rubs the dry beans against one another, or forces them against a blade, until the brittle parchment breaks away.

The frappé (shaken instant coffee) was invented at a 1957 trade fair in which country?

Greece: at the 1957 Thessaloniki International Fair, Nescafé representative Dimitris Vakondios shook instant coffee with cold water in a shaker when he could find no hot water.

Which country drinks the most coffee per person per year?

Finland gets through roughly 12 kg of coffee per person a year, about four cups a day; many of its collective labour agreements even write coffee breaks into the working day.

Which Hollywood actor, known in the adverts for asking 'What else?', became the face of Nespresso in 2006?

George Clooney's first Nespresso advert had him overhear two customers praising something dark, intense and rich, only to learn they meant the coffee; French newspapers took to calling him 'Mr What Else?'.

In 2011 UNESCO listed the 'Coffee Cultural Landscape' of which country as a World Heritage Site?

Colombia's Coffee Cultural Landscape, spanning the Andean departments of Caldas, Quindío, Risaralda and Valle del Cauca, was inscribed by UNESCO in 2011 for its smallholder farms on steep hillsides.

In the Ethiopian coffee ceremony, the coffee is boiled in a round clay pot called what?

The jebena is the round-bottomed clay pot of the Ethiopian coffee ceremony; green beans are roasted over coals, pounded, then boiled in it and poured into small cups.

What is the primary function of caffeine in coffee plants?

As a natural insect repellent, caffeine can paralyse and kill insects feeding on the plant; bees, meanwhile, seem to like a low dose in nectar.

Which coffee drink dilutes espresso with hot water to roughly drip-coffee strength?

An Americano, by popular account, dates from the Second World War, when American soldiers in Italy thinned their espresso with hot water to make it more like the coffee they knew at home.

Before coffee caught on in 17th-century Europe, which drink, along with wine, was the most common at breakfast?

Beer, often warmed into a soup, was a breakfast staple; people who switched to coffee started the day alert instead, and historian Mark Pendergrast's verdict is that Western civilization sobered up.

Coffee's botanical family, Rubiaceae, also includes the cinchona tree, the source of which malaria drug?

Quinine, from cinchona bark, was among the first drugs that worked against malaria; that makes coffee a botanical cousin of a fever cure and of the gardenia, all members of the madder family.

Mandheling is a trade name for arabica coffee grown in the north of which island?

Sumatra's Mandheling coffee is named after the Mandailing people, who grow coffee in the island's Tapanuli region, though beans sold under the name also come from Aceh, farther north.

What term describes how much of a coffee's flavor is dissolved into water during brewing?

Extraction is usually judged by yield: brewers aim to dissolve roughly 18 to 22% of the grounds' weight, and falling short or overshooting throws the cup's flavours out of balance.

Coffee decaffeinated by Ludwig Roselius's early process was sold in America under what brand?

Sanka, from the French 'sans caféine', was sold under a bright orange label and sent to diners in orange pots, which is how an orange handle came to mean decaf whatever the brand.

Which rare coffee species, sold in the Philippines as kapeng barako, is known for its jackfruit-like aroma?

Liberica makes up less than 2% of commercial coffee; its plantations in the Philippines outlasted arabica's when a crop disease swept Asia in the late 1800s, and its beans weigh nearly twice as much.

Which mythical creature appears on the Starbucks logo?

A siren with two tails has fronted Starbucks cups since 1971; the company says its designers found her in a 16th-century Norse woodcut, but scholars trace her to a 15th-century woodcut reprinted in a dictionary of symbols.

Kopi luwak is made from cherries that have passed through the gut of which animal?

The beans are collected from the droppings of the Asian palm civet, whose digestion is said to alter the flavour of the seed.

Compared with a cappuccino, a flat white is defined by the absence of what?

A thick foam layer is missing; a flat white uses steamed milk with fine microfoam instead of the deep cap that tops a cappuccino.

Kona coffee comes from districts of which US state?

Hawaii's Kona coffee grows on the slopes of the volcanoes Hualalai and Mauna Loa; missionary Samuel Ruggles brought the first cuttings there in 1828, and only beans from the Kona districts may carry the name.

Which composer wrote a comic secular cantata about a daughter who refuses to give up coffee?

Johann Sebastian Bach probably wrote the Coffee Cantata for the music society he directed at Zimmermann's coffee house in Leipzig; Lieschen vows to give up coffee for a husband, then secretly tells suitors they must let her drink it.

Which organ breaks down caffeine, clearing about half of a dose every three to seven hours in a healthy adult?

The liver does it with one main enzyme, CYP1A2; smoking speeds that enzyme up, while late pregnancy slows it so much that half a dose can take 15 hours to clear.

Which gas, in its supercritical state, is used to strip caffeine in one major decaffeination method?

Supercritical carbon dioxide, squeezed and warmed until it is neither quite gas nor liquid, dissolves the caffeine out of steamed green beans but leaves most of the flavour compounds behind.

Decaf pioneer Ludwig Roselius is said to have got the idea when a cargo of coffee beans was accidentally soaked in what?

Seawater had drawn most of the caffeine out of the soaked beans without ruining their taste, Roselius noticed; the process he patented in 1906 steamed the beans, then used benzene, since recognised as a carcinogen.

During World War II, the entire output of Nescafé's American plant was set aside for whom?

The US military took everything the plant made after instant coffee was classed as vital to the war effort in 1942; Nescafé had launched only four years earlier, in 1938.

What is the name of the small long-handled pot traditionally used to brew coffee in Turkey?

Finely ground coffee and water are brought just to the boil in a cezve, known elsewhere as an ibrik.

What do coffee growers call the single rounded seed that sometimes forms in a cherry instead of the usual flat-sided pair?

A peaberry forms when only one of a cherry's two seeds develops, so it grows round instead of flat on one side; they are often sorted out and sold separately, though evidence that they taste better is thin.

Which Japanese glassware company makes the V60 pour-over dripper?

Hario began in 1921 making laboratory glassware and moved into coffee with a siphon brewer in 1948; the cone-shaped V60 followed in 2005, grown out of a mini dripper it had sold since 1980.

The port of Mocha, once the world's leading coffee market, is in what is now which country?

Yemen's Red Sea port of Mocha (al-Mukha) dominated the coffee trade from the 16th century and peaked in the early 18th; its name lives on in chocolate-tinged coffee drinks.

In 1511 a theological court in which city forbade coffee because of its stimulating effect?

Mecca's governor banned coffee in 1511 on the advice of jurists and physicians; the ruling did not last, and when Cairo tried a similar ban in 1532 its coffeehouses and bean warehouses were sacked.

Alan Adler, who designed the AeroPress, was already known for inventing what?

A flying ring toy, the Aerobie, made Alan Adler's name in the 1980s; he began prototyping the AeroPress in his garage in 2004 to take the acidity and bitterness out of his daily cup.

Which Starbucks drink was created by The Coffee Connection, a Boston-area chain that Starbucks bought in 1994?

Frappuccino blends 'frappe', the New England word for a thick milkshake, with cappuccino; George Howell's chain trademarked the drink, and Starbucks relaunched it with a new recipe in 1995.

Which Asian country ranked third in the FAO's 2023 coffee production figures, behind the two leading growers?

Indonesia grew about 760,000 tonnes in the FAO's 2023 figures, edging Colombia, at about 680,000, out of the top three.

By tradition, the Sufi pilgrim Baba Budan smuggled coffee seeds out of Arabia in the 1600s to plant in which country?

India's coffee is traced by tradition to Baba Budan, who is said to have slipped raw seeds past Arab export controls and planted them by his hut in the hills of Mysore, a range that now carries his name.

David Strang of Invercargill patented a 'soluble dry coffee-powder' in 1890 in which country?

New Zealand: Strang, a coffee and spice merchant, patented his powder in 1890, and it seems to have been the first instant coffee sold anywhere, a credit that long went to Satori Kato's 1901 Chicago patent.

Theobromine, a close chemical cousin of caffeine, is the main stimulant in which of these?

Cocoa's main stimulant is theobromine, the principal alkaloid of the cacao bean; dogs break it down far more slowly than people do, which is why chocolate can poison them.

Which drink did chef Joe Sheridan reputedly invent to warm stranded flying-boat passengers at Foynes in the 1940s?

Irish coffee is credited to Sheridan, who laced coffee with whiskey for passengers whose transatlantic flight had turned back to the Foynes terminal in bad weather.

Starbucks took its name from the chief mate in which novel?

Moby-Dick's chief mate Starbuck came to mind after ad man Terry Heckler said names starting with 'st' sounded strong and co-founder Gordon Bowker spotted a mining town called Starbo on an old map.

Which Chinese chain, by then bigger in China than Starbucks, admitted in 2020 to inflating its sales by about US$310 million?

Luckin Coffee, founded only in 2017, had outgrown Starbucks in China within two years; after a short-seller accused it of faking sales, it owned up and its shares were thrown off the Nasdaq exchange.

Which executive turned Starbucks into an espresso-bar chain after buying it in 1987?

Howard Schultz bought Starbucks from its founders in 1987 for $3.8 million, folded in his Il Giornale espresso bars and led the chain's expansion as CEO until 2000.

Which chain began in 1948 as the Open Kettle in Quincy, Massachusetts?

Dunkin' Donuts took its new name in 1950; founder Bill Rosenberg had opened the shop after noticing that coffee and doughnuts brought in 40% of the revenue at his factory-catering business.

Tim Hortons was co-founded in 1964 by a star defenceman of which NHL team?

Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Tim Horton opened the first shop in Hamilton, Ontario, with businessman Jim Charade; after Horton died in a 1974 car crash, partner Ron Joyce built it into a national chain.

Which fast-food chain merged with Tim Hortons in 2014 under a new parent, Restaurant Brands International?

Burger King's owner, the Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital, drove the 2014 deal and based the new parent company in Canada, while the two chains kept their own brands and operations.

Who bought Costa Coffee from Whitbread in a £3.9 billion deal completed in 2019?

Coca-Cola's purchase took the soft-drinks giant into hot beverages for the first time; Whitbread, Costa's owner since 1995, said it would now focus on its Premier Inn hotels.

Alfred Peet, who opened Peet's Coffee in Berkeley in 1966, grew up in which country?

The Netherlands: Alfred Peet was born in Alkmaar in 1920 into a family coffee business; his Berkeley shop later supplied Starbucks with its first beans and let its founders apprentice there.

Lavazza was founded in 1895 in which Italian city?

Turin is where Luigi Lavazza took over a small grocery in 1895 and began blending beans from different origins, an art the firm says its rivals, who sold single varieties, had yet to try.

Which espresso company, founded in 1933, is headquartered in Trieste?

Illy was founded in Trieste in 1933 by Francesco Illy, who also pioneered pressurized, oxygen-free cans to keep roasted coffee fresh and an early automatic espresso machine, the Illetta.

Engineer Eric Favre devised the Nespresso capsule in the 1970s after studying a crowded espresso bar in which Italian city?

Rome's queue was outside a bar near the Pantheon, where the staff pumped the machine's lever several times before releasing each shot; Favre built that extra aeration into a sealed capsule.

Which single-serve pod did John Sylvan invent, later saying he regrets it?

The K-Cup launched with Keurig's office brewers in 1998, a year after Sylvan sold his stake for just $50,000; the pods went on to sell by the billion, and to pile up in landfill.

Folgers traces its origins to an 1850 coffee and spice mill in which city?

San Francisco: teenage James Folger arrived from Nantucket in 1850 and took a job at William Bovee's Pioneer Steam Coffee and Spice Mills, the firm he would later take over and give his name.

Maxwell House coffee is named after a hotel in which city?

Nashville's Maxwell House Hotel was the first big customer for Joel Cheek's blend in 1892 and lent it its name; the hotel burned down on Christmas night 1961, outlived by the coffee named after it.

What is Maxwell House's long-running slogan?

'Good to the last drop' was, the company long claimed, first uttered by Theodore Roosevelt after a cup in 1907; Folgers owns 'The best part of wakin' up'.

Which food giant bought a majority stake in Blue Bottle Coffee in 2017?

Nestlé, the group behind Nescafé instant, took a 68% stake in the Oakland-based craft roaster in 2017, reportedly paying up to $500 million.

Which coffee chain opened its first shop in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina in December 1992?

Caribou Coffee was dreamed up by John and Kim Puckett after a trip to Alaska's Denali National Park; John, a former Bain consultant, then moved to Minnesota to open the first shop.

In Italian, 'macchiato' literally means what?

Macchiato means 'stained' or 'marked': a caffè macchiato is espresso stained with a dash of milk foam, while a latte macchiato is milk stained with espresso.

A cortado, from the Spanish for 'cut', mixes espresso with roughly an equal amount of what?

Warm milk 'cuts' the espresso's acidity, hence the name, from the verb cortar; exact ratios vary by region.

A mocha is a chocolate-flavoured version of which drink?

Latte is the base: a caffè mocha stirs chocolate into the espresso and steamed milk, and borrows its name from the port of Mocha, a name European traders once gave to the coffee shipped from there.

In New Orleans, café au lait is traditionally made with coffee mixed with what?

Chicory root, roasted and ground, stretched scarce coffee when the Civil War cut off supplies to New Orleans, and the city kept the taste; Café du Monde still serves the blend beside its beignets.

A ristretto uses an espresso's dose of coffee but what quantity of water?

Half the water: a ristretto catches only the first, most concentrated part of the shot, so it tastes fuller-bodied, with a different balance of flavours from a standard espresso.

What is the Italian name for an espresso pulled from the usual dose of coffee with about twice the water?

Lungo, Italian for 'long', runs about twice as much water through the same dose; because flavours dissolve at different rates, it is not simply a weaker espresso.

Which whipped coffee went viral in 2020 after a Korean TV crew filmed it in Macau?

Dalgona coffee was café owner Leong Kam Hon's 'hand-beaten coffee' until a visiting Korean TV star said it tasted like dalgona, a honeycomb candy, and the name stuck.

Café Cubano is traditionally sweetened with what?

Brown sugar whipped with the first drops of espresso makes the creamy espuma that crowns a café Cubano; a colada is several shots in one cup, handed round with thimble-sized cups for sharing.

Yuenyeung, a Hong Kong drink, mixes coffee with what?

Milk tea, Hong Kong's strong brew with evaporated milk, is mixed with coffee to make yuenyeung, named for mandarin ducks: the male and female look so unlike that the pair stands for a match of opposites.

Which Swedish king is said to have acquired a taste for coffee in Ottoman exile?

Charles XII fled to Ottoman lands after his 1709 defeat at Poltava and is credited with bringing Turkish coffee-making home; his kingdom went on to ban coffee five times, and none of the bans stuck.

Caffeine works mainly by blocking receptors for which molecule?

Adenosine normally damps brain activity; caffeine's three-dimensional shape is close enough to fit the same receptors and block them, which is why a cup holds off fatigue and drowsiness.

Caffeine belongs to which chemical class of stimulants?

Methylxanthines also include theobromine and tea's theophylline, a relative potent enough to be prescribed for asthma; caffeine itself is 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine.

Which London coffee house on Tower Street gave rise to a famous insurance market?

Lloyd's began as Edward Lloyd's coffee house, where his reliable shipping news and ships' lists drew sailors, merchants and shipowners, who took to insuring voyages there.

Jonathan's Coffee-House in the City of London was the original site of what?

The Stock Exchange traces its origin to Jonathan's, where broker John Castaing began posting stock and commodity prices in 1698; brokers organised there before building their own exchange in 1773.

Paris's Café Procope was founded in the 1680s by a chef said to be from which island?

Sicily is the usual birthplace given for Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, who started out selling lemonade and ices; his café later became the haunt of Voltaire and Diderot.

Which cocktail is London barman Dick Bradsell credited with creating in the 1980s?

The Espresso Martini was his answer, he said, to a model who asked for something to wake her up; the bar's coffee machine stood right beside his station, so a fresh shot went in with the vodka.

A 1674 London pamphlet, 'The Women's Petition Against Coffee', complained that the drink left men what?

Impotent, the petitioners claimed: the 'drying and enfeebling liquor' kept husbands in coffee houses that shut women out, and a 'Men's Answer' defending the drink appeared the same year.

Which Austrian writer called the coffee house of his youth 'a sort of democratic club'?

Stefan Zweig, in his memoir The World of Yesterday, called it 'a sort of democratic club, open to everyone for the price of a cheap cup of coffee', where a guest could sit for hours over one order.

Which term for the craft-coffee movement is roaster Trish Rothgeb credited with coining?

Third wave was her nod to the waves of feminism: after supermarket tins and then coffee-shop chains, Rothgeb saw small roasters chasing quality in the cup above all.

Who is believed to have brought coffee to Vietnam in 1857?

French missionaries are credited with planting the first coffee in Vietnam in 1857; commercial plantations followed in 1888, and robusta later came to make up almost all of the country's vast crop.

Which fictional farmer has fronted Colombian coffee adverts since the 1950s?

Juan Valdez was created by the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach for the national coffee growers' federation, to make shoppers ask for 100% Colombian beans instead of anonymous blends.

In which TV series do single mother Lorelai and her daughter Rory get their coffee at Luke's Diner?

Gilmore Girls gave Lorelai a love of coffee to match her love of pop culture; she feeds it at the diner Luke Danes made out of his late father's hardware store.

The 'caffè sospeso', a coffee paid for in advance for a stranger in need, began in which Italian city?

Naples: by Neapolitan custom a customer pays for two coffees and drinks one; the habit had faded until the hard times of the early 2010s revived it and carried it to cafés across Europe.

By legend, Brazil's first coffee seeds were smuggled in a bouquet from which neighbouring colony in 1727?

French Guiana's governor would not share his coffee, the story goes, but his wife was charmed by the Portuguese envoy Francisco de Melo Palheta and hid the seeds in his farewell bouquet.

Stumptown Coffee Roasters, a craft-coffee pioneer founded in 1999, is named after a nickname of which US city?

Portland, Oregon, was nicknamed Stumptown in the mid-1800s, when it grew so fast that tree stumps were left standing where the forest had been cleared; Duane Sorenson opened the first Stumptown café there.

Costa Rica's 1890 railroad, built to export coffee, ran from San José to where?

The Atlantic: the line to the Caribbean port of Limón spared coffee the oxcart haul to the Pacific, and builder Minor Keith planted bananas beside the track, the seed of the United Fruit Company.

Which coffee variety, collected in an African forest in the 1930s, set a US$601-a-pound record at a 2017 Panama auction?

Geisha, also spelled Gesha after the region where it was found, was little planted until Panama's Peterson family entered it in the Best of Panama contest in the mid-2000s and it began smashing price records.

Which comedian collects a fellow comic in a different car each episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee?

Jerry Seinfeld launched the series on the web network Crackle in 2012, driving each guest out for coffee and conversation; it moved to Netflix for its tenth season in 2018.

The International Coffee Organization was set up in 1963 in which country?

Britain: the International Coffee Organization was established in London in 1963 to administer the 1962 International Coffee Agreement, negotiated under United Nations auspices.

Friends was developed under which coffee-themed working title?

Insomnia Cafe was the pitch title of Marta Kauffman and David Crane's sitcom; it became Friends Like Us, then Six of One, before NBC settled on Friends in 1994.

Which indie director made the black-and-white film Coffee and Cigarettes?

Jim Jarmusch began the series with a 1986 short and kept adding to it for nearly two decades, so the finished film is eleven separate conversations stitched together.

Van Gogh painted Café Terrace at Night in 1888 in which French town?

Arles, where Van Gogh set up his easel on the Place du Forum and painted the gas-lit terrace on the spot in the dark, telling his sister he had made 'a painting of night without black'.

Which animal digests the cherries for the Thai luxury coffee launched by Blake Dinkin in 2012?

Elephants digest the arabica cherries, and their dung is hand-picked for the beans; Black Ivory Coffee was launched in Thailand in 2012 by Canadian Blake Dinkin.

Whose late-1930s patent swapped steam for pressurised hot water, the breakthrough behind modern espresso?

Achille Gaggia worked it out at his family's coffee bar; after the war his company's lever machines carried the method to café counters.

La Marzocco, founded in 1927, is named after a symbol of which city?

Florence: the Marzocco is the city's heraldic lion, best known from Donatello's sculpture, and brothers Giuseppe and Bruno Bambi took its name when they began building espresso machines there in 1927.

Cà phê trứng, coffee topped with whipped egg yolk and condensed milk, comes from which city?

Hanoi's Café Giảng is the home of egg coffee: its founder is said to have whipped egg yolk into the cup in the late 1940s because fresh milk was scarce, and the stand-in became the city's speciality.

Which hourglass-shaped coffeemaker, invented by Peter Schlumbohm in 1941, sits in the Museum of Modern Art's collection?

Chemex pairs its glass flask with a wooden collar, tied on with a leather thong, so the brewer can be picked up and poured while hot; its German-born inventor had trained as a chemist.

What do Swedes call their daily pause for coffee and a pastry?

Fika grew partly out of the 'kafferep', a coffee party where the hostess laid out seven kinds of cookies: fewer, it was said, looked stingy and more looked boastful.

Hanson Goodrich of Illinois patented which stove-top coffee maker in 1889?

The percolator's central tube lifts boiling water and showers it over the grounds again and again; it was hugely popular in American kitchens until automatic drip machines supplanted it in the early 1970s.

Which baseball legend fronted Mr. Coffee's promotions in the 1970s?

Joe DiMaggio became Mr. Coffee's TV pitchman after founder Vincent Marotta, a Cleveland businessman, tracked down his number and cold-called him; Marotta and Samuel Glazer had launched the drip machine in 1972.

The world's first webcam (1991) pointed at a coffee pot at which university?

Cambridge's Computer Laboratory had one filter machine for some fifteen researchers, so they trained a camera on the pot to save wasted walks down the corridor; it became an early star of the web.

Which cocktail of vodka, coffee liqueur and cream is the Dude's drink of choice in The Big Lebowski?

White Russian was the favourite of Jeff Dowd, the real film producer the Dude is modelled on; in the film the character sometimes calls his drink a 'Caucasian'.

The blue-and-white Anthora paper cup, printed 'We Are Happy to Serve You', is an icon of which city?

New York's Greek-owned diners and delis were the customers Leslie Buck had in mind in the 1960s, hence the Greek key border and the amphora that his accent is said to have turned into 'Anthora'.

Dave Asprey's 'Bulletproof' coffee, inspired by a tea he drank in Tibet, is blended with which ingredient?

Butter went into his cup after Asprey tasted yak-butter tea on a trip to Tibet; he posted the buttered-coffee recipe on his blog in 2009 and built a diet brand around it.

Café owners in which two neighbouring countries both claim to have invented the flat white?

Australia and New Zealand both stake the claim: Sydney café owner Alan Preston says he put the name on his menu in 1985, while Wellington's Fraser McInnes says a cappuccino that would not froth gave him his in 1989.

Which probable carcinogen forms naturally when coffee beans are roasted, as it does when potatoes are fried?

Acrylamide forms when sugars react with the amino acid asparagine at high heat; it causes cancer in lab animals, yet large human studies have found no consistent link with the amounts people eat and drink.

Which Starbucks drink gained its namesake ingredient only in 2015?

Pumpkin Spice Latte took its flavour from the spices of a pumpkin pie, not the squash, for its first twelve years; the pumpkin was added only after customers pressed for it.

Fifteenth-century Sufi mystics, among the first known coffee drinkers, used it for what purpose?

To stay alert during night prayers: Sufi circles brewed coffee to keep awake through their nocturnal devotions, and by the late 1400s the habit was well established in their communities and beginning to spread across the Arab world.

Arbuckles' Ariosa, a pre-roasted coffee of the 1870s, became the everyday brew of which workers?

Cowboys made Ariosa 'the coffee that won the West'; before the Arbuckles sold it roasted in one-pound packages, buyers took home green beans and roasted them in a skillet.

George Constant Louis Washington, who launched mass-produced instant coffee in 1910, was born in Kortrijk in which country?

Belgium: born in Kortrijk to an English father, he emigrated to America, worked out his process while living in Guatemala and first sold it as 'Red E Coffee'.

In which US city was latte art developed in the 1980s–90s, popularized by David Schomer?

The heart pattern was established at Schomer's Espresso Vivace by 1989.

Professional coffee tasters certified to evaluate coffee are known as what?

Q Graders are tasters licensed by the Coffee Quality Institute after a multi-day exam; they score coffees by cupping, slurping from a spoon to aerate each sample.

Who first used the term 'specialty coffee', in a 1974 trade journal?

Erna Knutsen, a San Francisco green-coffee broker, used 'specialty coffee' in a 1974 Tea & Coffee Trade Journal interview to describe beans from special microclimates with distinct flavour.

Which French novelist, reputed to drink dozens of cups a day, wrote about coffee in his 1839 'Treatise on Modern Stimulants'?

Honoré de Balzac began writing at midnight and kept going until midday on strong black coffee; his treatise ranks it beside alcohol, tea, sugar and tobacco as one of five modern stimulants.

Postum, cereal magnate C. W. Post's coffee substitute of 1895, is made from molasses and what?

Wheat bran, roasted, and molasses went into the drink Post launched in 1895 after a stay at John Harvey Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanitarium, whose caramel cereal coffee he was accused of copying.

Mexican café de olla is sweetened with which unrefined sugar?

Piloncillo, the unrefined cane-sugar cone, sweetens café de olla along with cinnamon; the brew is traditionally made in an earthenware olla, which gives the drink its name.

Which US state made coffee milk, milk stirred with sweet coffee syrup, its official state drink in 1993?

Rhode Island traces coffee milk to Italian immigrants' taste for heavily sweetened coffee; the syrup moved from soda fountains into bottles, and the legislature made the drink official in 1993.

In 1781 Frederick the Great's 'sniffers' were disabled soldiers employed to do what?

Catch citizens roasting beans illegally: having reserved coffee roasting for state plants, Frederick sent some 400 war invalids through the streets to sniff out home roasters, to the public's lasting annoyance.

Boston's Green Dragon Tavern was a favourite haunt of the Freemasons and which group?

The Sons of Liberty met at the Green Dragon, a coffee-house tavern owned by the St Andrew's Lodge of Freemasons; Daniel Webster later dubbed it the 'headquarters of the Revolution'.

The first official International Coffee Day was launched on 1 October 2015 at a World Expo in which city?

Milan: the ICO launched the first official International Coffee Day at Expo Milano on 1 October 2015, consolidating various national coffee days onto one date.

Which type of mill grinds beans to a uniform size between two abrasive surfaces?

Burr grinders crush beans between two abrasive surfaces set a fixed distance apart, giving uniform particles; blade grinders chop unevenly and heat the grounds through friction.

Which composer is said to have counted exactly sixty beans for every cup of coffee?

Ludwig van Beethoven is said to have brewed his breakfast coffee himself each morning, counting out the beans one by one to be sure of the measure.

Which city got the first Starbucks outside North America in 1996?

Tokyo's upscale Ginza shopping district got the store, the first of fifteen planned for Japan, after Starbucks formed a joint venture with Sazaby, a Japanese retail and restaurant group.

Nespresso's single-serve coffee capsules are made mainly of which metal?

Aluminium, about a gram per capsule, seals each dose of ground coffee from the air; how many spent pods reach landfill and not a recycling plant is a standing criticism of the brand.

In Italy, where the word keeps its everyday meaning, a customer who orders just a 'latte' is served what?

A glass of milk is what arrives, because latte is simply the Italian for milk. The coffee drink is properly a caffè latte, which Italians mostly keep for breakfast.

In Italy, where the job covers far more than coffee, the word barista translates literally as what?

Bartender is the literal meaning, because an Italian bar pours wine and spirits alongside its espresso. In English the word narrowed to the person who makes the coffee drinks.

Which Starbucks cup size is named after the Italian word for twenty, the number of ounces it holds?

Venti holds 20 fluid ounces as a hot drink, but an iced Venti comes in a larger cup, so the name no longer fits. Trenta, the Italian for thirty, is larger still.

Italians traditionally drink a cappuccino, often with a pastry, only at which time of day?

In the morning is the rule: Italians treat cappuccino as a breakfast drink and rarely order one with any other meal. After lunch or dinner they switch to a plain espresso.

Which name is most commonly given to a cup of filter coffee with a shot of espresso added?

Red eye is the commonest name for the mix, which is also sold as a shot in the dark. Starbucks baristas call a two-shot version a black eye and a three-shot one a dead eye.

An espresso con panna, known in France as a café viennois, is a shot topped with what?

Whipped cream is the panna, the Italian word for cream, spooned over the espresso. British cafés use the same French name for the drink.

Which plant-based alternative became the first non-dairy option on Starbucks menus, back in 1997?

Soy milk reached Starbucks counters in 1997 and stood alone for nearly two decades. Coconut, almond and oat only joined it from the mid-2010s onward.

What do baristas call pressing ground coffee into a firm, level bed before an espresso is brewed?

Tamping packs and levels the grounds so that the water passes through them evenly. The handheld tool for the job is called a tamper.

What do baristas call the shiny, velvety steamed milk that makes it possible to pour latte art?

Microfoam has bubbles too small to see, which give a poured pattern its definition and stability. Big-bubbled dry foam is the stiff cap of an old-style cappuccino.

Which latte art pattern did David Schomer develop in 1992 from a photograph taken in an Italian café?

Rosetta, also written rosette, came three years after the heart had become the house signature at Schomer's Espresso Vivace. He went on to teach both in a course called Caffe Latte Art.

Which latte art method draws the design with a stick or pick after the milk has been poured?

Etching drags a tool through the foam once the cup is full. Free pouring instead forms the pattern during the pour itself, by moving the pitcher as the foam rises.

Into which countertop container does a barista empty the spent grounds after brewing each espresso?

Knock box is the name because the filter handle is rapped against its sturdy bash bar to free the hot puck of grounds. Trade slang also calls the whole thing a bash bin.

Which Riviera resort hosted the first World Barista Championship, held in 2000?

Monte Carlo staged the first contest, and the event moves to a different host city each time it is held. No woman won it until Agnieszka Rojewska of Poland in 2018.

Which English barista won the 2007 World Barista Championship and later drew millions of YouTube subscribers?

James Hoffmann followed the title by co-founding the London roaster Square Mile and writing The World Atlas of Coffee. Square Mile then sponsored the very next world champion.

Which rich espresso drink is made by steaming half-and-half in place of ordinary milk?

Breve gets its richness from half-and-half, an equal blend of milk and cream, which is steamed just as plain milk would be for a latte.

Italians 'correct' an espresso into a caffè corretto by adding a splash of which spirit, most often?

Grappa is the usual choice, with sambuca or brandy as alternatives. In the Veneto, drinkers then rinse the last of the coffee from the cup with a little more spirit and drink that too.

In which professional tasting ritual is coffee slurped from a spoon so that it sprays across the tongue?

Cupping begins with a deep sniff, then a slurp that aerates the coffee and spreads it over the tongue. Tasters use short-handled spoons with deep bowls, one each for hygiene.

Blue Bottle Coffee served its cortado in a Libbey glass tumbler, giving the drink which other name?

Gibraltar is the Libbey tumbler's own name, and it holds only about four and a half fluid ounces. Ritual Coffee Roasters and other rivals soon copied the glass and the label.

A galão, espresso with foamed milk served in a tall glass, is a hot drink from which country?

Portugal's galão is about one quarter coffee to three quarters foamed milk. Ask for a meia de leite instead and the two come in equal parts, served in a cup.

Before factory-roasted brands won out in the twentieth century, where was most coffee roasted?

At home was the norm: people stirred green beans in a cast-iron skillet or spread them on a metal sheet in the kitchen oven. One early roasting firm called selling roasted coffee up-hill work.

What rises to the surface of coffee beans late in a dark roast, leaving them visibly shiny?

Oils inside the bean liquefy under heat and pressure and seep out, so the further a roast is taken, the glossier it looks. Lightly roasted beans stay completely dry.

Which named level on the traditional scale for coffee beans is the very darkest, nearly black and shiny?

Italian roast sits one step beyond French roast, with burnt tones, a thin body and almost no acidity left. By that point little of the bean's own character survives.

By the end of a roast, how have coffee beans changed in size and weight compared with the raw beans?

Bigger and lighter: the beans shed 15 to 18 percent of their mass, mostly as water, while the pressure of steam inside roughly doubles their volume.

Which small kitchen appliance do hobbyists often repurpose to roast coffee beans at home?

Popcorn popper models that blow hot air keep the beans moving as they brown and blow the loose chaff off as well. The drawbacks are scattered husks and plenty of smoke.

Which spice gives its name to the very lightest coffee roast, stopped just as the beans begin to pop?

Cinnamon roast is so light that its sweetness is still undeveloped, leaving toasted-grain and grassy flavours with a sharp acidity.

Which browning process, the same one that flavours seared steak and toast, gives roasted coffee its taste?

Maillard reaction products form as the heat browns the bean. Raw beans hold as much caffeine and protein as roasted ones, yet without it they taste nothing like coffee.

As green coffee beans absorb heat in the roaster, which colour do they turn before any shade of brown?

Yellow comes first, during a drying phase in which the beans' moisture evaporates. Only after that do they pass through ever darker shades of brown.

Spain's torrefacto style glazes coffee beans by adding which ingredient during roasting?

Sugar is added to glaze the beans, which are then mixed with normally roasted ones. The method began in the 1920s as a cheap way to preserve coffee and to mask low-grade beans.

Why is coffee usually roasted near where it is drunk, not where it is grown?

Raw beans keep far longer than roasted ones, which are at their best for only a couple of weeks. So green coffee makes the sea voyage and the roasting waits until it is close to the customer.

Which preservation method did Hills Bros. first apply to cans of roasted coffee in 1900?

Vacuum packing in cans was the first large-scale way to stop roasted coffee going stale. Hills Bros. borrowed a process that had been patented for canned food only two years earlier.

In Vietnam, coffee beans are traditionally coated with which fat before going into the roaster?

Clarified butter is the traditional coating, which is why the style is known as a butter roast. It leaves an extra caramelised layer on the surface of every bean.

The 1970s Siemens Sirocco home coffee roaster was named, by way of a wind, after which desert?

Sahara winds called sirocco gave their name first to a commercial hot-air roasting process and then to the little Siemens machine, which floated its beans on heated air.

Which American region gives its name to a light coffee roast prized by some for its complex acidity?

New England roast is a moderate light brown, still mottled in appearance, and sits just one step darker than the palest named level of all.

What do roasters call the recipe, often plotted as a graph of temperature against time, for a batch of coffee?

Profile is the trade word: a roast profile is tuned to each coffee's origin, density and moisture, and can be logged by temperature probes inside the roaster.

Which family of acids in green coffee beans is a roaster's key target to break down during roasting?

Chlorogenic acids taste unpleasant, so breaking them down is one of the main goals of a roast. Other acids in the raw bean are pleasant ones that a roaster hopes to keep.

In which Middle Eastern city did the first cylinder coffee roaster with a hand crank appear around 1650?

Cairo's crank-turned cylinder, made of tinned copper or cast iron, kept the beans moving over a brazier or open fire. French, Dutch and Italian versions quickly followed.

Which word, shared with blacksmithing, describes stopping a roast by spraying the hot coffee beans with water?

Quenching with a spray of water is one of the two usual ways to cool a batch once it is dumped from the roaster. The other is simply moving air.

Which arm on an espresso machine does a barista plunge into a jug of milk to heat and froth it?

Steam wand jets on early espresso machines are what made the caffè latte possible, by letting a barista heat and texture the milk. The same jet whips milk into foam fine enough for latte art.

Which barista phrase for making an espresso comes from the long handle on lever-driven machines?

Pulling a shot dates from machines on which the barista hauled down a long handle against a spring-loaded piston, which then drove hot water through the coffee at high pressure.

Which James Bond actor brews coffee on a La Pavoni lever espresso machine in a 1973 film?

Roger Moore's Bond tips milk into thin, pale coffee and then pokes the machine's pipes into the cup. Clumsy or not, the scene gave the little Europiccola legendary status.

Which hard, chalky deposit must be dissolved out of an espresso machine's insides with a mild acid?

Limescale is mostly calcium carbonate that builds up wherever water is heated. Descaling products dissolve it with acid, and weak ones such as citric acid are kinder to the metal underneath.

The Faema E61 espresso machine takes its name from which event in the sky during its launch year?

A solar eclipse in 1961, the machine's year of introduction, supplied both the E and the 61. Its design went on to become close to ubiquitous among semi-automatic espresso machines.

Which herb's name goes on Breville espresso machines in the UK, where an unrelated firm owns the Breville brand?

Sage is the label Breville uses across the UK and Europe, because Newell Brands holds the Breville name there. The company began in 1932 making radios, and its name blends its two founders' surnames.

Which engineer devised the Nespresso capsule after studying an unusually busy coffee bar near Rome's Pantheon?

Eric Favre saw in 1975 that the bar's staff pumped the piston many times for each cup, forcing air into the coffee. His sealed capsule was designed to copy that extra aeration.

La Marzocco's GS of 1970 was its first professional espresso machine built with two of which component?

Boilers came in pairs on the GS, so the water for brewing was heated separately from the supply used on the milk. The firm had patented the first horizontal boiler back in 1939.

On an espresso machine, what is the fixed part called that the handled filter basket locks into for brewing?

Grouphead is the name, and its underside is pierced with many small holes, known as the shower, that spread the pressurised water evenly over the grounds.

De'Longhi, now known for espresso machines, built its name on portable heaters and which other appliance?

Air conditioners such as the portable Pinguino were De'Longhi's signature long before coffee was. The Italian company began in 1902 as a small workshop making industrial parts.

What do baristas call the fault in which water punches a hole through the coffee puck during brewing?

Channeling spoils the espresso because the water rushes through one path instead of the whole bed of grounds. Baristas check for it by brewing with a bottomless filter handle.

Besides the beans and a sweetener, what goes into the roaster for Southeast Asia's Hainanese-style kopi coffee?

Margarine goes in with the beans for a roast of about 25 minutes, which gives kopi its dark caramelised finish. The name kopi itself comes from Malay.

Which woman's name does Rancilio give its home espresso machine, made since 1997 and officially titled 'Miss'?

Silvia, officially Miss Silvia, has such a following of tinkerers that it has been called probably the most modified domestic espresso machine in the world.