Coffee Food Pictures, Food Photos, Food Images & Photo Art

COFFEE STOCK FOOD PHOTOS, STOCK FOOD PICTURES & FOOD PHOTO ART PRINTS

Stock photos & stock pictures gallery of Coffee beans photos.

Coffee is a popular brewed drink prepared from roasted seeds, commonly called coffee beans, of the coffee plant. They are seeds of coffee cherries that grow on trees in over 70 countries. Green unroasted coffee is one of the most traded agricultural commodities in the world. Due to its caffeine content, coffee often has a stimulating effect on humans. Today, coffee is one of the most popular beverages worldwide, second only to tea. The energizing effect of the coffee bean plant is thought to have been discovered in the northeast region of Ethiopia, and the cultivation of coffee first expanded in the Arab world. The earliest credible evidence of coffee drinking appears in the middle of the fifteenth century, in the Sufi monasteries of Yemen in southern Arabia. Ethiopian ancestors of today’s Oromo people were believed to have been the first to recognize the energizing effect of the coffee bean plant. From Ethiopia, coffee was said to have spread to Yemen, where the coffee beverage was first made and drunk, and then the beverage went to Egypt. From the Muslim world, coffee spread to Italy, then to the rest of Europe, to Indonesia, and to the Americas.

Coffee became more widely accepted after it was deemed a Christian beverage by Pope Clement VIII in 1600, despite appeals to ban the “Muslim drink.” The first European coffee house opened in Italy in 1645. The Dutch were the first to import coffee on a large scale, and they were among the first to defy the Arab prohibition on the exportation of plants or unroasted seeds when Pieter van den Broeck smuggled seedlings from Mocha, Yemen, into Europe in 1616.[96] The Dutch later grew the crop in Java and Ceylon. The first exports of Indonesian coffee from Java to the Netherlands occurred in 1711. Through the efforts of the British East India Company, coffee became popular in England as well. Oxford’s Queen’s Lane Coffee House, established in 1654, is still in existence today. Coffee was introduced in France in 1657, and in Austria and Poland after the 1683 Battle of Vienna, when coffee was captured from supplies of the defeated Turks.

The Frenchman Gabriel de Clieu brought a coffee plant to the French territory of Martinique in the Caribbean, from which much of the world’s cultivated arabica coffee is descended. Coffee thrived in the climate and was conveyed across the Americas. The territory of San Domingo (now Haiti) saw coffee cultivated from 1734, and by 1788 it supplied half the world’s coffee. However, the dreadful conditions that the slaves worked in on coffee plantations were a factor in the soon to follow Haitian Revolution. The coffee industry never fully recovered there. Meanwhile, coffee had been introduced to Brazil in 1727, although its cultivation didn’t gather momentum until independence in 1822.

Coffee has played a crucial role in many societies throughout history. In Africa and Yemen, it was used in religious ceremonies. As a result, the Ethiopian Church banned its secular consumption, a ban in effect until the reign of Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia. It was banned in Ottoman Turkey during the 17th century for political reasons, and was associated with rebellious political activities in Europe. Coffee berries, which contain the coffee seed, or “bean”, are produced by several species of small evergreen bush of the genus Coffea. The two most commonly grown are the highly regarded Coffea arabica, and the ‘robusta’ form of the hardier Coffea canephora. The latter is resistant to the devastating coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix). Both are cultivated primarily in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Once ripe, coffee berries are picked, processed, and dried. The seeds are then roasted to varying degrees, depending on the desired flavor. They are then ground and brewed to create coffee. Coffee can be prepared and presented in a variety of ways.

Coffee beans must be ground and brewed to create a beverage. Almost all methods of preparing coffee require the beans to be ground and mixed with hot water for long enough to extract the flavor, but without boiling for more than an instant; boiling develops an unpleasant “cooked” flavor. The ideal temperature is 79 to 85 °C (174 to 185 °F) and the ideal serving temperature is 68 to 79 °C (154 to 174 °F).

Photos & Pictures of Coffee beans stock photos

Espresso-based coffee has a wide variety of possible presentations. In its most basic form, it is served alone as a shot or in the more watered-down style café américano—a shot or two of espresso with hot water added. Reversing the process by adding espresso to hot water preserves the crema, and is known as a long black. Milk can be added in various forms to espresso: steamed milk makes a caffè latte, equal parts steamed milk and milk froth make a cappuccino, and a dollop of hot foamed milk on top creates a caffè macchiato. The use of steamed milk to form patterns such as hearts or maple leaves is referred to as latte art.

An important export commodity, coffee was the top agricultural export for twelve countries in 2004, and it was the world’s seventh-largest legal agricultural export by value in 2005. Some controversy is associated with coffee cultivation and its impact on the environment. Many studies have examined the relationship between coffee consumption and certain medical conditions; whether the overall effects of coffee are ultimately positive or negative has been widely disputed. The method of brewing coffee has been found to be important to its health effects.

Coffee has become a vital cash crop for many Third World countries. Over one hundred million people in developing countries have become dependent on coffee as their primary source of income. It has become the primary export and backbone for African countries like Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, and Ethiopia, as well as many Central American countries.

Buy all the stock photos in this gallery on line as Royalty Free or Rights managed stock photo. The stock pictures & stock images are all high resolution digital stock photos made award winning professional photographer Paul Williams.

Photo Art prints are also available to buy on line in large to small print formats for framing as art works for home, restaurant, pubs, office art , or commercial art.