More coffee facts

   Germany is the world's second largest consumer of coffee in terms of volume at 16 pounds per person.
   Over 53 countries grow coffee worldwide, but all of them lie along the equator between the tropic of Cancer and Capricorn.
   An acre of coffee trees can produce up to 10,000 pounds of coffee cherries. That amounts to approximately 2,000 pounds of beans after hulling or milling.
   The percolator was invented in 1827 by a French man. It would boil the coffee producing a bitter tasting brew. Today most people use the drip or filtered method to brew their coffee.
   With the exception of Hawaii and Puerto Rico, no coffee is grown in the United States or its territories.
   Up until the 1870's most coffee was roasted at home in a frying pan over a charcoal fire. It wasn't until recent times that batch roasting became popular.
   Each year some 7 million tons of green beans are produced world wide. Most of which is hand picked.
The Revolutionary Drink
   The coffee houses that sprung up in France, England, and eventually the Americas proved to aid the spread of new and sometimes radical political opinions. In 1675 Charles II issued a "Proclamation for the Suppression of Coffee Houses" in an attempt to quell the liberal ideas being discussed by the patrons. All parties rebelled, and eleven days later the coffee houses reopened. The Parisian coffee houses are credited as a testing ground for the ideology that led to the French Revolution.
   Across the ocean in Boston, the Boston Tea Party was planned in the now famous Green Dragon coffee house in 1773.  And, in New York the Merchants coffee house was site of the Government headquarters in the days following the outbreak of the American Revolution. Later, as American soldiers forged into battle in the Mexican War and the Civil War, they protected their coffee beans as their most precious rations.