Coffee facts to help win your next pub quiz

There are so many enjoyable and interesting facts about coffee, that for regular quiz contestants, finding out a little more about the little-known data about coffee could be the difference between winning and losing first prize. Here are a few interesting facts that most regular office coffee machine users don’t know about coffee. Do you know enough about coffee? Most people will understand that coffee, especially with caffeine, provides several effects that help refresh your mind and makes you feel better almost instantly. What most people will not know is that it was discovered almost by accident by an Ethiopian goat herder sometime around the ninth century after he found his goats were eating the beans and behaving strangely. Here are some more coffee facts:

• Across the commodity markets that trade around the world coffee is the second-largest article of trade after oil.
• While the British are fastidious tea and coffee drinkers, New York residents consume seven times more coffee than any other major or minor city across the states.
• Although there are many different brands and franchises of coffee, there are actually around 50 different species of your favourite drink.
• Coffee beans are grown naturally around the world, but in the US, for example, it is only Hawaii that produces coffee in commercial quantities for sale around the world.
• If you prefer more caffeine in your coffee, you will purchase coffee beans that are lightly roasted because those that are dark roasted often contain much less caffeine, compared to the lighter beans.

Modern and old inventions

• While most of us drink our coffee and enjoy it, scientists are performing research because they have found that coffee beans may be able to replace some fossil fuels. Perhaps your vehicle may work on coffee in the future.
• The world record for drinking continuous cups of coffee stands at 82 during a seven-hour period which equals about 1 gallon of coffee.
• Brazil, Colombia and the continent of Africa currently produce around 40% of the coffee that is required around the world.
• While you are used to having coffee served to you in many different ways, it was George Washington who invented instant coffee in 1906 in Guatemala. An English chemist managed to sell the product commercially three years later.
• Coffee was once banned in the 16^th century by Muslim leaders. This was due to the effect that coffee had on the body, which is one of the main reasons why people drink it today.

• Did you know that Dorothy Jones of Boston was the first person to actually be licensed as a coffee brewer for the USA? She gained her license all the way back in 1670.
• For the 75% of people that drink coffee across the UK, 65% of Americans drink coffee with their breakfast. If you’re visiting Turkey or Greece, you will probably be offered coffee when you are welcomed into someone’s home for the first time as this forms part of their culture.

Having learnt and mastered all of the information here, you may wish to gain a bonus point by knowing that Kopi Luwak coffee beans, which are excreted by the wildcats in Sumatra, are still the most expensive coffee across the globe. You will have to pay around £60 for a standard portion of this coffee. Image: Stirling Noyes