Coffee has always played a big part in my life—especially since I started work at Prospect—but I also seem to be reading about it a lot at the moment. Perhaps because there's a film exploring the economics of coffee currently on release, Anna Pickard recently came riding to the defence of corporate coffee on the Guardian's blog; while, over on Slate, I've been retrospectively delighting in Ron Rosenbaum's demolition of this op-ed by the prodigiously well-qualified Stanley Fish.
The British Coffee Association also have some thrilling things to tell you about the world's most popular drink, including the facts that coffee is the second largest export in the world after oil (in dollar value) and that it takes 42 coffee beans to make an espresso. On a more cultured note, Johann Sebastian Bach liked coffee so much he wrote a "Kaffee Kantate", which includes the immortal lines:
Father, don't be so severe! If I can't drink My bowl of coffee three times daily, Then in my torment I will shrivel up Like a piece of roast goat.But do you know how many different ways there now are of drinking the stuff? It's a question that seems to get all sorts of people worked up, especially when definitions are involved: take this heated debate from the Barista Guild of America. My casual list of coffee types thus far includes Café au lait, Americano, Espresso, Cappuccino, Latte, Ristretto, Macchiato, Mocha, Cortado, flat white, Greek/Turkish/Arabic coffee, breve, Galão, Bica, Kopi tubruk, Vietnamese coffee, Madras coffee, iced coffee and frappé. I'm certain it's far from complete…
