Ahh … that tastes good. It’s my first sip of coffee this morning. After breakfast, a hot “cup of joe” is the first order of business for me each day.

My parents drank coffee regularly but I didn’t care for it until I was about 16 and a girl cousin I was visiting drank a cup. Not to be outdone, I choked down a few swallows and discovered it wasn’t so bad after all. I also realized you could get free coffee refills at restaurants; something not offered to cola drinkers back then. I was soon addicted.

My first boss taught me how to make coffee at work — strong. In those days I was on the job by 5 a.m. so hot, strong coffee got me going in the a.m. and kept me going in the p.m. (in more ways than one!) For more than six decades now I’ve been a fan of hot, robust coffee.

Have you ever wondered who first roasted the fruit of the coffee tree and made a hot beverage from it? I surfed the Internet in search of an answer to that question.

From several sources I learned that in Ethiopia and Yemen prior to the 1400s coffee beans were chewed raw. When European explorers first reached Uganda, the natives were reportedly chewing dried coffee beans.

There are many old Arabian tales about the origin of coffee in Arabia. While the stories vary, the basic plot tells of a goat herder named Kaldi whose goats didn’t come home one day. After a search he found them hopping around, behaving bizarrely. When he noticed the animals were eating the red berries of a shrub the curious Kaldi ate some of the berries himself and soon he was hopping around, too. Kaldi had discovered a coffee tree and the delight of its fruit.

The roasting and grinding of coffee beans for the purpose of brewing a beverage, Internet sources say, goes back to about 500 AD. The popularity of coffee as a beverage, however, apparently didn’t become widespread until it was outlawed in Istanbul in 1543. The “Banned in Istanbul” label was just what coffee needed because its popularity boomed after that. By the late 1600s, the beverage we know as coffee had become popular throughout Europe.

I was surprised to learn that women tried to make coffee illegal at one point in history. A “women’s petition against coffee” which circulated in London in 1674 denounced “the grand inconvenience accruing (women) from the excessive use of that drying, enfeebling liquor.” The term “liquor,” I assume, refers simply to a beverage, not necessarily an alcoholic beverage. Coffee berries, however, can be fermented and in some Arabian countries are used to make an alcoholic beverage.

While I could not find a rationale for the women’s petition against coffee, their rage may have had something to do with the fact madams of many European brothels believed coffee increased sexual function and pleasure. Don’t spread that rumor or coffee prices will skyrocket even more.

Ironically, after women began drinking coffee their attitude did an about-face. Some years later the inability of a husband to provide coffee for his wife became legal grounds (no pun intended) for divorce.

Have you ever wondered how coffee got its nicknames? According to the information I found, coffee beans were exported from the ports of Java in Indonesia and Mocha in Yemen, hence the often used “java” and “mocha.”

And then there is coffee’s familiar nickname, “a cup of joe.” That allegedly goes back to when the U.S. Navy’s Admiral Josephus “Joe” Daniels became Chief of Naval Operations. He reportedly outlawed alcohol on ships and directed that coffee become the main beverage. That’s when his sailors began referring to coffee as “a cup of Joe.”

In a world of rapid change and expensive luxuries, a cup of hot coffee is an increasingly expensive, unchanging little treat which gets the day off to a good start. In addition, coffee adds to the pleasure of a conversation with friends, enhances a good book or newspaper and is the perfect accompaniment to a big piece of pie a la mode!

Ahhh … that tastes gooooood!

Arvid Huisman can be contacted at huismaniowa@gmail.com. ©2025 by Huisman Communications.