How should I store coffee?

A SHORT HISTORY OF COFFEE

Bravely the goatherder
tasted these berries himself and soon found,
to his amazement that he felt extraordinarily stimulated
and invigorated. Convinced that he had discovered a
miracle, Kaldi picked some more of the berries and rushed off
with them to show his local Imam, a learned holy man.
The Imam, on hearing the story, pronounced the beans to be
evil and flung them onto the fire, whereupon a delicious
and exotic aroma soon filled the air. Hastily the Imam,
changing his mind, raked the beans from the fire
and threw them into a bowl of water to cool, and then tasted
the water. So was the first recorded coffee "brewed" and
enjoyed.

Because of stories like this, coffee was first thought
to have originated in Yemen on the Arabian peninsula
when it was seen growing there by Europeans at a much
later date. But the botanical evidence indicates
that the coffee plant "Coffea Arabica" originated on
the plateaus of central Ethiopia where it still grows wild.

Somehow the Arab traders got the beans from Ethiopia
across the Red Sea to Yemen around the 6th
century AD. Black African cultures were using the
bean before this, but as a solid food: the ripe berries
were squashed, combined with animal fats and shaped into
round balls, which could be carried and eaten on
long journeys.

In Arabia coffee is first mentioned as a medicine, then
as a beverage taken during meditation and
religious exercises. But by the 13th century throughout
Arabia Qahveh (Coffee) houses serving the drink
had become very popular, lively places where music
was played and politicians, philosophers, artists and
tradesmen all gathered. As coffee drinking grew in Arabia
and Turkey, voyagers and traders from Europe tasted
the new drink and took news of it back to Europe,
but the Arabs jealously guarded their plants and would
allow no seeds to leave the country unless they were
roasted to prevent germination. However an Indian
Moslem named Baba Budan on a pilgrimage
to Arabia managed to smuggle coffee seeds out, and on his
return home planted them in southern India.

It wasn't until 1615 that the first shipment of
coffee arrived in Europe at Venice (then European trading
headquarters) from Turkey, and coffee houses quickly
spread through Italy and to Vienna, then on to most of
Europe. The first recorded reference to coffee in
England was in 1637 when a Turk named Jacob opened a
coffee house in Oxford. In the meantime the Dutch had
obtained coffee seeds from Malabar in India and planted
them in their colony at Java. At that time coffee was
available from Mocha the main port of Yemen or from Java,
giving rise to the famous blend of
"Mocha-Java."

In 1715 Louis XIV of France was given a single coffee
tree brought from Java to Holland, and then to Paris
for him by the Dutch. The first greenhouse in Europe
was then constructed to house the single tree,
where it flowered and bore fruit. (The coffee bush
is self-pollinating.) The first sprouts from this single
tree reached Martinique, a French dominion in the
Caribbean around 1720, and the plant spread from
there throughout Central and South America, notably
to Brazil which today supplies over one third
of the world's coffee.

In 1893 coffee was introduced to the British
colonial countries Kenya and Tanganyika in Africa,
only a few hundred kilometres south of
where it had originated, in Ethiopia.

Coffee is now grown in most parts of the tropical
zone, mostly at an elevation of 800 to 1000
metres, where the plant thrives best. The Robusta plant
though, being hardier, can be grown at lower elevations.