Coffee
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215 free Coffee trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
95 free coffee trivia questions with answers. Are you a true coffee enthusiast? Put your knowledge to the test with our comprehensive 215-question coffee trivia quiz. From the origins of espresso to brewing techniques and famous coffee varieties, this quiz covers everything a coffee lover should know. Challenge yourself and discover fascinating facts about the world's most beloved beverage.
30 of 215 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In coffee's best-known origin legend, which animals did the herder Kaldi see turn frisky after eating red berries?
Goats
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.
Q 02Which spice traditionally flavours Arabic coffee, the brew that hosts across the Gulf pour for their guests?
Cardamom
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.
Q 03What is the outermost skin of a coffee cherry called?
Exocarp
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.
Q 04Which country was the world's largest producer of coffee in 2023?
Brazil
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.
Q 05Which processing method cures the whole cherry, fruit pulp and all, in the sun?
Natural (dry) process
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.
Q 06What is the golden-brown foam that forms on top of a freshly brewed espresso shot?
Crema
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.
Q 07Which brewing method steeps coarse grounds in room-temperature water for 12 to 24 hours?
Cold Brew
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.
Q 08What penalty did Ottoman sultan Murad IV impose on people who defied his 1630s ban on coffeehouses and tobacco?
Execution
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.
Q 09Which of these is a common method for decaffeinating coffee beans?
Swiss Water Process
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.
Q 10What nickname for coffee comes from the island where the Dutch planted it in the 17th century?
Java
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.
Q 11Which Italian dessert soaks ladyfinger biscuits in espresso and layers them with mascarpone?
Tiramisu
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.
Q 12What is the audible pop called when roasting beans shed moisture and start to swell?
First crack
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.
Q 13Which brewer steeps grounds in hot water, then traps them under a mesh plunger?
French Press
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.
Q 21What is the standard water pressure used to brew a shot of espresso?
About 9 bar
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.
Q 22Hypothenemus hampei, the 2 mm 'coffee berry borer' rated the crop's most harmful pest, is what kind of insect?
A beetle
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.
Q 23Which Italian dessert, its name meaning 'drowned', pours a shot of hot espresso over a scoop of vanilla gelato?
Affogato
Q 14Coffee 'beans' are the seeds of a stone fruit like a cherry or peach, a type botanists call what?
Drupe
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.
Q 15Which tissue makes up most of the coffee bean itself, rather than a layer of the cherry?
Endosperm
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.
Q 16Which protest against a British tax made coffee the patriotic drink of the American colonies?
The Boston Tea Party
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'.
Q 17What is the common name for the dried fruit of the coffee plant, often used to make a herbal tea?
Cascara
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.
Q 18Which city is traditionally credited with Europe's first coffee house outside the Ottoman Empire, opened in the 1640s?
Venice
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.
Q 19What is the handled basket that holds the coffee grounds in an espresso machine called?
Portafilter
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.
Q 20What is the small cup traditionally used to serve a shot of espresso called?
Demitasse
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.
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.
Q 24England's first coffeehouse is traditionally dated to 1650 in which university city?
Oxford
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.
Q 25The majority of the world's coffee is grown in a geographical region often referred to by what name?
The Bean Belt
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.
Q 26Which kind of frost kills a coffee tree outright, costing growers the three to four years a replacement takes to fruit?
A black frost
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.
Q 27Which fungal disease, caused by Hemileia vastatrix, reached Brazil in 1970 and swept Latin America?
Coffee Leaf Rust
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.
Q 28Brewing water well below the recommended 91–96 °C tends to leave a cup of coffee tasting how?
Sour and weak
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.
Q 29The 1952 'Give yourself a Coffee-Break' slogan was a campaign by a growers' bureau from which region?
Pan-American
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.
Q 30Which gas is infused into cold brew to give it a creamy, stout-like head?
Nitrogen
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.