After eating a typical Ethiopian dinner with injera and wot, one of the women in the home will begin the ritual.
Coffee ceremony
She spreads fresh grass on the floor to bring a bit of the fragrance and freshness of the outside into the room. She sits in a corner on a stool near a coal brazier and lights incense, building the charming atmosphere. She generally prepares something to nibble on, offering the treat among the guests. Then she starts to roast the green coffee beans, tossing them in a concave bowl to roast them evenly. When the beans are properly roasted, she returns to the table and shakes the bowl in front of each guest so they can smell the pleasant fragrance, and then moves to the outside area of the house, where the kitchen is located. From inside you can hear the sound of the mortar and pestle as she grinds the beans.
The woman then returns with the traditional clay "jebenà" jug. It is round and bulges at the bottom, with a long neck on the side that ends in a spout. After warming the water in the jug over the brazier, she adds the ground coffee and brings the mixture to a boil. She then pours it into small cups without handles, adds sugar, and often a small twig of rue. Now the coffee is ready to be served. When everyone has drunk, the woman collects the cups, adds more water, and prepares the second round, using the same beans.
Tradition dictates that a third round can be prepared if the guests so desire.
In Ethiopia they say that the first, strongest, brew is for the fathers, the second for the mothers, and the third for the children.
Cafés
Chronologically, the very first "caffetteria" was opened in 1554 in Constantinople.
In Europe, a café was opened in Marseille in 1659, and one followed in Hamburg in 1679.
In Venice the plant was originally considered a medicine (thanks to the physician and botanist Prospero Alpino), but it was soon also used to prepare the delicious beverage:in 1683 (although some move this date forward to 1640, or even to 1615) in Piazza San Marco, the first "coffee shop" was opened under the arcades of the Procuratie.
The first café was opened in Vienna in 1683.Legend has it that when the Turks abandoned their siege of Vienna, in their flight they left behind many bags of coffee. It's no accident that Viennese coffee uses a method very similar to the Turkish procedure: the only difference is that it is filtered.
From that point forward, new shops sprung up throughout the city (in 1763 there were 218!), and they became meeting places to discuss business or enjoy a chat.
During the 17th century, the "coffee ritual" spread through Italy and all of Old Europe. Literary cafés opened their doors, and the great artistic and cultural currents that crafted the history of the continent gained strength around coffee.
"This precious beverage that spreads a joyful excitement throughout the entire body was called the beverage of intellectuals, the friend of literati, scientists and poets because, as it strikes the nerves, it helps clarify ideas, renders the imagination more active and accelerates thinking processes."(Pellegrino Artusi)
Coffee was very popular in the Enlightenment movement.Many famous followers of the Enlightenment were great coffee drinkers, because it helped them stay awake and prepared them to withstand lengthy debates. In 1700, the philosopher Voltaire boasted that he drank five cups of coffee a day.In 1842, the novelist Honoré de Balzac confessed that he had drunk over 3000 cups of coffee during the years he was writing "La Comédie humaine".
At the time of the French Revolution, cafés were places in which the leading topic was politics, and where revolutionaries developed their plans and proposals.French cafés were called "the spoken press of the revolution", and each one was characterized by a political leaning. Indeed, a man's ideas were judged by the Café he frequented.
The first Italian periodical was called "Il Caffè"; it was founded by a group of Enlightenment thinkers in Lombardy, including the Verri brothers, Cesare Beccaria, and other member of the "Accademia dei Pugni". The pages of "Il Caffè" dealt with a variety of different subjects, from the sciences to the arts to social life.
In Turkish life, coffee was also linked to intellectual activity – so much so that the earliest coffee houses were called "schools of cultured people" or "schools of knowledge".
Caffè Greco was a famous establishment and the heart of artistic Rome in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
Any artist passing through stopped there seeking his own consecration.
The new custom spread swiftly throughout Italy: in Turin, Genoa, Milan, Florence, and Rome, cafés sprung up, quickly gaining notoriety and becoming important cultural centers and meeting places for writers, politicians, and scholars of every age.
Coffee makers
The earliest coffee maker is the jebenà, originally from Ethiopia.
In Turkey instead we find the ibrik, used to prepare and serve coffee. It is a broad-based kettle with a much narrower neck that was never widely welcomed in Western Europe.
The Baghdad kettle is considered to be the precursor of European coffee makers: the metal jug has a spout, lid, and curved handle. We see the curved spout in the earliest English coffee house coffee makers.
From the 14th through the 18th centuries, the most effective method for making coffee remained boiling the grounds.
The main problem was then separating the grounds from the beverage.In France an infusion method was studied, in which the ground coffee was placed in a canvas sachet and immersed in the coffeepot tied to a short cord. These containers took the name samovar.They sat on three small feet to provide clearance for a small burner. Samovars were made of brass, pewter, or copper, and were commonly used in public establishments and well-to-do families.
As majolica began to spread, the old metal and glass containers began to be replaced with others that were either white or decorated, and were nicer looking and less expensive.
Filtered coffee makers arose later. These devices were simple in shape, divided into two parts, and this is where the filter appeared in the middle.
In 1819, the Parisian Morize developed a coffee pot that could be flipped over.These became very common in Italy as well, and an incredibly successful and popular version was the tin "napoletana", which had a very plain appearance but was incredibly efficient for its intended purpose. These became the most popular way to prepare coffee.
With the advent of electricity, new machines arrived – those for "espresso" coffee. Italy was a leader in building these machines, thanks to the ingenuity of men like Desiderio Pavoni and Luigi Bezzera, and espresso makers were soon manufactured also for use in the home as they still are today.
Among "flame" coffee makers, the most prestigious is undoubtedly the "moka", a device invented and brought to market before World War II by Alfonso Bialetti.
