Wednesday evening January 4 – our last evening in Maine

Our son-in-law Mark enjoys roasting his own coffee and gave us a demonstration – then gave the coffee to us. 🙂

He has perfected the process quite well.

They buy the beans green and roast them in an old popcorn popper – one that he keeps turning so they don’t burn.

They begin changing to a light brown – then pop.

As they get darker, there is another popping sound.

The beans were then cooled on a cookie sheet.

Notice the fans. They are used to draw the smell of roasting beans out of the house. It is kind of a burnt smell.

The next morning we were given a nice bag of coffee beans.

Thank you Mark, we are enjoying delicious, fresh coffee this week.

~~~

This process caused me to ask Google about the origin of coffee. There are a lot of legends concerning coffee. I didn’t include those. 🙂

The history of coffee goes at least as far back as the 10th century, with a number of reports and legends surrounding its first use. The native (undomesticated) origin of coffee is thought to have been Ethiopia. The earliest substantiated evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree is from the 15th century, in the Sufi monasteries of Yemen. By the 16th century, it had reached the rest of the Middle East, South India, Persia, Turkey, Horn of Africa, and northern Africa. Coffee then spread to the Balkans, Italy and to the rest of Europe, to Indonesia and then to America.

I found this to be interesting: By the end of the 18th century, coffee had become one of the world’s most profitable export crops. After crude oil, coffee is the most sought commodity in the world.