Coffee's delicious journey from tiny bean to tasty brew

Whether you’re an early bird or a night owl, coffee is probably part of your daily routine. Since 2004, the number of American adults who’ve enjoyed a daily cup of java has jumped up 37 percent, the highest level in more than 20 years, according to the National Coffee Association. But coffee is hardly a new invention. Its roots go all the way back to 850 CE , when coffee beans were first cultivated in the Arabian colony of Harar near present-day Ethiopia. 

“From there, coffee was transported to Mecca and spread throughout the Arabian continent,” Bryan Quoc Le, food scientist and CEO at Mendocino Food Consulting, tells Popular Science. “But only in the 1600s did Venetian merchants record seeing a blackish beverage that resembled modern coffee, and brought coffee beans to Europe.”

Throughout this history, the way we grow, prepare, and serve coffee has changed. According to Samo Smrke, a research associate at Zurich University of Applied Sciences’ Coffee Excellence Center, there’s not a whole lot of other foods that receive the same level of processing as coffee–and every tiny step, from the soil it’s grown into to the temperature it’s boiled at has an impact on flavor. 

Here’s a guide to the journey that a coffee bean takes to go from a simple root to your morning latte.

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