Coffee Trivia

• Coffee is the most popular drink worldwide with over 400 billion cups consumed each year.

• Last year in Britain, £730 million was spent on coffee.

• Britain consumes 500g of coffee per person, per year.

• It takes 42 coffee beans to make an espresso.

• Over half of the espresso consumed in the UK is drunk in the South East of the country.

• On average, men drink more coffee than women (1.7 cups per day vs 1.5 cups)

• 37% of coffee drinkers drink their coffee black; while 63% add a sweetener such as sugar.

• 57% of coffee is drunk at breakfast; 34% between meals and 13% at other meals.

• The first European coffee was sold in pharmacies in 1615 as a medicinal remedy.

• Cappuccino is so named because of the drink's peak of foam which resembles the cowl of a Capuchin friar's habit.

• Espresso contains less caffeine than any other roast.

• Coffee was first known in Europe as Arabian Wine.

• Bach wrote a coffee cantata in 1732.

• Italians do not drink espresso during meals. It is considered to be a separate event and is given its own time.

• In the ancient Arab world, coffee became such a staple part of family life that one of the causes allowed by law for marital separation was a husband's refusal to produce coffee for his wife.

• Raw coffee beans, soaked in water and spices, are chewed like candy in many parts of Africa.

• The Europeans first added chocolate to their coffee in the 1600's.

• Our sense of smell, more than any of our other senses makes our final judgement on coffee.

• The French philosopher, Voltaire, reportedly drank fifty cups of coffee a day.

• Decaffeinated coffee sales are at their highest in January due to people's New Year resolutions.

• Scandinavia has the world's highest per capita annual coffee consumption, 26.4 pounds.
  
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Tea Trivia

• Dried tea will absorb odours in the refrigerator

• India is one of the main tea growers, exporting more than 12% of the world's tea with 523,000 hectares under cultivation.

• Tea was created more than 5000 years ago in China.

• The first book about tea was written by Lu Yu in 800 A.D

• 96% of all cups of tea drunk daily in the UK are brewed from tea bags.

• 98% of people take their tea with milk, but only 30% take sugar in tea.

• Tea can be used as a foot refresher by soaking your feet in it

• Tea contains half the amount of caffeine found in coffee

• By the middle of the 18th Century tea had replaced ale and gin as the drink of the masses and had become Britain's most popular beverage

• Tea breaks are a tradition that have been with us for approximately 200 years

• 80% of office workers now claim they find out more about what's going on at work over a cup of tea than in any other way

If you are cold, tea will warm you. If you are heated, it will cool you. If you are depressed, it will cheer you. If you are excited, it will calm you." ~ William Gladstone