COFFEE POTS BY AMERICAN SILVERSMITHS]
[Illustration: TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN COFFEE SERVICE
The Portsmouth Pattern, by the Gorham Co.]
An interesting relic is in the collection of the Bostonian Society. It
is a coffee urn of Sheffield ware, formerly in the Green Dragon tavern,
which stood on Union Street from 1697 to 1832, and was a famous meeting
place of the patriots of the Revolution. It is globular in form, and
rests on a base; and inside is still to be seen the cylindrical piece of
iron which, when heated, kept the delectable liquid contents of the urn
hot until imbibed by the frequenters of the tavern. The iron bar was set
in a zinc or tin jacket to keep such fireplace ashes as still clung to
it from coming in contact with the coffee, which was probably brewed in
a stew kettle before being poured into the urn for serving. The Green
Dragon tavern site, now occupied by a business structure, is owned by
the St. Andrew's Lodge of Freemasons of Boston; and at a recent
gathering of the lodge on St. Andrew's Day, the urn was exhibited to the
assembled brethren.
When the contents of the tavern were sold, the urn was bought by Mrs.
Elizabeth Harrington, who then kept a famous boarding-house on Pearl
Street, in a building owned by the Quincy family. The house was razed in
1847, and was replaced by the Quincy Block; and Mrs. Harrington removed
to High Street, and from there to Chauncey Place. Some of the prominent
men of Boston boarded with her for many years. At her death, the urn was
given to her daughter, Mrs. John R. Bradford. It was presented to the
society by Miss Phebe C. Bradford, of Boston, granddaughter of Mrs.
Elizabeth Harrington.
A somewhat similar urn, made of pewter, is in the Museum of the Maine
Historical Society of Portland, Me.; another in the Museum of the Essex
Institute at Salem, Mass.
Among the many treasured relics of Abraham Lincoln is an old Britannia
coffee pot from which he was regularly served while a boarder with the
Rutledge family at the Rutledge inn in New Salem (now Menard), Ill. It
was a valued utensil, and Lincoln is said to have been very fond of it.
It is illustrated on page 690.
The pot is now the property of the Old Salem Lincoln League, of
Petersburg, Ill., and was donated to it, with other relics, by Mrs.
Saunders, of Sisquoc, Cal., the only surviving child of James and Mary
Ann Rutledge. Mrs. Rutledge carefully preserved this and other relics of
New Salem days; and shortly before her death in 1878, she gave them into
the keeping of her daughter, Mrs. Saunders, advising her to preserve
them until such time as a permanent home for them would be provided by a
grateful people back at New Salem, where they were associated with the
immortal Lincoln and his tragic romance with her daughter Ann.
[Illustration: TURKISH COFFEE SET, PETER COLLECTION, UNITED STATES
NATIONAL MUSEUM, WASHINGTON]
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE EVOLUTION OF COFFEE APPARATUS
_Showing the development of coffee-roasting, coffee-grinding,
coffee-making, and coffee-serving devices from the earliest time to
the present day--The original coffee grinder, the first coffee
roaster, and the first coffee pot--The original French drip pot,
the De Belloy percolator--Count Rumford's improvement--How the
commercial coffee roaster was developed--The evolution of
filtration devices--The old Carter "pull-out" roaster--Trade
customs in New York and St. Louis in the sixties and seventies--The
story of the evolution of the Burns roaster--How the gas roaster
was developed in France, Great Britain, and the United States_
A book could be written on the subject of this chapter. We shall have to
be content to touch briefly upon the important developments in the
devices employed. The changes that have taken place in the preparation
of the drink itself will be discussed in chapter XXXVI.
In the beginning, that is, in Ethiopia, about 800 A.D., coffee was
looked upon as a food. The whole ripe berries, beans and hulls, were
crushed, and molded into food balls held in shape with fat. Later, the
dried berries were so treated. So the primitive stone mortar and pestle
were the original coffee grinder.
The dried hulls and the green beans were first roasted, some time
between 1200 and 1300, in crude burnt clay dishes or in stone vessels,
over open fires. These were the original roasting utensils.
Next, the coffee beans were ground between little mill-stones, one
turning above the other. Then came the mill used by the Greeks and
Romans for grain. This mill consisted of two conical mill stones, one
hollow and fitted over the other, specimens of which have been found in
Pompeii. The idea is the same as that employed in the most modern metal
grinder.
Between 1400 and 1500, individual earthenware and metal coffee-roasting
plates appeared. These were circular, from four to six inches in
diameter, about 1/16 inch thick, slightly concave and pierced with small
holes, something like the modern kitchen skimmer. They were used in
Turkey and Persia for roasting a few beans at a time over braziers (open
pans, or basins, for holding live coals). The braziers were usually
mounted on feet and richly ornamented.
About the same time we notice the first appearance of the familiar
Turkish pocket cylinder coffee mill and the original Turkish _ibrik_, or
coffee boiler, made of metal. Little drinking cups of Chinese porcelain
completed the service.
The original coffee boiler was not unlike the English ale mug with no
cover, smaller at the top than at the bottom, fitted with a grooved lip
for pouring, and a long straight handle. They were made of brass, and in
sizes to hold from one to six tiny cupfuls. A later improvement was of
the ewer design, with bulbous body, collar top, and cover.
The Turkish coffee grinder seems to have suggested the individual
cylinder roaster which later (1650) became common, and from which
developed the huge modern cylinder commercial roasting machines.
[Illustration: THE OLDEST COFFEE GRINDER
Ancient Egyptian mortar and pestle, probably used for pounding coffee]
The individual coffee service of early civilization first employed crude
clay bowls or dishes for drinking; but as early as 1350, Persian,
Egyptian, and Turkish ewers, made of pottery, were used for serving. In
the seventeenth century, ewers of similar pattern, but made of metal,
were the favorite coffee-serving devices in oriental countries and in
western Europe.
Between 1428 and 1448, a spice grinder standing on four legs was
invented; and this was later used for grinding coffee. The drawer to
receive the ground coffee was added in the eighteenth century.
Between 1500 and 1600, shallow iron dippers with long handles and
foot-rests, designed to stand in open fires, were used in Bagdad, and by
the Arabs in Mesopotamia, for roasting coffee. These roasters had
handles about thirty-four inches long, and the bowls were eight inches
in diameter. They were accompanied by a metal stirrer (spatula) for
turning the beans.
[Illustration: GRAIN MILL OF GREEKS AND ROMANS
Also used for grinding coffee]
Another type of roaster was developed about 1600. It was in the shape of
an iron spider on legs, and was designed, like that just described, to
sit in open fires. At this period pewter serving pots were first used.
Between 1600 and 1632, mortars and pestles of wood, iron, brass, and
bronze came into common use in Europe for braying the roasted beans. For
several centuries, coffee connoisseurs held that pounding the beans in a
mortar was superior to grinding in the most efficient mill. Peregrine
White's parents brought to America on the _Mayflower_, in 1620, a wooden
mortar and pestle that were used for braying coffee to make coffee
"powder."
[Illustration: THE FIRST COFFEE ROASTER, ABOUT 1400]
When La Roque speaks of his father bringing back to Marseilles from
Constantinople in 1644 the instruments for making coffee, he undoubtedly
refers to the individual devices which at that time in the Orient
included the roaster plate, the cylinder grinder, the small long-handled
boiler, and _fenjeyns_ (findjans), the little porcelain drinking cups.
[Illustration: THE FIRST CYLINDER ROASTER, ABOUT 1650]
When Bernier visited Grand Cairo about the middle of the seventeenth
century, in all the city's thousand-odd coffee houses he found but two
persons who understood the art of roasting the bean.
About 1650, there was developed the individual cylinder coffee roaster
made of metal, usually tin plate or tinned copper, suggested by the
original Turkish pocket grinder. This was designed for use over open
fires in braziers. There appeared about this time also a combined
making-and-serving metal pot which was undoubtedly the original of the
common type of pot that we know today.
There appeared in England about 1660, Elford's white iron machine (sheet
iron coated with tin) which was "turned on a spit by a jack.[362]" This
was simply a larger size of the individual cylinder roaster, and was
designed for family or commercial use. Modifications were developed by
the French and Dutch. In the seventeenth century the Italians produced
some beautiful designs in wrought-iron coffee roasters.
[Illustration: HISTORICAL RELICS IN THE PETER COLLECTION, UNITED STATES
NATIONAL MUSEUM
1--Bagdad coffee-roasting pan and stirrer. 2--Iron mortar and pestle
used for pounding coffee. 3--Coffee mill used by General and Mrs.
Washington. 4--Coffee-roasting pan used at Mt. Vernon. 5--Bagdad coffee
pot with crow-bill spout]
Before the advent of the Elford machine, and indeed, for two centuries
thereafter, it was the common practise in the home to roast coffee in
uncovered earthenware tart dishes, old pudding pans, and fry pans.
Before the time of the modern kitchen stove, it was usually done over
charcoal fires without flame.
The improved Turkish combination coffee grinder with folding handle and
cup receptacle for the beans, used for grinding, boiling, and drinking,
was first made in Damascus in 1665. About this period, the Turkish
coffee set, including the long-handled boiler and the porcelain drinking
cups in brass holders, also came into vogue.
In 1665, Nicholas Book, "living at the Sign of the Frying Pan in St.
Tulies street," London, advertised that he was "the only known man for
making of mills for grinding of coffee powder, which mills are sold by
him from forty to forty-five shillings the mill."
By combining the long-handle idea contained in the Bagdad roaster with
that of the original cylinder roaster, the Dutch perfected a small,
closed, sheet-iron cylinder-roaster with a long handle that permitted
its being held and turned in open fire places. From 1670, and well into
the middle of the nineteenth century, this type of family roaster
enjoyed great favor in Holland, France, England, and the United States,
more especially in the country districts. The museums of Europe and the
United States contain many specimens. The iron cylinder measured about
five inches in diameter, and was from six to eight inches long, being
attached to a three or four foot iron rod provided with a wooden handle.
The green coffee was put into the cylinder through a sliding door.
Balancing the roaster over the blaze by resting the end of the iron rod
projecting from the far end of the roasting cylinder in a hook of the
usual fireplace crane, the housekeeper was wont slowly to revolve the
cylinder until the beans had turned the proper color.
[Illustration: TURKISH COFFEE MILL
A fine specimen in the Peter collection, United States National Museum]
Portable coffee-making outfits to fit the pocket were much in vogue in
France in 1691. These included a roaster, a grinder, a lamp, the oil,
cups, saucers, spoons, coffee, and sugar. The roaster was first made of
tin plate or tinned copper; but for the aristocracy silver and gold were
used. In 1754, a white-silver coffee roaster eight inches long and four
inches in diameter was mentioned among the deliveries made to the army
of the king at Versailles.
[Illustration: EARLY FRENCH WALL AND TABLE GRINDERS
Left, seventeenth-century coffee grinder in the Musée de la Porte de
Hal--Center, wall mill, eighteenth century--Right, iron mill, eighteenth
century]
Humphrey Broadbent, "the London coffee man" wrote in 1722:
I hold it best to roast coffee berries in an iron vessel full of
little holes, made to turn on a spit over a charcoal fire, keeping
them continually turning, and sometimes shaking them that they do
not burn, and when they are taken out of the vessel, spread 'em on
some tin or iron plate 'till the vehemency of the heat is vanished;
I would recommend to every family to roast their own coffee, for
then they will be almost secure from having any damaged berries, or
any art to increase the weight, which is very injurious to the
drinkers of coffee. Most persons of distinction in Holland roast
their own berries.
[Illustration: BRONZE AND BRASS MORTARS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY USED
FOR MAKING COFFEE POWDER
Left, bronze (Germany)--Center, brass (England)--Right, bronze (Holland,
1632)]
Between 1700 and 1800, there was developed a type of small portable
household stove to burn coke or charcoal, made of iron and fitted with
horizontal revolving cylinders for coffee roasting. These were provided
with iron handles for turning. A modification of this type of roaster
under a three-sided hood, and standing on three legs, was designed to
sit on the hearth of open fireplaces, close to the fire or in the
smoldering ashes. Because of its greater capacity, it was probably used
in the inns and coffee houses for roasting large batches. Still another
type, which made its appearance late in the eighteenth century, was the
sheet-iron roaster suspended at the top of a tall, iron, box-like
compartment, or stove, in which the fire was built. This, too, was
designed to roast coffee in comparatively large quantities. In some
examples it was provided with legs.
Great silver coffee pots ("with all the utensils belonging to them of
the same metal") were first used by Pascal at St.-Germain's fair in
Paris in 1672. It remained for the English and American silversmiths to
produce the most beautiful forms of silver coffee pots; and there are
some notable collections of these in England and the United States.
The oriental serving pot was nearly always of metal, tall, and, in old
models, of graceful curve, with a slightly twisted ornamental beak in
the form of an S, attached below the middle of the vessel. A handle
ornamented in the same way formed a decorative balance.
In 1692, the lantern straight-line coffee serving pot with true cone
lid, thumb-piece, and handle fixed at right angle to the spout, was
introduced into England, succeeding the curved oriental serving pot. In
1700, coffee pots made of cheaper metals, like tin and Britannia ware,
began to appear on the home tables of the people. In 1701, silver coffee
pots appeared in England having perfect domes and bodies less tapering.
Between 1700 and 1800, silver, gold, and delicate porcelain serving pots
were the vogue among European royalty.
[Illustration: EARLY AMERICAN COFFEE ROASTERS
Both the cast-iron spiders and the long-handled roasters were used in
open fireplaces previous to 1770]
In 1704, Bull's machine for roasting coffee was patented in England.
This probably marks the first use of coal for commercial roasting.
In 1710, the popular coffee roaster in French homes was a dish of
varnished earthenware. This same year a novelty was introduced in France
in the shape of a fustian (linen) bag for infusing ground coffee.
By 1714, the thumb-piece on English serving pots had disappeared, and
the handle was no longer set at a right angle to the spout. English
coffee-pot bodies showed a further modification in 1725, the taper
becoming less and less.
Coffee grinders were so common in France in 1720 that they were to be
had for a dollar and twenty cents each. Their development by the French
had been rapid from the original spice grinder. At first, they were
known as coffee mills; but in the eighteenth century, roasters came to
be known by that name. They were made of iron, retaining the same
principle of the horizontal mill-stones--one of which is fixed while the
other moves--that the ancients employed for grinding wheat. They were
squat, box-shaped affairs, having in the center a shank of iron that
revolved upon a fixed, corrugated iron plate. There was also the style
that fastened to the wall. At first, the drawer to receive ground coffee
was missing, but this was supplied in later types. Before its invention,
the ground coffee was received in a sack of greased leather, or in one
treated on the outside with beeswax--probably the original of the duplex
paper bag for conserving the flavor.
[Illustration: ROASTER WITH THREE-SIDED HOOD
It succeeded the cast-iron spider, and was suspended from a crane, or
stood in the embers]
[Illustration: ROASTING, MAKING, AND SERVING DEVICES
Early seventeenth century, as pictured by Dufour]
The French brought their innate artistic talents to bear upon coffee
grinders, just as they did upon roasters and serving pots. In many
instances they made the outer parts of silver and of gold.
By 1750, the straight-line serving pot in England had begun to yield to
the reactionary movement in art favoring bulbous bodies and serpentine
spouts.
About 1760, French inventors began to devote themselves to improvements
in coffee-making devices. Donmartin, a Paris tinsmith, in 1763, invented
an urn pot that employed a flannel sack for infusing. Another infusion
device, produced the same year by L'Ainé, also a tinsmith of Paris, was
known as a _diligence_.
A complete revolution in the style of English serving pots took place in
1770, with a return to the flowing lines of the Turkish ewer; and
between 1800 and 1900, there was a gradual return to the style of
serving pot having the handle at a right angle to the spout.
[Illustration: ENGLISH AND FRENCH COFFEE GRINDERS
Nineteenth century]
In 1779, Richard Dearman was granted an English patent on a new method
of making mills for grinding coffee. In 1798, the first American patent
on an improved coffee grinding mill was granted to Thomas Bruff, Sr. It
was a wall mill, fitted with iron plates, in which the coffee was ground
between two circular nuts, three inches broad and having coarse teeth
around their centers and fine shallow teeth at the edges.
De Belloy's (or Du Belloy's) coffee pot appeared in Paris about 1800. It
was first made of tin; but later, of porcelain and silver--the original
French drip pot. This device was never patented; but it appears to have
furnished the inspiration for many inventors in France, England, and the
United States. The first French patent on a coffee maker was granted to
Denobe, Henrion, and Rouch in 1802. It was for a
"pharmacological-chemical coffee-making device by infusion." Charles
Wyatt obtained a patent the same year in London on an apparatus for
distilling coffee. The De Belloy pot is illustrated on page 622.
In 1806, Hadrot was granted a French patent on a device "for filtering
coffee without boiling and bathed in air." This use of the word
filtering was misleading, as it was many times after in French, English,
and American patent nomenclature, where it often meant percolation or
something quite different from filtration. True percolation means to
drip through fine interstices of china or metal. Filtration means to
drip through a porous substance, usually cloth or paper. De Belloy's pot
was a percolator. So was Hadrot's. The improvement on which Hadrot got
his patent was to "replace the white iron filter (sic) used in ordinary
filtering pots by a filter composed of hard tin and bismuth" and to use
"a rammer of the same metal, pierced with holes." The rammer was
designed to press down and to smooth out the powdered coffee in an even
and uniform fashion. "It also," says Hadrot in his specification, "stops
the derangement which boiling water poured from a height can produce. It
is held by its stem a half inch from the surface of the powder so that
it receives only the action of the water which it divides and
facilitates thus the extraction which it must produce in each of the
particles."
[Illustration: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ROASTER
Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.]
A coffee percolator was invented in Paris about 1806 by Benjamin
Thompson, F.R.S., an American-British scientist, philanthropist, and
administrator. He was known as Count Rumford, a title bestowed on him by
the Pope. Rumford's invention was first given to the public in London in
1812. He has gained great credit for his device, because of an elaborate
essay that he wrote on it in Paris under the title of _The excellent
qualities of coffee and the art of making it in the highest perfection_,
and that he caused to be published in London in 1812. It was a simple
percolator pot provided with a hot-water jacket, and was a real
improvement on the French drip or percolator coffee pot invented by De
Belloy, but not at all unlike Hadrot's patented device. Count Rumford,
however, was a picturesque character, and a good advertiser. He is
generally credited with the invention of the coffee percolator; but
examination of his device shows that, strictly speaking, the De Belloy
pot was just as much a percolator, and apparently antedated it by about
six years.
[Illustration: THE ORIGINAL FRENCH DRIP POT
_Cafetière à la_ De Belloy]
De Belloy employed the principle of having the boiling water drip
through the ground coffee when held in suspension by a perforated metal
or porcelain grid. This is true percolation. Hadrot did the same thing
with the improvements noted above. Count Rumford in his essay admits
that this method of making coffee was not new, but claims his
improvement was. This was to provide a rammer for compressing the ground
coffee in the upper or percolating device into a definite thickness,
this being accomplished by providing the perforated circular tin disk
water-spreader that rested on the ground coffee with four projections,
or feet, that kept the spreader within half an inch of the grid holding
the powder in suspension and free from "agitation."
His argument was that two-thirds of an inch of ground coffee should be
leveled and compressed into a half-inch thickness before the boiling
water was introduced. Practically the same result was achieved in the De
Belloy and Hadrot pots, also provided with water-spreaders and pluggers,
but the same mathematical exactitude in the matter of the depth of the
ground coffee before the percolation started was not assured. De
Belloy's spreader did not have the projections on the under side upon
which Count Rumford laid such stress. Then there was the hot-water
jacket, which was an improvement on Hadrot's hot air bath. Inventors
that followed Rumford have made light of the importance that he attached
to scientific accuracy in coffee-making; but it is interesting to note
how many of the features of the De Belloy, Hadrot, and Rumford pots have
been retained in the modern complex coffee machines, and in most of the
filtration devices.
[Illustration: BELGIAN, RUSSIAN, AND FRENCH PEWTER SERVING POTS
These are in the Metropolitan Museum and are of nineteenth century
design]
French inventors continued to apply themselves to coffee-roasting and
coffee-making problems, and many new ideas were evolved. Some of these
were improved upon by the Dutch, the Germans, and the Italians; but the
best work in the line of improvements that have survived the test of
time was done in England and the United States.
In 1815, Sené was granted a French patent on "a device to make coffee
without boiling." In 1819, Laurens produced the original of the
percolation device in which the boiling water is raised by a tube and
sprayed over the ground coffee. The same year Morize, a Paris tinsmith
and lamp-maker, followed with a reversible, double drip pot which was
the pioneer of all the reversible filtration pots of Europe and America.
Gaudet, another tinsmith, in 1820, patented an improvement on the
percolator idea, that employed a cloth filter. By 1825, the pumping
percolator, working by steam pressure and by partial vacuum, was much
used in France, Holland, Germany, and Austria.
Meanwhile, it was common practise to roast coffee in England in "an iron
pan or in hollow cylinders made of sheet iron"; while in Italy, the
practise was to roast it in glass flasks, which were fitted with loose
corks. The flasks were "held over clear fires of burning coals and
continually agitated." Anthony Schick was granted an English patent in
1812, on a method, or process, for roasting coffee; but as he never
filed his specifications, we shall probably never know what the process
was. The custom of the day in England was to pound the roasted beans in
a mortar, or to grind them in a French mill.
[Illustration: COUNT RUMFORD'S PERCOLATOR]
In 1822, Louis Bernard Rabaut was granted an English patent in which the
French drip process was reversed by using steam pressure to force the
boiling water upward through the coffee mass. Casseneuve, a Paris
tinsmith, seems to have patented practically the same idea in France in
1824. Casseneuve employed a paper filter in his machine.
In America, a United States patent was granted in 1813 to Alexander
Duncan Moore of New Haven on a mill "for grinding and pounding coffee."
This was followed by a patent granted to Increase Wilson, of New London,
in 1818, on a steel mill for grinding coffee.
[Illustration: PEWTER POTS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
Left to right, they are German, Flemish, English, and Dutch specimens in
the Metropolitan Museum]
[Illustration: PATENT DRAWINGS OF EARLY FRENCH COFFEE MAKERS
Left, drip pot of 1806--Next two, Durant's inner-tube pot, 1827--Next
(fourth), Gandais' first practicable percolator, 1827--Right, Grandin &
Crepeaux' percolator, 1832]
In 1815, Archibald Kenrich was granted a patent in England on "mills for
grinding coffee."
The coffee biggin, said to have been invented by a Mr. Biggin, came into
common use in England for making coffee about 1817. It was usually an
earthenware pot. At first it had in the upper part a metal strainer like
the French drip pots. Suspended from the rim in later models there was a
flannel or muslin bag to hold the ground coffee, through which the
boiling water was poured, the bag serving as a filter. The idea was an
adaptation of the French fustian infusion bag of 1711, and of other
early French drip and filtration devices, and it attained great
popularity. Any coffee pot with such a bag fitted into its mouth came to
be spoken of as a coffee biggin. Later, there was evolved the metal pot
with a wire strainer substituted for the cloth bag. The coffee biggin
still retains its popularity in England.
[Illustration: EARLY FRENCH FILTRATION DEVICES
Left, Casseneuve's filter-paper machine, 1824--Center, Gaudet's
cloth-filter pot, 1820--Right, Raparlier's percolator]
While French inventors were busy with coffee makers, English and
American inventors were studying means to improve the roasting of the
beans. Peregrine Williamson, of Baltimore, was granted the first patent
in the United States for an improvement on a coffee roaster in 1820. In
1824, Richard Evans was granted a patent in England for a commercial
method of roasting coffee, comprising a cylindrical sheet-iron roaster
fitted with improved flanges for mixing; a hollow tube and trier for
sampling coffee while roasting; and a means for turning the roaster
completely over to empty it.
The next year, 1825, the first coffee-pot patent in the United States
was granted to Lewis Martelley of New York. It marked the first American
attempt to perfect an arrangement to condense the steam and the
essential oils and to return them to the infusion. In 1838, Antoni
Bencini, of Milton, N.C., was granted a similar patent in the United
States. Rowland, in 1844, and Waite and Sener, in their Old Dominion pot
of 1856, tried for the same result, namely, the condensation of the
steam in upper chambers.
[Illustration: EARLY AMERICAN COFFEE-MAKER PATENTS
Left, Waite & Sener's Old Dominion pot--Right, Bencini's steam
condenser]
The French meantime focused on coffee makers; and in 1827, Jacques
Augustin Gandais, a manufacturer of plated jewelry in Paris, produced a
really practicable pumping percolator. This machine had the ascending
steam tube on the exterior. The same year, 1827, Nicholas Felix Durant,
a manufacturer in Chalons-sur-Marne, was granted a French patent on a
percolator employing for the first time an inner tube for spraying the
boiling water over the ground coffee.
In 1828, Charles Parker, of Meriden, Conn., began work on the original
Parker coffee mill, which later was to bring him fame and fortune.
The next year, 1829, the first French patent on a coffee mill was issued
to Colaux & Cie. of Molsheim.
That same year, 1829, the Établissements Lauzaune, Paris, began to make
hand-turned iron-cylinder coffee-roasting machines.
In 1831, David Selden was granted a patent in England for a
coffee-grinding mill having cones of cast-iron.
The first Parker coffee-grinder patent for a household coffee and spice
mill was issued in the United States in 1832 to Edmund Parker and Herman
M. White of Meriden, Conn. The Charles Parker Company's business was
founded the same year. In 1832 and 1833, United States patents were
issued to Ammi Clark, of Berlin, Conn., also on improved coffee and
spice mills for home use.
Amos Ransom, Hartford, Conn., was granted a United States patent on a
coffee roaster in 1833.
The English began exporting coffee-roasting and coffee-grinding
machinery to the United States in 1833-34.
[Illustration: FRENCH COFFEE MAKERS, NINETEENTH CENTURY
1, 2--Improved French drip pots. 3--Persian design. 4--De Belloy pot.
5--Russian reversible pot. 6--New filter machine. 7--Glass filter pot.
8--Syphon machine. 9--Vienna Incomparable. 10--Double glass "balloon"
device]
[Illustration: FIRST ENGLISH COMMERCIAL COFFEE-ROASTER PATENT, 1824
Fig. 1--End elevation. Fig. 2--Front sectional view. Fig. 3--Front
elevation, showing how the roasting cylinder was turned completely over
to empty. Fig. 4--The examiner, or trier. Fig. 5--Tube (J) to be
inserted in H of Fig. 6 to prevent escape of aroma]
It was not until 1836 that the first French patent was issued on a
combined coffee-roaster-and-grinder to François Réné Lacoux of Paris.
The roaster was made of porcelain, because the inventor believed that
metal imparted a bad taste to the beans while roasting.
[Illustration: EARLY FRENCH COFFEE-ROASTING MACHINES
1--Delephine's coke machine. 2--Bernard's machine, 1841. 3--Circlet for
same. 4--Postulart's gas machine]
In 1839, James Vardy and Moritz Platow were granted an English patent on
a kind of urn percolator employing the vacuum process of coffee making,
the upper vessel being made of glass. The first French patent on a glass
coffee-making device, using the same principle, was granted to Madame
Vassieux, of Lyons, in 1842. These were the forerunners of the double
glass "balloons" for making coffee which later on, in the early part of
the twentieth century, attained much vogue in the United States. They
were very popular in Europe until the latter part of the nineteenth
century.
In 1839, John Rittenhouse, of Philadelphia, was granted a United States
patent on a cast-iron mill designed to handle the problem of nails and
stones in grinding coffee. His improvement was intended to prevent
injury to the grinding teeth by stopping the machine.
In 1840, Abel Stillman, Poland, N.Y., was granted a United States patent
on a family coffee roaster having a mica window to enable the operator
to observe the coffee while roasting. (See 10, page 630.)
In 1841, William Ward Andrews was granted an English patent on an
improved coffee pot employing a pump to force the boiling water upward
through the coffee, which was contained in a perforated cylinder screwed
to the bottom of the pot. This was Rabaut's idea of nineteen years
before. We find it again repeated in the United States in a machine
which appeared on the New York market in 1906.
[Illustration: BATTERY OF CARTER PULL-OUT MACHINES IN AN EARLY AMERICAN
PLANT]
In 1841, Claude Marie Victor Bernard, of Paris, was granted a French
patent on a coffee roaster, which was an improvement designed to bring
the roasting cylinder and the fire in closer contact. This was
accomplished, to quote the quaint language of the inventor, by applying
movable legs and "by superimposing a sheet iron circlet around the edge
of the furnace to get double the quantity of heat and it presents so
much advantage that it has seemed to me worthy of being patented." (See
4, page 627.)
But the French were only toying with the roaster, because roasting in
France was not yet a separate branch of business, as it had become in
England and the United States, where keen minds were already at work on
the purely commercial coffee-roasting machine. The application of
intensive thought in this direction was destined to bear fruit in
America in 1846, and in England in 1847.
French inventive genius continued to occupy itself with coffee making,
and in the invention of Edward Loysel de Santais, of Paris, in 1843,
produced the first of the ideas that were later incorporated in the
hydrostatic percolator for making "two thousand cups of coffee an
hour"[363] at the exposition of 1855, and that has since been improved
upon by the Italians in their rapid-filter machines. It should be noted
that Loysel's 2,000 cups were probably demi-tasses. The modern Italian
rapid-filter machine produces about 1,000 large coffee cups per hour.
James W. Carter, of Boston, was granted a United States patent in 1846
on his "pull-out" roaster; and this was the machine most generally
employed for trade roasting in America for the next twenty years. Carter
did not claim to have invented the combination of cylindrical roaster
and furnace; but he did claim priority for the combination, with the
furnace and roasting vessel, of the air space, or chamber, surrounding
it, "the same being for the purpose of preventing the too rapid escape
of heat from the furnace when the air chamber's induction and eduction
air openings or passages are closed."
The Carter "pull-out," was so called because the roasting cylinder of
sheet iron was pulled out from the furnace on a shaft supported by
standards, to be emptied or to be refilled from sliding doors in its
"sides." It was in use for many years in such old-time plants as that of
Dwinell-Wright Company, 25 Haverhill Street. Boston; by James H. Forbes
and William Schotten in St. Louis; and by D.Y. Harrison in Cincinnati.
The picture of a roasting room with Carter machines in operation,
reproduced here, recalled to George S. Wright, the present head of the
Dwinell-Wright Company's business, the scene as he saw it so many times
when, as a boy of ten or twelve, he occasionally spent a day in his
father's factory. "The only difference I notice," he wrote the author,
"is that, according to my recollection, there was no cooler box to
receive the roasted coffee, which was dumped on the floor where it was
spread out three or four inches deep with iron rakes and sprinkled with
a watering pot. The contact of water and hot coffee caused so much steam
that the roasting room was in a dense fog for several minutes after each
batch of coffee was drawn from the fire."
A.E. Forbes also thus recalled the Carter machine in his father's
factory in St. Louis in 1853, when he used to help after school; and
sometimes ran the roasters, after 1857:
It was barrel shaped, having a slide the full length of one side to
fill and empty. A heavy shaft ran through the centre, resting on
the wall of the furnace at the rear end and on an upright about
eight feet from the front wall. The fire was about sixteen to
eighteen inches below the cylinder and of soft coal. The cylinder
was not perforated, the theory being to keep the vapors from
escaping.[364] This of course was erroneous. The color of the smoke
bursting from the edge of the slide was our medium of telling when
the roasting process was nearing completion, and often the cylinder
was pulled out and opened for inspection several times before that
point was reached. When just right, the belt was shifted to a loose
pulley, stopping the cylinder, which, was pulled off the fire. A
handle was attached to the shaft, the slide drawn, and the coffee
was dumped into a wooden tray which had to be shoved under the
cylinder. The coffee was stirred around in the tray until cool
enough to sack.
The roaster man had to be a husky in those days to pick up a sack
of Rio weighing about one hundred, sixty to one hundred,
seventy-five pounds (not a hundred, thirty-two pounds, as now) and
to empty it in the cylinder. We had no overhead hoppers.
[Illustration: EARLY ENGLISH AND AMERICAN COFFEE ROASTERS
1, 2--English charcoal machines. 3, 5, 8--American coal-stove
roasters. 4--Remington's wheel-of-buckets (American) roaster, 1841.
6--Wood's roaster. 7--Hyde's stove roaster. 9--Reversible stove
roaster. 10--Abel Stillman's stove roaster]
Later we built in the rear and put in two cylinders of the Chris
Abele type, having stationary fronts and filling and emptying from
the front end. We still used soft coal, with the fire sixteen to
eighteen inches under the cylinder.
We had other machines made locally from the Carter pattern. The
idea of the tight cylinder was to keep out smoke, as well as to
keep in the aroma. I think we were the first to use perforations,
because I remember old Jabez Burns coming along after we put in one
of his machines and remarking on it.... We had a kind of mechanical
genius for engineer at that time (he also did the roasting) and he
conceived the idea that we ought to get rid of the moisture in the
roasting coffee because it would cook quicker. When the holes
clogged up, he put in loose pieces of wire bent at the ends which
shook as the cylinder revolved and kept the holes open. Another
thing, he put a hole in the cylinder head and a stopper with a
string on it so he could get out a few grains at a time to note the
progress of the roasting--but he judged mostly by the smoke.
The cooling box was as I have described it, but later we put in a
perforated false bottom which let out some chaff and small stones.
On our first watering, we pulled out the slide and dashed in a
bucket of water, then closed the slide and let it revolve outside
the furnace. This was hard on the cylinder, so later we used the
sprinkling can and put on water sparingly.
Once we had a party that wanted to put in a soapstone lined
roaster, and another near us named Salzgerber patented a
superheated-steam roaster which was shaped like our modern milk
bottle. This was covered with asbestos and worked on a central
bearing so it could be depressed for emptying and elevated for
filling. It did good work.
Mr. Forbes' recollections of the early days of roasting and selling
coffee at retail in St. Louis are so illuminating, and paint so
interesting a picture of the period that they are printed here to
illustrate the conditions that prevailed generally at the time when the
commercial roasting machine of the United States was being developed
into the modern type. He says further:
Selling roasted coffee was uphill work, as every one roasted coffee
in the kitchen oven. People were buying, say, at twenty cents. Our
asking twenty-five cents "roasted" called for a lot of explanation
about shrinkage, tight cylinders so the strength and flavor could
not get away, etc.; while, when they roasted a pound in the oven
the flavor scented the whole house, thus losing so much strength to
say nothing of the unevenness of their roasts--part raw, part
roasted, producing an unpleasant taste. An occasional burned roast
at home helped some. They tell of a man who, going out in the back
yard and kicking over a clod by accident, uncovered some burned
coffee. He called to his wife and wanted an explanation. She
acknowledged she had burnt it, and hid it so he would not scold. He
said, "We had better buy it roasted in the future and avoid such
accidents."
We roasted in the cellar. We had an elaborately polished Reed &
Mann engine in one window, two brass hoppered mills in the other,
and our boiler was under the sidewalk. We had a mahogany-top
counter, oil paintings on the wall, and bin fronts of Chinamen,
etc., done by the celebrated artist, Mat Hastings (now dead); so
you see we started right.
The fight we had to introduce roasted coffee was fierce. Our
argument was on the saving of fuel, labor, temper, scorched faces,
and anything we could think of. We talked only three coffees, Rio,
Java, and Mocha. When Santos began to come, it was hard to change
them over from the rank Rio flavor to the more mild Santos. The
latter they claimed did not have the rough taste. They missed it
and longed for the wild tang of the Rio.
We did not import, but bought in New Orleans and from several local
wholesale grocers. No one delivered. Shipments were f.o.b. St.
Louis. Draying and packages were extra. Coffee was not cleaned or
stoned, but was sold as it came from the sack. However, we did not
use any very low grades then. If any one complained of the stones
hurting their mills, we advised them to buy ground coffee, showing
how it kept better ground as it was packed tight, whereas the
roasted was looser and the air could get through it. It was fully a
year or more before we began to sell in quantities to make it
profitable. In roasting for others, we got a cent per pound; and
after awhile, that became so much a business it paid all our
expenses. We were the first to roast coffee by steam power west of
the Mississippi and east of the Rocky Mountains.
The tea department helped us to hold out until coffee got its hold
on the public; for in those days every one used tea and insisted on
having it good. Price was no object. How different now!
Five years later (1862) J. Nevison, an Englishman, drifted into
town and opened at 85 North Fourth Street. He got out a very
bombastic circular which caused us to put out the one I enclose
(illustration, page 436). Then came a party named Childs; and after
him, Hugh Menown, grand-uncle of the present Menown, of Menown &
Gregory; and Mat Hunt; all passed over to the Great Majority. After
the Civil War they multiplied pretty fast, coming and going until
now we have nineteen roasting establishments in the city.
The late Julius J. Schotten also wrote the author as follows concerning
the days of the Carter roaster and of the wholesale coffee-roasting
business founded by William Schotten in 1862:
In the early days, every wholesale grocer was selling coffee; the
wholesale grocer controlled ninety percent of the trade in the
country. It did not pay the coffee roaster to have men on the road
selling coffee in those days. Such being the case, seventy-five
percent of the roasting done by the coffee roasters was job
roasting, at one cent a pound.
In the beginning there were only two kinds of roasted coffee known
to the trade in this section of the country (St. Louis) and of
course one of these brands was "Rio"--the other; "Java". The former
was a genuine Rio, but the Java was mostly Jamaica coffee.
Roasted coffee then was packed (for city trade) in five and ten
pound packages, and this size package seemed to supply the wants of
the ordinary grocer for a week. Occasionally a twenty-five pound
package, and in a few instances as much as fifty pounds of one
grade was sold at a time.
The class of customers the coffee roasters sold in those days were
the smaller merchants; the larger stores, having their ideas as to
quality, bought their coffees green. As they had very little sale
for the roasted, they would send a half-sack, and sometimes a whole
sack to have it roasted. It took a number of years to induce the
larger grocers, and even the average grocers, to purchase their
coffee already roasted.
Coffees were roasted in the old style, "pull-out" roaster cylinder.
That is to say, it was necessary to stop the roaster and to pull
out the cylinder to sample the coffee in order to know when to take
the coffee off the fire. When the coffee was ready to take off, the
cylinder was pulled out its entire length. It was then turned over
and a slide nine inches wide, running the full length of the
cylinder, was opened and the contents were dumped in the cooling
box. When the coffee reached the cooling box, it took two men with
hoes or wooden shovels to stir and turn it until it was properly
cooled, there being no cooling arrangements then as we have
nowadays.
At that time there were no stoning or separating machines; and as a
bag of the ordinary green Jamaica coffee contained from three to
five pounds of stones and sticks, it was necessary to hand-pick the
coffee after it was roasted.
[Illustration: EARLY FOREIGN AND AMERICAN COFFEE-MAKING DEVICES
1--English adaptation of French boiler. 2--English coffee biggin.
3--Improved Rumford percolator. 4--Jones's exterior-tube percolator.
5--Parker's steam-fountain coffee maker. 6--Platow's filterer.
7--Brain's Vacuum, or pneumatic filter. 8--Beart's percolator.
9--American coffee biggin. 10--cloth-bag drip pot. 11--Vienna coffee
pot. 12--Le Brun's cafetière. 13--Reversible Potsdam cafetière. 14,
15--Gen. Hutchinson's percolator and urn. 16--Etruscan biggin]
After Carter, the next United States coffee-roaster patent was granted
to J.R. Remington, of Baltimore, on a roaster employing a wheel of
buckets to move the green coffee beans singly through a charcoal heated
trough. It never became a commercial success. (See 4, page 630.)
In 1847-48, William and Elizabeth Dakin were granted patents in England
on an apparatus for "cleaning and roasting coffee and for making
decoctions." The roaster specification covered a gold, silver, platinum,
or alloy-lined roasting cylinder and traversing carriage on an overhead
railway to move the roaster in and out of the roasting oven; and the
"decoction" specification covered an arrangement for twisting a
cloth-bag ground-coffee-container in a coffee biggin, or applied a screw
motion to a disk within a perforated cylinder containing the ground
coffee, so as to squeeze the liquid out of the grounds after infusion
had taken place.
The roaster has survived, but the coffee maker was not so fortunate. The
Dakin idea was that coffee was injuriously affected by coming in contact
with iron during the roasting process. The roasting cylinder was
enclosed in an oven instead of being directly exposed to the furnace
heat. The apparatus was provided also with a "taster," or sampler, the
first of its kind, to enable the operator to examine the roasting
berries without stopping the machine. As will be seen by referring to
the picture of the model shown, the apparatus was ingenious and not
without considerable merit. Dakin & Co. are still in existence in
London, operating a machine very like the original model.
In 1848, Thomas John Knowlys was granted a patent in England on a
perforated roasting cylinder coated with enamel.
It is to be noted in passing that this idea of handling the green bean
with extreme delicacy, evidently obtained from the French, was never
taken seriously in the United States, whose inventors chose to handle it
with rough courage.
[Illustration: THE DAKIN ROASTING MACHINE OF 1848]
The first English patent on a coffee grinder was granted to Luke
Herbert in 1848.
In 1849, Apoleoni Pierre Preterre, of Havre, was granted an English
patent on a coffee roaster mounted on a weighing apparatus to indicate
loss of weight in roasting and automatically stop the roasting process.
At the same time he secured an English patent on a vacuum percolator,
not unlike Durant's of 1827.
In 1849 also, Thomas R. Wood, of Cincinnati, was granted a United States
patent on a spherical coffee roaster for use on kitchen stoves. It
attained considerable popularity among housewives who preferred to do
their own roasting. (See 6, page 630.)
In 1852, Edward Gee secured a patent in England on a coffee roaster
fitted with inclined flanges for turning the beans while roasting.
C.W. Van Vliet, of Fishkill Landing, N.Y., was granted a United States
patent in 1855 on a household coffee mill employing upper breaking and
lower grinding cones. He assigned it to Charles Parker of Meriden, Conn.
In 1860-61 several United States patents were granted John and Edmund
Parker on coffee grinders for home use.
In 1862, E.J. Hyde, of Philadelphia, was granted a United States patent
on a combined coffee-roaster and stove fitted with a crane on which the
roasting cylinder was revolved and swung out horizontally for emptying
and refilling. This machine proved to be a commercial success. Benedickt
Fischer used one in his first roasting plant in New York. It is still
being manufactured by the Bramhall Deane Company of New York.
[Illustration: A GLOBULAR STOVE ROASTER OF 1860]
[Illustration: HYDE'S COMBINED ROASTER AND STOVE]
In 1864, Jabez Burns, of New York, was granted a United States patent on
the original Burns coffee roaster, the first machine which did not have
to be moved away from the fire for discharging the roasted coffee, and
one that marked a distinct advance in the manufacture of coffee-roasting
apparatus. It was a closed iron cylinder set in brickwork. (See
illustration, page 635.)
Jabez Burns had been a student of coffee roasting in New York for twenty
years before he produced the machine that was to revolutionize the
coffee business of the United States. He had brought with him from
England a knowledge of the trade in that country, where he first began
his business training by selling Java coffee at fourteen cents and
Sumatra at eleven cents to hotels, boarding-houses, and private
families.
Up to the time of the Civil War, the contrivances employed for roasting
coffee in every case necessitated the removal of the roasting
apparatus--whether pan, globe, or cylinder--from the fire. The process
of causing coffee to discharge from the end of the roasting cylinder at
the pleasure of the operator while the cylinder was still in motion was
new; and the double set of flanges to produce this effect, and at the
same time, during the process of roasting, to keep the coffee equally
distributed from end to end of the cylinder, was new. Some one suggested
this last improvement was simply an Archimedean screw placed in a
cylinder, but Mr. Burns replied: "It is a double screw, a thing never
suggested by the Archimedean screw. It is, in fact, a double right and
left augur, one within the other, firmly secured together and also to
the shell or cylinder, and when the cylinder revolves the desired
result is obtained--the idea being entirely original."
Mr. Burns had watched the development of the coffee business from the
time when the preparation of coffee was largely confined to the home,
where the approved roasting implements were hot stones, or tiles, iron
plates, skillets, and frying pans. Some of these were still in use
twenty years after he produced his first machine; and he often said that
coffee evenly roasted by such methods was just as good as if done by the
best mechanical device ever invented. He also said: "Coffee can be
roasted in very simple machinery. Some of the best we ever saw was done
in a corn popper. Patent portable roasters are almost as numerous as rat
traps or churns."
[Illustration: THE ORIGINAL BURNS ROASTER, 1864]
He early saw the practise of domestic roasting falling into disuse, as
it was becoming possible to supply the consumer with roasted coffee for
only a trifle more than in the green state, with all the labor and
annoyance of roasting done away with--a talking point that John Arbuckle
was quick to seize upon in his first Ariosa advertising.
In almost every town of any size there were concerns engaged in the
roasting business. Within a few years, Burns machines were placed in all
the principal roasting centers. Pupke & Reid in New York; Flint, Evans &
Co., and James H. Forbes in St. Louis; Arbuckles & Co., in Pittsburgh;
the Weikel & Smith Spice Co. in Philadelphia; Theodore F. Johnson & Co.,
in Newark; Evans & Walker in Detroit; W. & J.G. Flint in Milwaukee; and
Parker & Harrison in Cincinnati, were among his first customers.
It is said that in 1845 there were facilities in and around New York to
roast as much coffee as was then consumed in Great Britain. Steam power
was being extensively used, and the roasting was done here for a large
part of the country. The habit was to buy roasted coffee from the coffee
and spice mills by the bag or larger quantity for country consumption;
and the grocers and small tea stores, for local consumption, bought from
twenty-five pounds upward at a time. This method cheapened the roasting
of coffee to half a cent a pound; and then good profits could be made,
for everything was cheap in those days. Even at that, it would have been
impossible for each tea dealer to have roasted his own coffee for
several times the amount, so the practise was generally adhered to all
over the country.
Jabez Burns wrote in 1874:
It is preposterous to suppose that household roasting will be
continued long in any part of this country, if coffee properly
prepared can be had. This is demonstrated by the remarkable
advances made in Pittsburgh and other places, where only a few
years ago the sales were chiefly in green coffee. Now the amount
roasted in Pittsburgh alone by those who make a business of it,
exceeds the entire consumption of coffee of any kind in the United
States fifty years ago. It will never pay for small stores to roast
if the large manufactories will do the work well, and if they will
not, small dealers will add proper machinery, and will eventually
become strong competing dealers. By doing the work with proper care
they will not only secure a reputation with large sales for
themselves, but will command the roasting for other parties.
Until the Burns roaster appeared, coffee roasters were usually cylinders
that revolved upon an axis; the other devices that were tried were not
successful. Jabez Burns thus describes the first roaster he ever saw at
Hull, England:
It consisted of a furnace, open at the top, and a perforated
cylinder with a slide door. The axis, or shaft, of the cylinder had
bearings on a frame which passed outside the furnace, while the
cylinder went down into the fire pit, the top of which could be
covered over. In this position it could be turned by means of a
crank on the end of a shaft The only means of testing was by the
escape of the steam or aroma, whichever predominated, passing out
through the perforations at the top; but so expert was the operator
and so quick to detect the aroma, that he seldom had to return the
cylinder to the fire to produce a satisfactory roast. This man
roasted fifty pounds or less in a batch for a number of retail
stores.
Globes, consisting of two hemispheres, made of cast-iron and so
arranged that they opened to fill and discharge, but operated
substantially as above, only with the method of lowering into the
fire changed somewhat, I have seen in use in Scotland in 1840. They
were called French roasters.
In this country a few years ago the use of the long sheet-iron
cylinder was almost universal, varying only in the method of
placing the cylinder over the fire--some sideways on a track,
others endwise, sliding on a long shaft or by turning on a crane,
in either case causing considerable labor and loss of time, which
often resulted in the hands of the inexperienced in more or less
spoiling the batch of coffee.
From his expert knowledge of coffee and coffee-roasting problems, Jabez
Burns quickly rose to a commanding position in the industry. He was a
trade teacher and a trade builder. He had very definite ideas on
roasting. He said:
The object of roasting is not attained until all the moisture
(water of vegetation) is driven off. Roast properly--uniformly and
sufficiently--and you will get all the aroma there is in the bean.
Coffees of various kinds can not be roasted to a uniform color.
Some will be of a light shade when sufficiently roasted while
others will have to be roasted dark to develop the aroma.
Therefore, appearance alone is not a proper test. Aroma-saving
devices have had their day. Coffee is of no use unless the aroma is
fully developed, and the more it is developed by roasting the
better it is. What passes off in the roasting process can not be
saved and is so small that if all of it in the country could be
collected and freed of all foreign matter, it would not weigh an
ounce.
Roast coffee over a slow fire so that it will be an hour before it
has the color of roasted coffee, and, in contrast, produce in
another batch of like quantity the same color in thirty minutes,
and it will be found for all intended purposes, either to grind,
sell or drink, that the latter will be, beyond all comparison, the
best. Coffee should be roasted uniform and as quickly as possible,
only it must not be scorched or spotted, otherwise it will have a
bitter burned taste. If roasted properly it will very considerably
increase its bulk and will be plump, swelled out and crisp; easily
crushed in the hand or between the fingers.
In his _Spice Mill Companion_, published in 1879, Jabez Burns said
further in regard to roasting:
All coffees do not roast alike; some will be a bright light color
when done, and others will be dark before done. There are two
infallible rules, which if properly appreciated and tried will
prove to be practically useful. One is, when the aroma is
sufficiently developed to produce a sharp, cutting, but aromatic
sensation in the nose. Those who practice that way do not need to
see the roast. The other rule is that when a berry is broken it is
crisp and uniform in color inside and out. Those who are accustomed
to this method may be good coffee roasters, albeit they may not
have any nose at all. But we must state in this connection, that a
man who has no smell and is color blind is not a fit candidate for
the coffee roasting profession; and, moreover, we affirm that any
person who can not roast coffee, so far as judgment is concerned,
after a few trials, will never make a good operator.
[Illustration: BURNS GRANULATING MILL, 1872-74]
In 1867, Jabez Burns was granted a United States patent on an improved
coffee cooler, mixer, and grinding mill, or granulator. Another
granulator patent was issued to him in 1872. Mr. Burns had also given
the subject of cooling coffees considerable study, and his cooler was
the result. He argued that it was necessary to cool quickly. Before his
day, various methods had been employed, such as placing the coffee in
revolving drums covered with wire cloth. Sometimes a draft of cold air
was applied to the cooling drums, and the dirt and chaff blown through
the wire cloth. It was also customary in wholesale establishments to
blow cold air up through a perforated bottom, and this had been found
effective when properly applied. The Burns idea was to cool by means of
suction, causing a downward draft through the coffee and wire-cloth
bottomed box, which was found to be more uniform and efficient for
cooling purposes, as well as in controlling smoke, heat, and dust, which
by this means could be blown out of the roasting room by any convenient
outlet.
On the subject of grinding, likewise, Mr. Burns had reached some
definite conclusions. The French and English lap and wall mills, the
English steel mills, and the Swift mills were all used in the United
States. Troemner's, the Enterprise, and others--to be mentioned later in
chronological order--were extending their use in a retail way; but Jabez
Burns confined his attention to a practicable mill for wholesale
grinding establishments.
For manufacturing purposes, burstone mills were for many years
exclusively employed, especially one first known as the Prentiss & Page,
and later as the Page mill. There was a time when all the coffee
establishments in New York sent their coffee to Prentiss & Page to be
ground. Some of the places roasted by hand, others by horse power; and
if by steam, it was limited, and they did not have enough to spare for
grinding.
With the march of improvement, burstone mills went into the discard. The
difficulty lay in finding men experienced in stone dressing to run them;
and the demand grew for a better style of grinding than could be done in
a mill out of face and balance. This demand was met in an altogether
different style of machine, which for twenty-five years was well known
as the Barbor mill. It was for improvements on this mill that Jabez
Burns in 1867, 1872, and 1874 obtained his granulator patents.
The mill comprised cutters in the form of an iron roller running in near
contact with a concave, also of iron, and a revolving cylinder provided
with sieves, or screens, that received the ground material, rolled it
over the wire surface, sifting out the fine and discharging the coarse
automatically into the cutter, to be again manipulated until it was fine
enough to pass through the meshes of the screen.
Jabez Burns patented an improved form of his roaster in 1881, and a
sample-coffee roaster in 1883, before he died in 1888; and since that
time his sons, who continue the business, have perfected a number of
improvements and brought out new machines which will be referred to in
chronological order.
James H. Nason, of Franklin, Mass., was granted a United States patent
in 1865 on a percolator with fluid joints.
P.H. Vanderweyde, of Philadelphia, was granted United States patents in
1866 on a percolator and a continuous coffee-filtering machine.
Raparlier was granted a French patent on a pocket coffee-making device
in 1867. In later years, his invention became very popular among French
coffee drinkers. It was one of the early practicable forms of
double-glass-globe filtration devices.
E.B. Manning of Middletown, Conn., was granted his first patent on a tea
and coffee pot in 1868. Others followed in 1870 and 1876. In the latter
year, John Bowman brought out the valve-type percolator which
subsequently attained great favor in American households.
Thomas Smith & Son (Elkington & Company, Ltd., successors) began to
manufacture at Glasgow, Scotland, about 1870, the Napierian vacuum
coffee machine which had been invented in 1840--but never patented--by
Robert Napier of the celebrated firm of Clyde shipbuilders. This machine
makes coffee by distillation and filtration. It employs a metal globe,
and a brewer from which the coffee is syphoned over into the globe
through a tube, around the strainer-end of which, as it rests in the
coffee liquid in the brewer, there is tied a filter cloth. It is still
being manufactured by Elkington & Company.
[Illustration: NAPIER'S VACUUM MACHINE, 1840]
Thomas Page, a New York millwright, began the manufacture of a pull-out
coffee roaster similar to the old Carter machine, in 1868. Later, Chris
Abele, who was foreman in the Page shop, succeeded to the business; and
in 1882, he was granted a United States patent on an improvement on a
coffee roaster similar to the original Burns machine (the patent had
then expired) which he marketed under the name of Knickerbocker.
_German Coffee Machinery_
The Germans first began to show an active interest in coffee machinery
in 1860. In that year, Alexius Van Gulpen, of Emmerich, produced a
green-coffee grader; and later (1868), in partnership with J.H. Lensing
and Theodore von Gimborn, began the manufacture of coffee-roasting
machines. From this start there developed in Emmerich quite an industry
in coffee-machinery building. In 1870, Alexius Van Gulpen introduced to
the German trade a globular coffee roaster employing wood and coke as
fuel and having perforations and an exhauster. Van Gulpen and von
Gimborn are the two names most often met with in the development of
German coffee-roasting machinery.
The first recorded German patent on a coffee roaster was issued to G.
Tubermann's Son in 1877, for "a coffee burner with vertically adjusted
stirring works." German patents were issued in 1878 to R. Muhlberg, of
Taucha, for coffee roasters with movable partitions and "screw-shaped
declining walls." Six roaster patents were issued to other inventors in
1878-79.
Peter Pearson, of Manchester, took out a German patent on a
coffee-roasting apparatus in 1880. Fleury & Barker, of London, were
granted a coffee-roaster patent in Germany in 1881.
After 1870, Van Gulpen devoted himself to the cylinder type of roaster,
on which he obtained several patents. The partnership between Messrs.
Van Gulpen, Lensing and von Gimborn was dissolved in 1906. They were
succeeded by the Emmericher Maschinenfabrik und Eissengiesserei, and Van
Gulpen & Co. Van Gulpen died in 1920. Among his inventions were a
circular air fan to supply fresh air to the beans while roasting; a
fire-dampening device; roasting and cooling exhausters; and a
"withdrawable" mixer remaining inside the cylinder during the roasting
process, but designed to be withdrawn at the end, discharging the
contents with a jerk into a circular cooler. These improvements are
featured in Van Gulpen & Co.'s latest Meteor machine. They make also the
Typhoon and Comet machines, and a line of globular roasters.
A dozen coffee-roaster patents were issued in Germany in 1880-82. Among
them was one to the Emmerich Machine Factory and Iron Foundry, Van
Gulpen, Lensing & von Gimborn, Emmerich, in 1882.
[Illustration: GERMAN GAS AND COAL ROASTING MACHINES
Left, Perfekt gas roaster--Right, Probat coal roaster]
Numerous coffee-cooling, coffee-grinding, and coffee-making devices were
patented in Germany from 1877 to 1885; among them Newstadt's
coffee-extract machine in 1882, safety attachments, rapid filters,
Vienna coffee makers, etc. The first Vienna coffee maker seems to have
been patented in Germany in 1879.
The Emmerich Machine Factory and Iron Foundry acquired certain Danish
and Austrian coffee-roaster patents in 1881, and in 1892 it was granted
a German patent on a ball roaster. In the eighties this concern began
the manufacture of a closed ball, or globular, roaster with gas-heater
attachment. It acquired, in 1889, the rights for Germany to manufacture
gas roasters under the Dutch Henneman patents of 1888. In 1892, Theodore
von Gimborn was granted French and English patents on a coffee roaster
employing a naked gas flame in a rotary cylinder. In 1897, the
Emmericher concern was granted a German patent on an automatic circular
tipping cooler with power drive. Today, this factory features the Probat
and Perfekt roasters, but manufactures a general line of cylinder and
ball machines for coal, coke, and gas.
Among others engaged in the manufacture of coffee machines in Germany
are G. W. Barth, Ludwigsburg, and Ferd. Gothot, Mulheim on Rhur. The
latter manufactures a coke or gas heated quick-roaster known as the
Ideal-Rapid, and a smaller hand-power machine, of the same type, called
Favour.
[Illustration: OTHER GERMAN COFFEE ROASTERS
Left, globular machine--Right, Meteor quick-roasting outfit]
_American, French, and British Machines_
In 1869, Élie Moneuse and L. Duparquet, of New York, were granted three
United States patents on a coffee pot or urn made of sheet copper and
lined with pure sheet block tin. These patents were the foundation of
the successful coffee-urn business afterward built up under the name of
the Duparquet, Huot & Moneuse Co.
Thomas Smith & Son (Elkington & Co., Ltd., successors) began, in 1870,
the manufacture of the Napierian coffee-making machine at Glasgow,
Scotland. This was a device for making coffee by distillation, employing
a metal globe syphon and brewer with filter cloth. The principle was
subsequently used in the Napier-List steam coffee machine for ships and
institutions, patented in England in 1891.
John Gulick Baker, of Philadelphia, one of the founders of the
Enterprise Manufacturing Co. of Pennsylvania, was granted a United
States patent in 1870, on a coffee grinder introduced to the trade as
the Enterprise Champion No. 1 store mill. Another Baker patent was
granted in 1873, and this became known as the Enterprise Champion Globe
No. 0. These mills were the pioneer machines for store use.
In 1870, Delphine, Sr., of Marourme, France, was granted a French patent
on a tubular coffee roaster which turned over a flame.
In the sixties and seventies, French inventors became quite active on
coffee-roaster improvements. Many patents were granted, and quite a few
were for practical small-capacity machines that have survived, and are
in use today in France and on the continent. Some supplied inspiration
for inventors in neighboring countries. Among the more notable names,
mention should be made of Martin, of St. Quentin, who produced a
sheet-iron cylinder roaster with "interior gatherer" in 1860; Marchand,
of Paris, "fan roaster with movable fire box," 1866 and 1869; Lauzaune,
Paris, "rocking system of roasting coffee in a round stove," 1873;
Ittel's glass sphere, Lyons, 1874; and Marchand and Hignette, Paris,
1877, a ball coffee roaster.
_Evolution of the Gas Roaster_
According to the patent records, Roure, of Marseilles, appears to have
produced the original gas coffee roaster in 1877. The evolution of the
gas roasting-machine was as follows:
In 1879, H. Faulder, of Stockport, England, obtained an English patent
on an external air-blast burner applied to a cylinder gas machine, which
is still being manufactured by the Grocers Engineering and Whitmee,
Ltd., of London. Fleury and Barker, of London, followed with another
English gas machine in 1880, the heat being supplied from gas jets over
the roasting cylinder. In 1881, Peter Pearson, of Manchester, produced a
gas roaster which consisted of a wire-gauze cylinder revolving under a
metal plate heated by gas.
[Illustration: ORIGINAL ENTERPRISE MILL]
Beeston Tupholme, of London, was granted an English patent in 1887, on a
direct-flame gas roaster which he assigned to Joseph Baker & Sons.
Karel F. Henneman, the Hague, Netherlands, took out his first patent on
the Henneman direct-flame gas roaster in Spain in 1888; and the
following year, he obtained patents in Belgium, France, and England. His
United States patents were granted in 1893-95.
Postulart secured a patent in France for a gas coffee roaster in 1888.
The Germans also began, in the eighties, to take the quick gas coffee
roaster seriously. In 1889, Carl Alexander Otto, of Dresden, secured a
German patent on a spiral tubular machine to roast coffee in three and a
half minutes. It was first manufactured and sold by Max Thurmer, of
Dresden, in 1891-93.
[Illustration: MAX THURMER'S QUICK GAS ROASTER]
[Illustration: LOADING COFFEE ON ZAMBOEKS AT HODEIDA
These boats then transfer their cargoes to steamships lying in the
roads]
[Illustration: PICTURESQUE CAMEL AND BULLOCK CARTS
Used for local coffee transport in Aden and Hodeida]
[Illustration: PRIMITIVE TRANSPORTATION METHODS IN ARABIA]
The subject of quick roasting has greatly agitated German and French
coffee men. Otto found that coffee roasted in small quantities (say
fifty grams) on a sample-roaster produced a finer flavor and aroma than
that roasted in the big machines. He set out to produce a machine that
would roast continuous small quantities in the shortest time. He built
the first commercial machine under his patent in 1893. It was shown at
the International Food Exhibition in Dresden in 1894. The latest type
manufactured by Max Thurmer, Dresden, in which firm Otto is a partner,
has a spiral five meters long and an hourly production of about 450
pounds. The Thurmer machine, as it is called, has been sold to the trade
since 1914.
Quick roasting is gone in for quite extensively in Germany, even in the
big trade-roasting plants, where machines to roast in ten to seventeen
minutes are common. Natural, slow cooling is most necessary with quick
roasting, according to Thurmer. On the other hand, A. Mottant, of Paris,
who also manufactures a line of quick gas-roasting machines, called
Magic, argues that quick cooling is essential after quick roasting.
Three of the Mottant machines are illustrated on pages 642 and 644.
Other quick-roasting machines of German make are the Combinator,
Tornado, and Rekord.
In a lecture before the Society of Medical Officers of Health, London,
October 24, 1912, William Lawton demonstrated to the satisfaction of his
audience that coffee could be roasted in 3 minutes, using a perforated
gas-roaster of his own invention.[365]
The first direct-flame gas coffee roaster in America was installed in
the plant of the Potter-Parlin Co., New York, by F.T. Holmes, in 1893.
This was Tupholme's machine, patented in England in 1887, and in the
United States in 1896-97. The Potter-Parlin Co. subsequently placed the
Tupholme machines throughout the United States on a daily rental basis,
limiting its leases to one firm in a city, having obtained the exclusive
American rights from the Waygood, Tupholme Co., now the Grocers
Engineering and Whitmee, Ltd.
[Illustration: AN ENGLISH GAS COFFEE-ROASTING PLANT
The machines are the Morewood (Improved Faulder) sliding-burner indirect
type]
Natural gas was first used in the United States as fuel for roasting
coffee in 1896, when it was introduced under coal roasting cylinders in
Pennsylvania and Indiana by improvised gas burners.
[Illustration: FRENCH GLOBULAR ROASTER]
Edwin Crawley and W.T. Johnston, Newport, Ky., assignors to the
Potter-Parlin Co., New York, were granted four United States patents on
gas coffee-roasting machines.
In 1897, a special gas burner, not to be confused with the direct-flame
machine, was first attached to a regular Burns roaster in the United
States, and was made the basis of application for a patent.
In 1897-99, David B. Fraser, of New York, began to market in the United
States a central-heated gas-fuel machine with an inner wire-cloth
cylinder to keep the coffee from dropping into the flame, developed
under United States patents granted to Carl H. Duehring, of Hoboken, in
1897, and to D.B. Fraser in 1899.
M.F. Hamsley, of Brooklyn, was granted a United States patent on an
improved direct-flame gas roaster in 1898.
Ellis M. Potter, New York, was granted in 1899, a United States patent
on an improved direct-flame gas roaster in which the flame was spread
over a large area to avoid scorching and to insure a more thorough and
uniform roast. In the Tupholme machine, the gas flame entered at one
end, and the smoke and flame went out through a stack on top. In the
Potter machine, the stack was put on the end opposite the gas intake,
with a fan to pull the flame all the way through.
The Burns direct-flame gas roaster, with patented swing-gate head for
feeding and discharging, was introduced to the trade in 1900. The Burns
gas sample-roaster followed.
In 1901, Joseph Lambert, of Marshall, Mich., introduced to the trade one
of the earliest indirect gas roasting machines.
In 1901, also, T.C. Morewood, of Brentford, England, was granted an
English patent on a gas roaster fitted with a sliding burner and a
removable sampling tube. This machine is now being made by the Grocers
Engineering and Whitmee, Ltd.
In the same year, 1901, F.T. Holmes, formerly with the Potter-Parlin
Co., joined the Huntley Manufacturing Co., Silver Creek, N.Y., which
then began to build the Monitor direct-flame gas coffee roaster. Mr.
Holmes still further improved the Tupholme idea by putting gas burners
in both ends of the roasting cylinder, with the pipes bent down so as to
cause the gas flame to go first to the bottom and then up to the stack
on top. This improvement was never patented.
[Illustration: SIROCCO MACHINE (FRENCH)]
The Henneman direct-flame gas roaster was introduced to the United
States trade in 1905, by C.A. Cross & Co., wholesale grocers, of
Fitchburg, Mass. It was marketed here seven years, but was never a
great success.
[Illustration: ENGLISH ROASTING AND GRINDING EQUIPMENT
Showing one 168-pound Simplex gas roaster, with a Rapid disk grinding
machine having a capacity of 300 to 400 pounds per hour]
In 1906, F.T. Holmes was granted a United States patent on a coffee
roaster which he assigned to the Huntley Manufacturing Co.
J.C. Prims, of Battle Creek, Mich., was granted a United States patent
in 1908, on a corrugated cylinder improvement for a gas and coal roaster
designed for retail stores. The A.J. Deer Co., Hornell, N.Y., acquired
this machine in 1909, and began to market it as the Royal coffee
roaster. An improvement patented in 1915 by J.C. Prims was assigned to
the A.J. Deer Co.
In 1915, and again in 1919, Jabez Burns & Sons, New York, patented their
Jubilee roaster, an inner-heated machine in which the gas is burned
inside a revolving cylinder in a combustion chamber protected from
direct coffee contact. The heat is deflected downward and then passes
upward through the coffee.
In 1919, William Fullard (_d._ 1921), of Philadelphia, was granted a
United States patent on a "heated fresh air system" roaster, in which
the fresh air is forced by an electric fan through a pipe to a set of
coils over gas, coal, or oil flame. At the top of the coils is a
manifold, the hot air being forced through small holes to circulate in
and around a regulation perforated roasting cylinder; the vapors and
spent air are then drawn into an overhead exhaust pipe that connects
with a pipe provided with a fresh-air intake, the idea being to return
them to the roasting cylinder after being mixed with fresh air and
heated in the coils as before. This patent has not been successfully
marketed at the time of writing. The purpose is to roast by heated air
not mixed with any furnace gases. Whether this can be done with
sufficient fuel economy, and whether coffee thus roasted would have any
greater value, are questions that are raised by the coffee experts.
_Coffee-Grinding and Coffee-Making Chronology_
To return to our coffee-grinding and coffee-making chronology, it is to
be noted that in 1875-76-78, Turner Strowbridge, of New Brighton, Pa.,
was granted three United States patents on a box coffee mill, first made
by Logan & Strowbridge, later the Logan & Strowbridge Iron Company, the
latter being succeeded by the Wrightsville Hardware Co. in 1906.
[Illustration: MAGIC GAS MACHINE (FRENCH)]
In 1878, a United States patent was issued to Rudolphus L. Webb,
assignor to Landers, Frary & Clark, New Britain, Conn., on an improved
box coffee grinder for home use.
In 1878, and in 1880, United States patents were issued to John C. Dell
of Philadelphia on a store coffee mill.
In 1879, and in 1880, United States patents were issued to Orson W.
Stowe, of the Peck, Stowe & Wilcox Co., Southington, Conn., on a
household coffee mill.
In 1879, Charles Halstead, of New York, was granted the first United
States patent on a metal coffee pot having a china interior. It was an
infuser for home use.
In 1880, coffee pots, with tops having muslin bottoms for clarifying and
straining, were first made in the United States by the Duparquet, Huot &
Moneuse Co., of New York.
The name Hungerford first appears in the United States patent records in
1880-81, in connection with patents granted to G.W. and G.S. Hungerford
on machines for cleaning, scouring, and polishing coffee. In 1882, the
Hungerfords, father and son, brought out a roaster. This machine and the
one patented by Chris Abele, of New York, already referred to, were
constructions resulting from the expiration of the original Burns patent
of 1864. In 1881, Jabez Burns patented the improved Burns roaster,
comprising a turn-over front head serving for both feeding and
discharging. Additional United States coffee-roaster patents were issued
to G.W. Hungerford in 1887-89. In the latter year, David Fraser, who
came to the United States from Glasgow in 1886, established the
Hungerford Co., succeeding the business of the Hungerfords, and later
being granted certain United States patents, already mentioned. In 1910,
the Hungerford Co. business was discontinued in New York; and David B.
Fraser moved to Jersey City, where he continued to operate as the Fraser
Manufacturing Co. This business was discontinued in 1918.
Chris Abele was an active competitor of the Hungerfords and of the
Fraser Manufacturing Co.; and his Knickerbocker roaster was sold over a
wide territory. He died in 1910; and his son-in-law, Gottfried Bay,
succeeded to the business.
[Illustration: BURNS JUBILEE GAS MACHINE]
In 1881, the Morgan Brothers, Edgar H. and Charles, began the
manufacture of household coffee mills, the business being acquired in
1885 by the Arcade Manufacturing Co., of Freeport, Ill. The latter
concern brought out the first pound coffee mill in 1889. Its mills
became very popular in the United States. In 1900, Charles Morgan was
granted a United States patent on a glass-jar coffee mill, with
removable glass measuring cup.
[Illustration: DOUBLE AROMATIC GAS ROASTING OUTFIT (FRENCH)]
In 1881, Harvey Ricker, of Brooklyn, later of Minneapolis, introduced to
the trade in the United States a "minute coffee pot" and urn known as
the Boss, the name being subsequently changed to Minute. He improved and
patented the device in 1901 as the Half-Minute coffee pot. It is a
filtration device employing a cotton sack with a thickened bottom.
In 1882, Chris Abele, of New York, patented an improvement on the
old-style Burns roaster, with openings cut in the front plate. It was
known as the Knickerbocker. As already noted, the machine was a
competitor of the Hungerford machine patented the same year.
In 1882, a German patent was granted to Emil Newstadt, of Berlin, on one
of the earliest coffee-extract machines.
In 1883, Jabez Burns was granted a United States patent on his improved
sample-coffee roaster.
In 1884, the Star coffee pot, later known as the Marion Harland, was
introduced to the trade. It employed a wire-gauze drip device, called a
"filter," which was fitted to a metal pot. It was extensively advertised
and attained considerable popularity. The same year, Finley Acker, of
Philadelphia, brought out an improved coffee pot for family trade.
Later, he produced his Mo-Kof-Fee pot and an individual porcelain drip
pot for testing-table use.
In 1885, F.A. Cauchois, New York, brought out an improved
porcelain-lined urn.
In 1887-88, the Etruscan coffee pot was invented and put on the market
by the Etruscan Coffee Pot Co., of Philadelphia. It employed a muslin
cylinder with metal ends and a mechanism for combining "agitation,
distillation and infusion." It was not unlike the Dakin device of 1848,
previously mentioned.
In 1890, A. Mottant, Bar-le-Duc, France, began to manufacture a line of
coffee-roasting machinery which included vertical ball-and-cylinder
machines, using wood, coal, coke, or gas for fuel. His best known makes
are Magic and Sirocco (see page 642).
Before 1895, the commercial roaster was little used in France. Since
then, the industry has developed, but without displacing the smaller
roaster for family use. Ball roasters are popular with shop-keepers,
especially the variety manufactured by the Établissements Lauzaune at
Paris, and known as Aromatic, being equipped with electric motors. This
firm builds also a larger machine known as Moderne.
Other makes of roasters that have attained prominence in France are the
Lambert, equipped with a steam condenser; Van den Brouck's, having the
roasting cylinder lined with wire gauze; and Resson's machine for
wholesale plants.
The French led off with glass-cylinder roasters for home use in the
early seventies. They are still popular. One of the developments of the
last decade was known as the Bijou, and was operated by clock work. A
similar automatic machine, made of glass, was manufactured and sold in
New York in 1908 under the name of the Home roaster. As late as 1914, an
American inventor produced a home roaster for use in a stove hole. This
device had a stirrer in the cover to be rotated by hand. A similar
device was sold in 1917 under the name Savo. Home roasting, however, has
become a lost art in America.
[Illustration: LAMBERT'S VICTORY GAS MACHINE]
In 1897, Joseph Lambert, of Vermont, began the manufacture and sale in
Battle Creek, Mich., of the Lambert self-contained coffee roaster
without the brick setting then required for coffee-roasting machines. In
1900, he was joined by A.P. Grohens. In 1901, the Lambert Food and
Machinery Co. was organized. In 1904, the company was reorganized. Since
then, many improvements have been made under Mr. Grohens' direction. The
Lambert gas roaster, one of the first machines employing gas as fuel for
indirect roasting, dates back to 1901, as previously mentioned. The
Economic roaster is Mr. Grohens' latest development for coal or coke
fuel. It is a compact self-contained equipment operating in connection
with a new-type rotary cooler. He has also recently (1922) brought out a
gas-fired, electrically operated 600-pound Victory roaster and a
fifty-pound miniature coffee-roasting plant designed for retail stores.
In 1897, the Enterprise Manufacturing Co. of Pennsylvania was the first
regularly to employ electric motors for driving commercial coffee mills
by means of belt-and-pulley attachments.
In 1898, the Hobart Manufacturing Co., of Troy, Ohio, introduced to the
trade another early coffee grinder connected with an electric motor and
driven by belt-and-pulley attachment.
In 1900, the first gear-driven electric coffee grinder was put on the
market by the Enterprise Manufacturing Co. of Pennsylvania.
In 1902, the Coles Manufacturing Co., (Braun Co., successor) and Henry
Troemner, of Philadelphia, began the manufacture and sale of gear-driven
electric coffee grinders.
In 1905, the A.J. Deer Co., Buffalo, N.Y., (now at Hornell, N.Y.) began
to sell its Royal electric coffee mills direct to dealers on the
instalment plan, revolutionizing the former practise of selling coffee
mills through hardware jobbers.
In 1905, H.L. Johnston was granted a United States patent on a coffee
mill. He assigned the patent to the Hobart Manufacturing Co.
In 1900, Charles Lewis was granted a United States patent on an improved
reversible filtration coffee pot known as the Kin-Hee. This pot has
since been further improved, and the patent rights sold in several
foreign countries. It employs a filter cloth in place of the metal or
china strainer used in the French drip pot.
In 1901, Landers, Frary & Clark's improved Universal percolator was
patented in the United States. This pot has proved to be one of the most
popular percolators on the American market. This firm brought out the
Universal Cafenoira, a double glass filtration device, in 1916. It is
covered by design and structural patents issued in 1916 and 1917.
In 1900, the Burns swing-gate sample-roasting outfit was patented in the
United States.
In 1901, Robert Burns, of New York, was granted two United States
patents on a coffee roaster and cooler.
In 1901, Freidrich Kuchelmeister, Brux, Austria-Hungary, was granted a
United States patent on a coffee roaster having a double-walled drum,
the inner being of wire gauze, and the outer of solid iron, designed to
prevent scorching of the beans.
In 1902, W.M. Still & Sons, London, were granted an English patent on a
steam coffee-making machine employing twelve ounces of coffee to the
gallon.
In 1902, T.K. Baker, of Minneapolis, was granted two United States
patents on a cloth-filter coffee-making device.
In 1903, A.E. Bronson, Jr., assignor to the Bronson-Walton Company,
Cleveland, Ohio, was granted a United States patent on a coffee mill.
In 1903, John Arbuckle was granted a United States patent on a
coffee-roasting apparatus employing a fan to force the hot fire gases
into the roasting cylinder. From this was developed the Jumbo roaster,
now used in the Arbuckle plant, which roasts ten thousand pounds an
hour.
_Electric Coffee-Roasting_
In 1903, George C. Lester, of New York, was granted a United States
patent on an electric coffee roaster, that is, a machine to roast by
electric heat. There were two cylinders, the inner being of wire gauze,
and the outer of copper and asbestos. Between the two, four electric
heaters were placed.
There was demonstrated in Germany, in 1906, an electric coffee roaster
employing a number of resistance coils, consisting of strips of Krupp
metal two and one-half mm. thick, five mm. broad, and thirteen and
one-half mm. long, wound on porcelain tubes, which transmitted the heat
to the air within the roasting cylinder. Analysis showed that coffee
electrically roasted contained more substances soluble in water than
that roasted by coke, as well as considerably more material soluble in
ether. This machine was invented by Captain Carl Moegling about 1900.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE FIRST ELECTRIC COFFEE MILLS]
Another electric-fuel-machine patent was granted in the United States to
Robert H. Talbutt, of Baltimore, in 1911. This machine had the electric
heater in the center of the roasting cylinder. An electrically heated
machine called the Ben Franklin was demonstrated in New York in 1918.
In 1919, Everett T. Shortt, Dallas, Tex., was granted a United States
patent on an electrical roaster.
Up to the present writing, no great progress has been made in the United
States with the roasting of coffee by electric heat.
The Phoenix Electrical Heating Co. manufactured, and the Uno Company,
Ltd., of London, marketed an electrically heated roaster as far back as
1909. The machine was not altogether satisfactory, even to the makers;
and the Uno Company is now (1922) experimenting with a new type of
electric roaster which it expects will remedy the defects of the early
machine. The 1909 roaster was made of two concentric cylinders revolving
around a set of fixed heating elements, consisting of a series of
spiral wires held in position on fireproof clay insulators, these wires
being assembled, insulated, and brought out through the fixed center to
a terminal, or a set of terminals, at one end. In this way, no contact
brushes or rings were needed. The machine had a sampling device at one
end which threw out a few berries each time it was operated. It was not
possible to return these sample berries. Such an arrangement appeared
necessary, however, unless one was prepared to have the heating element
on the outside of the machine and to pick up the current by means of
rings or brushes. When the operator became accustomed to the coffee he
was roasting, this was not a matter of great moment, because in England,
at least, the average coffee roaster does not require a testing sample
until he is about ready to turn out and to cool the roast.
[Illustration: ENGLISH ELECTRIC-FUEL ROASTER]
The Uno machine had a capacity of seven pounds, and the time occupied in
roasting was from eight to ten minutes, depending on whether the roaster
had been freshly switched on or had been running for a few minutes. The
wattage was 5,520. The consumption per hundred-weight was under thirteen
units. The makers gave, as the most economical pressure on which to
work, 220 to 240 volts. The machine was operated for eighteen months in
the show window of a London retail grocer.
In 1921, a United States patent was granted to Mark T. Seymour, Stowe,
N.Y., on an electric coffee and peanut roaster, which has the heating
element embedded in a cement-lined cylinder that contains a roasting
cage.
In 1921, Fred J. Kuhlemeir and Ralph J. Quelle, of Burlington, Ia., were
granted a United States patent on a small household coffee roaster
electrically equipped, and roasting by electric heat.
_Other Machinery Patents_
In 1903, Luigi Giacomini, of Florence, Italy, was granted a United
States patent on a process for roasting coffee.
[Illustration: BEN FRANKLIN ELECTRIC COFFEE ROASTER]
In 1905, A.A. Warner, assignor to Landers, Frary & Clark, New Britain,
Conn., was granted two United States patents on a coffee mill.
In 1906, Ludwig Schmidt, assignor to the Essmueller Mill Furnishing
Co., St. Louis, was granted a United States patent on a coffee roaster.
This company and the Reuter-Jones Manufacturing Co., also of St. Louis,
were making machines similar to the original Burns model. The
Reuter-Jones Manufacturing Co., in 1910, brought out a self-contained
gas roaster called the St. Louis, Jr. In 1913, at a receiver's sale,
A.P. Grohens, of the Lambert Machine Co., acquired all the machinery and
patent rights of the Reuter-Jones Manufacturing Company.
In 1904, J.W. Chapman and G.W. Kooman, assignors to Manning, Bowman &
Co., Meriden, Conn., were granted a United States patent on a coffee or
tea pot. The same year, George E. Savage and G.W. Hope were granted two
United States patents on coffee or tea pots, also assigned to Manning,
Bowman & Co.
In 1904, Sigmund Sternau, J.P. Steppe, and L. Strassberger, assignors to
S. Sternau & Co., New York, were granted a United States patent on a
percolator. Six others were granted to Charles Nelson, and assigned to
S. Sternau & Co., in 1912 and 1913, for a percolator, the manufacture
and sale of which were discontinued in 1915.
In 1905, a celebrated case was decided in Kansas City involving
litigation between William E. Baker, of Baker & Co., Minneapolis, and
the F.A. Duncombe Manufacturing Co., of St. Joseph, Mo., over Mr.
Baker's patent rights in a machine to produce steel-cut coffee. The suit
was brought in 1903, and Mr. Baker contended that his patent gave him
the exclusive right to the "uniformity of granules by means of the
sharply dressed mechanism" and by the use of a fan for blowing away the
silver skins, produced by his machine; while the defendant said he
obtained the same result (steel-cut coffee) by grading the granules
through screens or sieves. The defense was that Mr. Baker's process was
not a discovery; because, grinding coffee was as old as the world's
knowledge, and winnowing the chaff was equally ancient. The lower court
dismissed the bill, because the "patents sued upon are devoid of
patentable invention"; and the United States Court of Appeals confirmed
the decision.
[Illustration: ENTERPRISE HAND STORE MILL]
In 1905, Frederick A. Cauchois, of New York, brought out his Private
Estate coffee maker, a clever combination of the French drip and filter
processes, employing a thin layer of Japanese paper as a filtering
agent. The same year, Finley Acker, of Philadelphia, was granted a
United States patent on a percolator employing two cylinders, perforated
on the sides, with a sheet of percolator paper placed between them to
act as a filtering medium.
In 1906, George Savage and J.W. Chapman, assignors to Manning, Bowman &
Co. of Meriden, Conn., were granted a United States patent on a coffee
percolator.
In 1906, Alonzo A. Warner, assignor to Landers, Frary & Clark, New
Britain, Conn., was granted a United States patent on a coffee
percolator.
In 1906, H.D. Kelly, Kansas City, was granted a United States patent on
the Kellum Automatic coffee urn, employing a coffee extractor in which
ground coffee is continually agitated before percolation by a vacuum
process. Sixteen patents followed.
[Illustration: LATEST TYPES OF ELECTRICALLY DRIVEN STORE MILLS]
In 1907, Desiderio Pavoni, of Milan, Italy, was granted a patent in
Italy for an improvement on the Bezzara system for preparing and serving
coffee as a rapid infusion of a single cup, first introduced in
1903-1904. It is known as the Ideale urn, and makes 150 cups per hour.
Among other Italian rapid coffee-making machines which, with this one,
have attained considerable prominence in Europe and South America,
mention should be made of La Victoria Arduino made by Pier Teresio
Arduino, of Turin, Italy, introduced in 1909, that makes 1000 cups per
hour. It was patented in the United States in 1920. There are, also,
L'Italiana Sovereign Filter Machine (1440 cups per hour) made by Bossi,
Vernetti & Bartolini, Turin, (subsequently merged with La Victoria
Arduino-Societa Anonima); and José Baro's Express, Buenos Aires, making
600 cups an hour.
[Illustration: THE IDEALE MACHINE (CENTER) MAKES 150 CUPS OF COFFEE AN
HOUR. THE MACHINE AT THE LEFT MAKES 1,000 CUPS AN HOUR
A MACHINE OF THE TYPE OF THE ONE AT THE RIGHT WILL PRODUCE FROM 1,440 TO
1,800 CUPS OF COFFEE AN HOUR
TYPES OF ITALIAN RAPID COFFEE-MAKING MACHINES]
In 1908, A.E. White, Chicago, was granted a United States patent on a
coffee urn. He assigned it to the James Heekin Co., of Cincinnati.
In 1908, I.D. Richheimer, Chicago, introduced his Tricolator to the
trade and the consumer. This is an aluminum device to fit any coffee
pot, combining French drip and filtration ideas, with Japanese paper as
the filtration medium.
In 1908, an improved type of Burns roaster was patented in the United
States. The improvement consisted of an open perforated cylinder with
flexible back-head and balanced front bearing. The following year, the
Burns tilting sample-roaster for gas or electric heating units was
patented.
In 1909, Frederick A. Cauchois, of New York, was granted a United States
patent on a coffee urn fitted with a centrifugal pump for repouring.
In 1909, C.F. Blanke, of St. Louis, was granted two United States
patents on a china coffee pot with a cloth filter, the sides tightly,
and the bottom loosely, woven.
In 1911, Edward Aborn, of New York, was granted a United States patent
on his Make-Right coffee-filter device. This was later incorporated with
improvements in a Tru-Bru coffee pot, on which he was granted another
patent in 1920.
In 1912, John E. King, of Detroit, was granted a United States patent on
an improved coffee percolator for restaurants, employing a sheet of
filter paper on a ring in a metal basket; the ring to be removed once
the filter paper was in position on the perforated bottom plate of the
percolator basket.
In 1913, F.F. Wear, Los Angeles, perfected a coffee-making device in
which a metal perforated clamp was employed to apply a filter paper to
the under-side of an English earthenware adaptation of the French drip
pot.
In 1912, William Lawton demonstrated in London a gas coffee roaster of
his own invention, by means of which he roasted coffee "in suspension"
to a light brown color in three minutes.
[Illustration: SHOWING HOW THE ITALIAN RAPID COFFEE MACHINE WORKS
Left, putting coffee in the filter--Center, applying filter to
faucet--Right, turning on water and steam to make the drink]
Herbert L. Johnston, assignor to the Hobart Electric Manufacturing Co.,
Troy, Ohio, was granted a United States patent on a machine for refining
coffee in 1913.
In 1914, the Phylax coffee maker, embodying an improvement on the French
drip principle, was introduced to the trade. The process was
demonstrated by Benjamin H. Calkin, of Detroit, in 1921, as "an art of
brewing coffee."
[Illustration: LA VICTORIA ARDUINO MIGNONNE
An electric rapid coffee maker]
In 1914, Robert Burns, assignor to Jabez Burns & Sons, New York, was
granted a United States patent on a coffee-granulating mill.
In 1914-15, Herbert Galt, of Chicago, was granted three United States
patents on the Gait coffee pot, made of aluminum, and having two parts,
a removable cylinder employing the French drip principle, and the
containing pot.
In 1915, the Burns Jubilee (inner-heated) gas coffee roaster was
patented in the United States and put on the market.
In 1915, the National Coffee Roasters Association Home coffee mill,
employing an improved set screw operating on a cog-and ratchet
principle, was introduced to the trade.
In 1916, a United States patent was granted to I.D. Richheimer, Chicago,
for an infuser improvement on his Tricolator.
In 1916, Saul Blickman, assignor to S. Blickman, New York, was granted a
United States patent on an apparatus for making and dispensing coffee.
In 1916, Orville W. Chamberlain, New Orleans, was granted a United
States patent on an automatic drip coffee pot.
In 1916, Jules Le Page, Darlington, Ind., obtained two United States
patents on cutting rolls to cut--and not to grind or crush--corn, wheat,
or coffee. These were subsequently incorporated in the Ideal steel-cut
coffee mill and marketed to the trade by the B.F. Gump Co., Chicago.
In 1917, Richard A. Greene and William G. Burns, assignors to Jabez
Burns & Sons, New York, were granted patents in the United States on
the Burns flexible-arm cooler (for roasted batches) providing full
fan-suction to a cooler box at all points in its track travel.
In 1919, Joseph F. Smart, assignor to Landers, Frary & Clark, New
Britain, Conn., was granted a United States patent on a percolator.
In 1919, Charles Morgan, assignor to the Arcade Manufacturing Co.,
Freeport, Ill., was granted a United States patent on an improved
grinding mill.
In 1919, Edward F. Schnuck, assignor to Jabez Burns & Sons, New York,
was granted a United States patent on an improvement for a gas coffee
roaster. In 1920, he was granted a United States patent on an improved
process of twice cutting coffee and removing the chaff after each
cutting.
In 1920, Natale de Mattei, of Turin, Italy, was granted a United States
patent on a rapid coffee-filtering machine.
In 1920, Frederick H. Muller, of Chicago, was granted a United States
patent on "an art of making coffee," and on an improved apparatus for
hotels and restaurants, which comprised a series of superposed metal
containers, or cartridges, of ground coffee placed in a perforated
bucket designed to rest in a coffee urn, the cartridges being lifted out
as the boiling water poured on them sinks with the drawing off of the
"decoction" at the faucet.
[Illustration: THE N.C.R.A. HOME COFFEE MILL]
[Illustration: THE MANTHEY-ZORN RAPID COFFEE INFUSER AND DISPENSER]
In 1920, Alfredo M. Salazar, of New York, was granted a United States
patent on a coffee urn in which the coffee is made at the time of
serving by using steam pressure to force the boiling water through
ground coffee held in a cloth sack attached to the faucet.
In 1920, William H. Bruning, Evansville, Ind., was granted a United
States patent on an improved French drip pot made of aluminum and
provided with a vacuum jacket in the dripper section, and a hot-water
jacket in the serving portion, to keep the beverage hot.
In 1921, the Manthey-Zorn Laboratories Co., of Cleveland, brought out a
rapid coffee-infuser and dispenser employing in the infuser a
centrifugal to make an extract in thirty-eight seconds, and designed to
deliver a gallon of concentrated liquid, or coffee base, every three
minutes. The dispenser automatically combines the coffee base with
boiling water in a differential faucet in the proportion desired,
usually one of base to four of water. The dispenser serves 600 cups per
hour. An additional faucet may be added which will double the capacity.
[Illustration: THE TRICOLETTE, A PAPER-FILTER DEVICE FOR A SINGLE CUP
Above; In position on cup--Below; opened, showing parts]
Among foreign coffee makers applying the French drip principle, the
Vienna coffee-making machine, known in the United States as the Bohemian
coffee pot, has met with much favor in this country. Elsewhere it is
known as the Carlsbad. It is made of china, and the European
manufacturer has a patent on the porcelain strainer, or grid, which is
provided with slits that are very fine on the inner side but that widen
on the outer side to permit careful straining and to facilitate
cleaning.
Some of the latest developments in coffee apparatus were shown at the
industrial exposition at the National Coffee Roasters Association, held
in New York, November 1-3, 1921. Among items of distinction not
heretofore included in this work, mention should be made of: an
American-French coffee biggin, being a French drip pot made of American
porcelain and fitted with a muslin strainer; a glass urn-liner, intended
to supplant the porcelain liner; and an electric repouring pump,
designed to be attached to any type of coffee urn.
Careful research of the records of the United States patent office
discloses that the number of patents relating to coffee apparatus and
coffee preparations, issued from 1789 to 1921, is as follows:
UNITED STATES COFFEE PATENTS
_Devices_ _Patents_
Coffee Mills 185
Coffee-roasting devices, and improvements thereon 312
Coffee-making devices 835
Coffee-cleaning, hulling, drying, polishing,
and plantation machinery in general 175
Miscellaneous patents (for coating, glazing, treated
coffees, substitutes, etc.) 300
________
Total 1,807
It must be borne in mind that there was a number of patents granted on
machines that were intended for, and used for, coffee, but that did not
mention coffee in the specifications. Many coffee driers were listed as
"grain driers," for instance. Also, many excellent devices have been
made that were never patented.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XXXV
WORLD'S COFFEE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
_How coffee is roasted, prepared, and served in all the leading
civilized countries--The Arabian coffee ceremony--The present-day
coffee houses of Turkey--Twentieth-century improvements in Europe
and the United States_
Coffee manners and customs have shown little change in the Orient in the
six hundred-odd years since the coffee drink was discovered by Sheik
Omar in Arabia. As a beverage for western peoples, however, and more
particularly in America, there have been many improvements in making and
serving it.
A brief survey of the coffee conventions and coffee service in the
principal countries where coffee has become a fixed item in the dietary
is presented here, with a view to show how different peoples have
adapted the universal drink to their national needs and preferences.
To proceed in alphabetical order, and beginning with Africa, coffee
drinking is indulged in largely in Abyssinia, Algeria, Egypt, Portuguese
East Africa, and the Union of South Africa.
_Coffee Manners and Customs in Africa_
In Abyssinia and Somaliland, among the native population, the most
primitive methods of coffee making still obtain. Here the wandering
Galla still mix their pulverized coffee beans with fats as a food
ration, and others of the native tribes favor the _kisher_, or beverage
made from the toasted coffee hulls. An hour's boiling produces a
straw-colored decoction, of a slightly sweetish taste. Where the Arabian
customs have taken root, the drink is prepared from the roasted beans
after the Arabian and Turkish method. The white inhabitants usually
prepare and serve the beverage as in the homeland; so that it is
possible to obtain it after the English, French, German, Greek, or
Italian styles. Adaptations of the French sidewalk café, and of the
Turkish coffee house, may be seen in the larger towns.
In the equatorial provinces of Egypt, and in Uganda, the natives eat the
raw berries; or first cook them in boiling water, dry them in the sun,
and then eat them. It is a custom to exchange coffee beans in friendly
greeting.
Individual earthen vessels for making coffee, painted red and yellow,
are made by some of the native tribes in Abyssinia, and usually
accompany disciples of Islam when they journey to Mecca, where the
vessels find a ready sale among the pilgrims, most of whom are
coffee-devotees.
Turkish and Arabian coffee customs prevail in Algeria and Egypt,
modified to some extent by European contact. The Moorish cafés of Cairo,
Tunis, and Algiers have furnished inspiration and copy for writers,
artists, and travelers for several centuries. They change little with
the years. The _mazagran_--sweetened cold coffee to which water or ice
has been added--originated in Algeria. It probably took its name from
the fortress of the same name reserved to France by the treaty of the
Tafna in 1837. It is said that the French colonial troops were first
served with a drink made from coffee syrup and cold water on marches
near Mazagran, formerly spelled Masagran. Upon their return to the
French capital, they introduced the idea, with the added fillip of
service in tall glasses, in their favorite cafés, where it became known
as _café mazagran_. Variants are coffee syrup with seltzer, and with
hot water. "This fashion of serving coffee in glasses", says Jardin,
"has no _raison d'être_, and nothing can justify abandoning the cup for
coffee."
[Illustration: MOORISH COFFEE HOUSE IN ALGIERS]
In the principal streets and public squares of any town in Algeria it is
a common sight to find a group of Arabs squatting about a portable
stove, and a table on which cups are in readiness to receive the boiling
coffee. The thirsty Arab approaches the dealer, and for a modest sum he
gets his drink and goes his way; unless he prefers to go inside the
café, where he may get several drinks and linger over them, sitting on a
mat with his legs crossed and smoking his _chibouque_. Indeed, this is a
typical scene throughout the Near East, where sheds or coffee
tents--sketches of the more pretentious coffee houses--coffee shops, and
itinerant coffee-venders are to be met at almost every turn.
In an unpublished work, Baron Antoine Rousseau and Th. Roland de Bussy
have the following description of a typical Moorish café at Algiers:
We entered without ceremony into a narrow deep cave, decorated with
the name of the café. On the right and on the left, along its
length, were two benches covered with mats; notched cups, tongs, a
box of brown sugar, all placed near a small stove, completed the
furniture of the place. In the evening, the dim light from a lamp
hanging from the ceiling shows the indistinct figures of a double
row of natives listening to the nasal cadences of a band who play a
pizzicato accompaniment on small three-stringed violins.
Here, as in Europe, the cafés are the providential rendezvous for
idlers and gossips, exchanges for real-estate brokers and players
at cards.
Europeans recently arrived frequent them particularly. Some go only
to satisfy their curiosity; others out of an inborn scorn for the
customs of civilization. They go to sleep as Frenchmen, they awake
Mohammedans! Their love for "Turkish art" only leads them to haunt
the native shops and to affect oriental poses.
If we quit for a moment the interior of the city to follow between
two hedgerows of mastics or aloes, one of those capricious paths
which lead one, now up to the summit of a hill, now to the depths
of some ravine, very soon the tones of a rustic flute, the
modulations of the _Djou-wak_, will betray some cool and peaceful
retreat, some rustic café, easily recognized by its facade, pierced
with large openings. To my eyes, nothing equals the charm of these
little buildings scattered here and there along the edges of a
stream, sheltered under the thick foliage, and constantly enlivened
by the coming and going of the husbandmen of the neighborhood.
Certain old Moors from the neighboring districts, fleeing the
noises of the city, are the faithful habitués of these agreeable
retreats. Here they instal themselves at dawn, and know how to
enjoy every moment of their day with tales of their travels and
youthful adventures, and many a legend for which their imagination
takes all the responsibility.
[Illustration: COFFEE HOUSE IN CAIRO]
[Illustration: HULLING COFFEE IN ADEN, ARABIA]
Gérôme's painting of the "Coffee House at Cairo," which hangs in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gives one a good idea of the
atmosphere of the Egyptian café. The preparation and service is modified
Turkish-Arabian. The coffee is ground to a powder, boiled in an _ibrik_
with the addition of sugar, and served frothing in small cups.
Story-tellers, singers, and dancers furnish amusement as of yore. The
Oriental customs have not changed much in this respect. Trolley cars,
victorias, and taxis may have replaced the donkeys in the new sections
of the larger Egyptian cities; but in old Alexandria and Cairo, the
approach to the native coffee house is as dirty and as odorous as ever.
Coffee is always served in all business transactions. Nowadays, the
Egyptian women chew gum and the men smoke cigarettes, French department
stores offer bargain sales, and the hotels advertise tea dances; but the
Egyptian coffee drink is still the tiny cup of coffee grounds and sugar
that it was three hundred years ago, when sugar was first used to
sweeten coffee in Cairo.
[Illustration: COFFEE SERVICE AT A BARBER SHOP IN CAIRO]
In Portuguese East Africa, the natives prepare and drink coffee after
the approved African native fashion, but the white population follows
European customs. In the Union of South Africa, Dutch and English
customs prevail in making and serving the beverage.
_Manners and Customs in Asia_
"Arabia the Happy" deserves to be called "the Blest", if only for its
gift of coffee to the world. Here it was that the virtues of the drink
were first made known; here the plant first received intensive
cultivation. After centuries of habitual use of the beverage, we find
the Arabs, now as then, one of the strongest and noblest races of the
world, mentally superior to most of them, generally healthy, and growing
old so gracefully that the faculties of the mind seldom give way sooner
than those of the body. They are an ever living earnest of the
healthfulness of coffee.
The Arabs are proverbially hospitable; and the symbol of their
hospitality for a thousand years has been the great drink of
democracy--coffee. Their very houses are built around the cup of human
brotherhood. William Wallace,[366] writing on Arabian philosophy,
manners, and customs, says:
The principal feature of an Arab house is the _kahwah_ or coffee
room. It is a large apartment spread with mats, and sometimes
furnished with carpets and a few cushions. At one end is a small
furnace or fireplace for preparing coffee. In this room the men
congregate; here guests are received, and even lodged; women rarely
enter it, except at times when strangers are unlikely to be
present. Some of these apartments are very spacious and supported
by pillars; one wall is usually built transversely to the compass
direction of the _Ka'ba_ (sacred shrine of Mecca). It serves to
facilitate the performance of prayer by those who may happen to be
in the _kahwah_ at the appointed times.
Several rounds of coffee, without milk or sugar, but sometimes flavored
with cardamom seeds, are served to the guest at first welcome; and
coffee may be had at all hours between meals, or whenever the occasion
demands it. Always the beans are freshly roasted, pounded, and boiled.
The Arabs average twenty-five to thirty cups (findjans) a day.
Everywhere in Arabia there are to be found cafés where the beverage may
be bought.
[Illustration: SHIPS OF THE DESERT LADEN WITH COFFEE, ARABIA]
Those of the lower classes are thronged throughout the day. In front,
there is generally a porch or bench where one may sit. The rooms,
benches, and little chairs lack the cleanliness and elegance of the
one-time luxurious "_caffinets_" of cities like Damascus and
Constantinople, but the drink is the same. There is not in all Yemen a
single market town or hamlet where one does not find upon some simple
hut the legend, "Shed for drinking coffee".
The Arab drinks water before taking coffee, but never after it. "Once in
Syria", says a traveler, "I was recognized as a foreigner because I
asked for water just after I had taken my coffee. 'If you belonged
here', said the waiter, 'you would not spoil the taste of coffee in your
mouth by washing it away with water.'"
It is an adventure to partake of coffee prepared in the open, at a
roadside inn, or khan, in Arabia by an _araba_, or diligence driver. He
takes from his saddle-bag the ever-present coffee kit, containing his
supply of green beans, of which he roasts just sufficient on a little
perforated iron plate over an open fire, deftly taking off the beans,
one at a time, as they turn the right color. Then he pounds them in a
mortar, boils his water in the long, straight-handled open boiler, or
_ibrik_ (a sort of brass mug or _jezveh_), tosses in the coffee powder,
moving the vessel back and forth from the fire as it boils up to the
rim; and, after repeating this maneuver three times, pours the contents
foaming merrily into the little egg-like serving cups.
_Cafée sultan_, or _kisher_, the original decoction, made from dried and
toasted coffee hulls, is still being drunk in parts of Arabia and
Turkey.
Coffee in Arabia is part of the ritual of business, as in other Oriental
countries. Shop-keepers serve it to the customer before the argument
starts. Recently, a New York barber got some valuable publicity because
he regaled his customers with tea and music. It was "old stuff". The
Arabian and Turkish barber shops have been serving coffee, tobacco, and
sweetmeats to their customers for centuries.
[Illustration: AN ARABIAN COFFEE HOUSE]
For a faithful description of the ancient coffee ceremony of the Arabs,
which, with slight modification, is still observed in Arabian homes, we
turn to Palgrave. First he describes the dwelling and then the ceremony:
The K'hawah was a large oblong hall, about twenty feet in
height, fifty in length, and sixteen, or thereabouts, in breadth;
the walls were coloured in a rudely decorative manner with brown
and white wash, and sunk here and there into small triangular
recesses, destined to the reception of books, though of these
Ghafil at least had no over-abundance, lamps, and other such like
objects. The roof of timber, and flat; the floor was strewed with
fine clean sand, and garnished all round alongside of the walls
with long strips of carpet, upon which cushions, covered with faded
silk, were disposed at suitable intervals. In poorer houses felt
rugs usually take the place of carpets.
In one corner, namely, that furthest removed from the door, stood a
small fireplace, or, to speak more exactly, furnace, formed of a
large square block of granite, or some other hard stone, about
twenty inches each way; this is hollowed inwardly into a deep
funnel, open above, and communicating below with a small horizontal
tube or pipe-hole, through which the air passes, bellows-driven, to
the lighted charcoal piled up on a grating about half-way inside
the cone. In this manner the fuel is soon brought to a white heat,
and the water in the coffee-pot placed upon the funnel's mouth is
readily brought to boil. The system of coffee furnaces is universal
in Djowf and Djebel Shomer, but in Nejed itself, and indeed in
whatever other yet more distant regions of Arabia I visited to the
south and east, the furnace is replaced by an open fireplace
hollowed in the ground floor, with a raised stone border, and
dog-irons for the fuel, and so forth, like what may be yet seen in
Spain. This diversity of arrangement, so far as Arabia is
concerned, is due to the greater abundance of firewood in the
south, whereby the inhabitants are enabled to light up on a larger
scale; whereas throughout the Djowf and Djebel Shomer wood is very
scarce, and the only fuel at hand is bad charcoal, often brought
from a considerable distance, and carefully husbanded.
[Illustration: BREWING THE GUEST'S COFFEE IN A MOHAMMEDAN HOME]
This corner of the K'hawah is also the place of distinction
whence honour and coffee radiate by progressive degrees round the
apartment, and hereabouts accordingly sits the master of the house
himself, or the guests whom he more especially delighteth to
honour.
On the broad edge of the furnace or fireplace, as the case may be,
stands an ostentatious range of copper coffee-pots, varying in size
and form. Here in the Djowf their make resembles that in vogue at
Damascus; but in Nejed and the eastern districts they are of a
different and much more ornamental fashioning, very tall and
slender, with several ornamental circles and mouldings in elegant
relief, besides boasting long beak-shaped spouts and high steeples
for covers. The number of these utensils is often extravagantly
great. I have seen a dozen at a time in a row by one fireside,
though coffee-making requires, in fact, only three at most. Here in
the Djowf five or six are considered to be the thing; for the south
this number must be doubled; all this to indicate the riches and
munificence of their owner, by implying the frequency of his guests
and the large amount of coffee that he is in consequence obliged to
have made for them.
Behind this stove sits, at least in wealthy houses, a black slave,
whose name is generally a diminutive in token of familiarity or
affection; in the present case it was Soweylim, the diminutive of
Salim. His occupation is to make and pour out the coffee; where
there is no slave in the family, the master of the premises
himself, or perhaps one of his sons, performs that hospitable duty;
rather a tedious one, as we shall soon see.
We enter. On passing the threshold it is proper to say,
"_Bismillah_, _i.e._, in the name of God;" not to do so would be
looked on as a bad augury alike for him who enters and for those
within. The visitor next advances in silence, till on coming about
half-way across the room, he gives to all present, but looking
specially at the master of the house, the customary
"_Es-salamu'aleykum_," or "Peace be with you," literally, "on you."
All this while every one else in the room has kept his place,
motionless, and without saying a word. But on receiving the salaam
of etiquette, the master of the house rises, and if a strict
Wahhabee, or at any rate desirous of seeming such, replies with
the full-length traditionary formula. "_W' 'aleykumu-s-salamu,
w'rahmat' Ullahi w'barakátuh_," which is, as every one knows, "And
with (or, on) you be peace, and the mercy of God, and his
blessings." But should he happen to be of anti-Wahhabee
tendencies the odds are that he will say "_Marhaba_," or "_Ahlan w'
sahlan_," _i.e._, "welcome" or "worthy, and pleasurable," or the
like; for of such phrases there is an infinite, but elegant
variety.
All present follow the example thus given, by rising and saluting.
The guest then goes up to the master of the house, who has also
made a step or two forwards, and places his open hand in the palm
of his host's, but without grasping or shaking, which would hardly
pass for decorous, and at the same time each repeats once more his
greeting, followed by the set phrases of polite enquiry, "How are
you?" "How goes the world with you?" and so forth, all in a tone of
great interest, and to be gone over three or four times, till one
or other has the discretion to say "_El hamdu l'illah_," "Praise
be to God", or, in equivalent value, "all right," and this is a
signal for a seasonable diversion to the ceremonious interrogatory.
The guest then, after a little contest of courtesy, takes his seat
in the honoured post by the fireplace, after an apologetical
salutation to the black slave on the one side, and to his nearest
neighbour on the other. The best cushions and newest looking
carpets have been of course prepared for his honoured weight. Shoes
or sandals, for in truth the latter alone are used in Arabia, are
slipped off on the sand just before reaching the carpet, and there
they remain on the floor close by. But the riding stick or wand,
the inseparable companion of every true Arab, whether Bedouin or
townsman, rich or poor, gentle or simple, is to be retained in the
hand, and will serve for playing with during the pauses of
conversation, like the fan of our great-grandmothers in their days
of conquest.
Without delay Soweylim begins his preparations for coffee. These
open by about five minutes of blowing with the bellows and
arranging the charcoal till a sufficient heat has been produced.
Next he places the largest of the coffee-pots, a huge machine, and
about two-thirds full of clear water, close by the edge of the
glowing coal-pit, that its contents may become gradually warm while
other operations are in progress. He then takes a dirty knotted rag
out of a niche in the wall close by, and having untied it, empties
out of it three or four handfuls of unroasted coffee, the which he
places on a little trencher of platted grass, and picks carefully
out any blackened grains, or other non-homologous substances,
commonly to be found intermixed with the berries when purchased in
gross; then, after much cleansing and shaking, he pours the grain
so cleansed into a large open iron ladle, and places it over the
mouth of the funnel, at the same time blowing the bellows and
stirring the grains gently round and round till they crackle,
redden, and smoke a little, but carefully withdrawing them from the
heat long before they turn black or charred, after the erroneous
fashion of Turkey and Europe; after which he puts them to cool a
moment on the grass platter.
He then sets the warm water in the large coffee-pot over the fire
aperture, that it may be ready boiling at the right moment, and
draws in close between his own trouserless legs a large stone
mortar, with a narrow pit in the middle, just enough to admit the
large stone pestle of a foot long and an inch and a half thick,
which he now takes in hand. Next, pouring the half-roasted berries
into the mortar, he proceeds to pound them, striking right into the
narrow hollow with wonderful dexterity, nor ever missing his blow
till the beans are smashed, but not reduced into powder. He then
scoops them out, now reduced to a sort of coarse reddish grit, very
unlike the fine charcoal dust which passes in some countries for
coffee, and out of which every particle of real aroma has long
since been burnt or ground.
After all these operations, each performed with as intense a
seriousness and deliberate nicety as if the welfare of the entire
Djowf depended on it, he takes a smaller coffee-pot in hand, fills
it more than half with hot water from the larger vessel, and then
shaking the pounded coffee into it, sets it on the fire to boil,
occasionally stirring it with a small stick as the water rises to
check the ebullition and prevent overflowing. Nor is the boiling
stage to be long or vehement: on the contrary, it is and should be
as light as possible. In the interim he takes out of another
rag-knot a few aromatic seeds called heyl, an Indian product, but
of whose scientific name I regret to be wholly ignorant, or a
little saffron, and after slightly pounding these ingredients,
throws them into the simmering coffee to improve its flavour, for
such an additional spicing is held indispensable in Arabia though
often omitted elsewhere in the East. Sugar would be a totally
unheard of profanation. Last of all, he strains off the liquor
through some fibres of the inner palm-bark placed for that purpose
in the jug-spout, and gets ready the tray of delicate
parti-coloured grass, and the small coffee cups ready for pouring
out. All these preliminaries have taken up a good half-hour.
Meantime we have become engaged in active conversation with our
host and his friends. But our Sherarat guide, Suleyman, like a true
Bedouin, feels too awkward when among townsfolk to venture on the
upper places, though repeatedly invited, and accordingly has
squatted down on the sand near the entrance. Many of Ghafil's
relations are present; their silver-decorated swords proclaim the
importance of the family. Others, too, have come to receive us, for
our arrival, announced beforehand by those we had met at the
entrance pass, is a sort of event in the town; the dress of some
betokens poverty, others are better clad, but all have a very
polite and decorous manner. Many a question is asked about our
native land and town, that is to say, Syria and Damascus,
conformably to the disguise already adopted, and which it was
highly important to keep well up; then follow enquiries regarding
our journey, our business, what we have brought with us, about our
medicines, our goods and wares, etc., etc. From the very first it
is easy for us to perceive that patients and purchasers are likely
to abound. Very few travelling merchants, if any, visit the Djowf
at this time of year, for one must be mad, or next door to it, to
rush into the vast desert around during the heats of June and July;
I for one have certainly no intention of doing it again. Hence we
had small danger of competitors, and found the market almost at our
absolute disposal.
But before a quarter of an hour has passed, and while blacky is
still roasting or pounding his coffee, a tall thin lad, Ghafil's
eldest son, appears, charged with a large circular dish,
grass-platted like the rest, and throws it with a graceful jerk on
the sandy floor close before us. He then produces a large wooden
bowl full of dates, bearing in the midst of the heap a cup full of
melted butter; all this he places on the circular mat, and says,
"_Semmoo_," literally, "pronounce the Name", of God, understood;
this means "set to work at it." Hereon the master of the house
quits his place by the fireside and seats himself on the sand
opposite to us; we draw nearer to the dish, and four or five
others, after some respectful coyness, join the circle. Every one
then picks out a date or two from the juicy half-amalgamated mass,
dips them into the butter, and thus goes on eating till he has had
enough, when he rises and washes his hands.
By this time the coffee is ready, and Soweylim begins his round,
the coffee-pot in one hand; the tray and cups on the other. The
first pouring out he must in etiquette drink himself, by way of a
practical assurance that there is no "death in the pot;" the guests
are next served, beginning with those next the honourable fireside;
the master of the house receives his cup last of all. To refuse
would be a positive and unpardonable insult; but one has not much
to swallow at a time, for the coffee-cups, or finjans, are about
the size of a large egg-shell at most, and are never more than
half-filled. This is considered essential to good breeding, and a
brimmer would here imply exactly the reverse of what it does in
Europe; why it should be so I hardly know, unless perhaps the
rareness of cup-stands or "zarfs" (see Lane's "Modern Egyptians")
in Arabia, though these implements are universal in Egypt and
Syria, might render an over-full cup inconveniently hot for the
fingers that must grasp it without medium. Be that as it may, "fill
the cup for your enemy" is an adage common to all, Bedouins or
townsmen, throughout the Peninsula. The beverage itself is
singularly aromatic and refreshing, a real tonic, and very
different from the black mud sucked by the Levantine, or the watery
roast-bean preparations of France. When the slave or freeman,
according to circumstances, presents you with a cup, he never fails
to accompany it with a "_Semm'_," "say the name of God," nor must
you take it without answering "_Bismillah_."
When all have been thus served, a second round is poured out, but
in inverse order, for the host this time drinks first, and the
guests last. On special occasions, a first reception, for instance,
the ruddy liquor is a third time handed round; nay, a fourth cup is
sometimes added. But all these put together do not come up to
one-fourth of what a European imbibes in a single draught at
breakfast.
[Illustration: NATIVE CAFÉ, HARAR, ABYSSINIA]
[Illustration: EARLY MANNER OF SERVING COFFEE, TEA AND CHOCOLATE
From a drawing in Dufour's _Traités Nouveaux et Curieux du Café, du The
et du Chocolat_]
For a more recent pen picture of coffee manners and customs in Arabia,
we turn to Charles M. Daughty's "_Travels in Arabia Deserta_"[367]:
Hirfa ever demanded of her husband towards which part should "the
house" be built. "Dress the face". Zeyd would answer, "to this
part", showing her with his hands the south, for if his booth's
face be all day turned to the hot sun there will come in fewer
young loitering and parasitical fellows that would be his
coffee-drinkers. Since the _sheukh_, or heads, alone receive their
tribes' _surra_, it is not much that they should be to the arms [of
his] coffee-hosts. I have seen Zeyd avoid [them] as he saw them
approach, or even rise ungraciously upon such men's presenting
themselves (the half of every booth, namely the men's side, is at
all times open, and any enter there that will, in the free
desert), and they murmuring he tells them, _wellah_, his affairs do
call him forth, adieu; he must away to the _mejlis_; go they and
seek the coffee elsewhere. But were there any _sheykh_ with them, a
coffee lord, Zeyd could not honestly choose but abide and serve
them with coffee; and if he be absent himself, yet any _sheykhly_
man coming to a _sheykh's_ tent, coffee must be made for him,
except he gently protest "_billah_, he would not drink." Hirfa, a
_sheykh's_ daughter and his nigh kinswoman, was a faithful mate to
Zeyd in all his sparing policy.
Our _menzil_ now standing, the men step over to Zeyd's coffee-fire,
if the _sheykh_ be not gone forth to the _mejlis_ to drink his
mid-day cup there. A few gathered sticks are flung down beside the
hearth; with flint and steel one stoops and strikes fire in tinder,
he blows and cherishes those seeds of the cheerful flame in some
dry camel-dung, sets the burning shred under dry straws, and
powders over more dry camel-dung. As the fire kindles, the _sheykh_
reaches for his _dellàl_, coffee pots, which are carried in the
_fatya_, coffee-gear basket; this people of a nomad life bestow
each thing of theirs in a proper _beyt_; it would otherwise be lost
in their daily removings. One rises to go to fill up the pots at
the water-skins, or a bowl of water is handed over the curtain from
the woman's side; the pot at the fire, Hirfa reaches over her
little palm-ful of green coffee berries.... These are roasted and
brayed; as all is boiling he sets out his little cups, _fenjeyl_
(for fenjeyn). When, with a pleasant gravity, he has unbuckled his
_gutia_ or cup-box, we see the nomad has not above three or four
fenjeyns, wrapt in a rusty clout, with which he scours them busily,
as if this should make his cups clean. The roasted beans are
pounded amongst Arabs with a magnanimous rattle--and (as all their
labor) rhythmical--in brass of the town, or an old wooden mortar,
gaily studded with nails, the work of some nomad smith. The water
bubbling in the small _dellàl_, he casts in his fine coffee powder,
_el-bunn_, and withdraws the pot to simmer a moment. From a knot in
his kerchief he takes then a head of cloves, a piece of cinnamon or
other spice, _bahar_, and braying these he casts their dust in
after. Soon he pours out some hot drops to essay his coffee; if the
taste be to his liking, making dexterously a nest of all the cups
in his hand, with pleasant clattering, he is ready to pour out for
all the company, and begins upon his right hand; and first, if such
be present, to any considerable _sheykh_ and principal persons. The
_fenjeyn kahwah_ is but four sips; to fill it up to a guest, as in
the northern towns, were among Bedouins an injury, and of such
bitter meaning, "This drink thou and depart."
[Illustration: NUBIAN SLAVE GIRL WITH COFFEE SERVICE, PERSIA]
Then is often seen a contention in courtesy amongst them,
especially in any greater assemblies, who shall drink first. Some
man that receives the _fenjeyn_ in his turn will not drink yet--he
proffers it to one sitting in order under him, as to the more
honourable; but the other putting off with his hand will answer
_ebbeden_, "Nay, it shall never be, by Ullah! but do thou drink."
Thus licensed, the humble man is despatched in three sips, and
hands up his empty _fenjeyn_. But if he have much insisted, by this
he opens his willingness to be reconciled with one not his friend.
That neighbor, seeing the company of coffee-drinkers watching him,
may with an honest grace receive the cup, and let it seem not
willingly; but an hard man will sometimes rebut the other's gentle
proffer.
Some may have taken lower seats than becoming their _sheykhly_
blood, of which the nomads are jealous; entering untimely, they sat
down out of order, sooner than trouble all the company. A _sheykh_,
coming late and any business going forward, will often sit far out
in the assembly; and show himself a popular person in this kind of
honourable humility. The more inward in the booth is the higher
place; where also is, with the _sheykhs_, the seat of a stranger.
To sit in the loose circuit without and before the tent, is for the
common sort. A tribesman arriving presents himself at that part or
a little lower, where in the eyes of all men his pretension will be
well allowed; and in such observances of good nurture, is a nomad
man's honour among his tribesmen. And this is nigh all that serves
the nomad for a conscience, namely, that which men will hold of
him. A poor person, approaching from behind, stands obscurely,
wrapped in his tattered mantle, with grave ceremonial, until those
sitting indolently before him in the sand shall vouchsafe to take
notice of him; then they rise unwillingly, and giving back enlarge
the coffee-circle to receive him. But if there arrive a _sheykh_, a
coffee-host, a richard amongst them of a few cattle, all the
coxcomb companions within will hail him with their pleasant
adulation _taad henneyi_, "Step thou up hither."
The astute Fukara _sheukh_ surpass all men in their coffee-drinking
courtesy, and Zeyd himself was more than any large of this
gentlemen-like imposture: he was full of swaggering complacence and
compliments to an humbler person. With what suavity could he
encourage, and gently too compel a man, and rising himself yield
him parcel of another man's room! In such fashions Zeyd showed
himself a bountiful great man, who indeed was the greatest niggard.
The cups are drunk twice about, each one sipping after other's lips
without misliking; to the great coffee _sheykhs_ the cup may be
filled more times, but this is an adulation of the coffee-server.
There are some of the Fukara _sheukh_ so delicate Sybarites that of
those three bitter sips, to draw out all their joyance, twisting,
turning, and tossing again the cup, they could make ten. The
coffee-service ended, the grounds are poured out from the small
into the great store-pot that is reserved full of warm water; with
the bitter lye the nomads will make their next bever, and think
they spare coffee.
Here is an Arabian recipe[368] for making coffee as given by Kadhi
Hodhat, the best informed man of his time:
Tadj-Eddin-Aid-Almaknab-ben-Yacoub-Mekki Molki, chief of all the
cantons of Hedjaz, (May God have mercy on him!) I learned it when
once in his company at the time of the Holy Feasts.... He informed
me that nothing is more beneficial than to drink cold water before
coffee, because it lessens the dryness of the coffee and thus taken
it does not cause insomnia to the same degree. The poet did not
forget to explain this manner of taking coffee:
As with art 'tis prepared, one should drink it with art.
The mere commonplace drinks one absorbs with free heart;
But this--once with care from the bright flame removed,
And the lime set aside that its value has proved--
Take it first in deep draughts, meditative and slow,
Quit it now, now resume, thus imbibe with gusto;
While charming the palate it burns yet enchants,
In the hour of its triumph the virtue it grants
Penetrates every tissue; its powers condense.
Circulate cheering warmths, bring new life to each sense.
From the cauldron profound spiced aromas unseen
Mount to tease and delight your olfactories keen,
The while you inhale with felicity fraught,
The enchanting perfume that a zephyr has brought.
[Illustration: PERSIAN COFFEE SERVICE, 1737]
Gone are the "luxurious and magnificent" coffee houses of Constantinople
(if they ever existed--at least as we understand luxury and
magnificence) which first brought the beverage world-wide fame; such
_caffinets_ as the one pictured by Thomas Allom and described by the
Rev. Robert Walsh, in _Constantinople, Illustrated_:
The caffinet, or coffee-house, is something more splendid, and the
Turk expends all his notions of finery and elegance on this, his
favorite place of indulgence. The edifice is generally decorated in
a very gorgeous manner, supported on pillars, and open in front. It
is surrounded on the inside by a raised platform, covered with mats
or cushions, on which the Turks sit cross-legged. On one side are
musicians, generally Greeks, with mandolins and tambourines,
accompanying singers, whose melody consists in vociferation; and
the loud and obstreperous concert forms a strong contrast to the
stillness and taciturnity of Turkish meetings. On the opposite side
are men, generally of a respectable class, some of whom are found
here every day, and all day long, dozing under the double influence
of coffee and tobacco. The coffee is served in very small cups, not
larger than egg-cups, grounds and all, without cream or sugar, and
so black, thick, and bitter that it has been aptly compared to
"stewed soot". Besides the ordinary chibouk for tobacco, there is
another implement, called narghillai, used for smoking in a
caffinet, of a more elaborate construction. It consists of a glass
vase, filled with water, and often scented with distilled rose or
other flowers. This is surmounted with a silver or brazen head,
from which issues a long flexible tube; a pipe-bowl is placed on
the top, and so constructed that the smoke is drawn, and comes
bubbling up through the water, cool and fragrant to the mouth. A
peculiar kind of tobacco, grown at Shiraz in Persia, and resembling
small pieces of cut leather, is used with this instrument.
[Illustration: IN A TURKISH COFFEE HOUSE]
Certainly there never was any such thing as a coffee-house architecture.
It may be that up to the time of Abdul Hamid, when money was more
plentiful than it has been for the past fifty years, there were coffee
houses more comfortably appointed than now exist.
The coffee house in a modernized form is, however, quite as numerous in
Turkey as in the days of Amurath III and the notorious Kuprili.
H.G. Dwight[369] writing on the present day Turkish coffee house, says:
[Illustration: ROASTING COFFEE BEFORE A CAFÉ, TURKEY]
There are thoroughfares in any Turkish city that carry on almost no
other form of traffic. There is no quarter so miserable or so
remote as to be without one or two. They are the clubs of the
poorer classes. Men of a street, a trade, a province, or a
nationality--for a Turkish coffee-house may also be Albanian,
Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Kurd, almost anything you please--meet
regularly when their work is done, at coffee-houses kept by their
own people. So much are the humbler coffee-houses frequented by a
fixed clientèle that a student of types or dialects may realize for
himself how truly they used to be called Schools of Knowledge.
The arrangement of a Turkish coffee-house is of the simplest. The
essential is that the place should provide the beverage for which
it exists and room for enjoying the same. A sketch of a coffee-shop
may often be seen on the street, in a scrap of shade or sunshine
according to the season, where a stool or two invite the passer-by
to a moment of contemplation. Larger establishments, though they
are rarely very large, are most often installed in a room longer
than it is wide, having as many windows as possible at the street
end and what we would call the bar at the other. It is a bar that
always makes me regret I do not etch, with its pleasing curves, its
high lights of brass and porcelain striking out of deep shadow, and
its usually picturesque _kahvehji_.
You do not stand at it. You sit on one of the benches running down
the sides of the room. They are more or less comfortably cushioned,
though sometimes higher and broader than a foreigner finds to his
taste. In that case you slip off your shoes, if you would do as the
Romans do, and tuck your feet up under you. A table stands in front
of you to hold your coffee--and often in summer an aromatic pot of
basil to keep the flies away. Chairs or stools are scattered about.
Decorative Arabic texts, sometimes wonderful prints, adorn the
walls. There may even be hanging rugs and china to entertain your
eyes. And there you are.
The habit of the coffee-house is one that requires a certain
leisure. You must not bolt coffee as you bolt the fire-waters of
the West, without ceremony, in retreats withdrawn from the public
eye. Being a less violent and a less shameful passion, I suppose,
it is indulged in with more of the humanities. The etiquette of the
coffee-house, of those coffee-houses which have not been too much
infected by Europe, is one of their most characteristic features.
Something like it prevails in Italy, where you tip your hat on
entering and leaving a _caffè_. In Turkey, however, I have seen a
new-comer salute one after another each person in a crowded
coffee-room, once on entering the door and again after taking his
seat, and be so saluted in return--either by putting the right hand
to the heart and uttering the greeting _Merhabah_, or by making the
_temennah_, that triple sweep of the hand which is the most
graceful of salutes. I have also seen an entire company rise upon
the entrance of an old man, and yield him the corner of honor.
Such courtesies take time. Then you must wait for your coffee to be
made. To this end coffee, roasted fresh as required by turning in
an iron cylinder over a fire of sticks and ground to the fineness
of powder in a brass mill, is put into a small uncovered brass pot
with a long handle. There it is boiled to a froth three times on a
charcoal brazier, with or without sugar as you prefer. But to
desecrate it by the admixture of milk is an unheard of sacrilege.
Some _kahvehjis_ replace the pot in the embers with a smart rap in
order to settle the grounds. You in the meanwhile smoke. That also
takes time, particularly if you "drink" a _narguileh_, as the Turks
say. This is familiar enough in the West to require no great
description. It is a big carafe with a metal top for holding
tobacco and a long coil of leather tube for inhaling the
water-cooled fumes thereof. The effect is wonderfully soothing and
innocent at first, though wonderfully deadly in the end to the
novice. The tobacco used is not the ordinary weed, but a much
coarser and stronger one called _tunbeki_, which comes from Persia.
The same sort of tobacco used to be smoked a great deal in shallow
red earthenware pipes with long mouthpieces. They are now chiefly
seen in antiquity shops.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A TURKISH CAFFINET, EARLY NINETEENTH
CENTURY--AFTER ALLAN]
When your coffee is ready it is poured into an after-dinner
coffee-cup or into a miniature bowl, and brought to you on a tray
with a glass of water. A foreigner can almost always be spotted by
the manner in which he finally partakes of these refreshments. A
Turk sips his water first, partly to prepare the way for the
coffee, but also because he is a connoisseur of the former liquid
as other men are of stronger ones. And he lifts his coffee-cup by
the saucer, whether it possess a handle or no, managing the two
together in a dexterous way of his own. The current price for all
this, not including the water-pipe, is ten paras--a trifle over a
cent--for which the _kahvehji_ will cry you "Blessing". More
pretentious establishments charge twenty paras, while a giddy few
rise to a piaster--not quite five cents--or a piaster and a half.
That, however, begins to look like extortion. And mark that you do
not tip the waiter. I have often been surprised to be charged no
more than the tariff, although I gave a larger piece to be changed
and it was perfectly evident that I was a foreigner. That is an
experience which rarely befalls a traveller among his own
coreligionaries. It has even happened to me, which is rarer still,
to be charged nothing at all, nay, to be steadfastly refused when I
persisted in attempting to pay, simply because I was a foreigner,
and therefore a guest.
There is no reason, however, why you should go away when you have
had your coffee--or your glass of tea--and your smoke. On the
contrary, there are reasons why you should stay, particularly if
you happen into the coffee-house not too long after sunset. Then
coffee-houses of the most local color are at their best. Earlier in
the day their clients are likely to be at work. Later they will
have disappeared altogether. For Constantinople has not quite
forgotten the habits of the tent. Stamboul, except during the holy
month of Ramazan, is a deserted city at night. But just after dark
it is full of a life which an outsider is often content simply to
watch through the lighted windows of coffee-rooms. These are also
barber-shops, where men have shaved not only their chins, but
different parts of their heads according to their "countries". In
them likewise checkers, the Persian backgammon, and various games
of long narrow cards are played. They say that Bridge came from
Constantinople. Indeed, I believe a club of Pera claims the honor
of having communicated that passion to the Western World. But I
must confess that I have yet to see an open hand in a coffee-house
of the people.
[Illustration: COFFEE MAKING IN TURKEY]
One of the pleasantest forms of amusement to be obtained in
coffee-houses is unfortunately getting to be one of the rarest. It
is that afforded by itinerant story-tellers, who still carry on in
the East the tradition of the troubadours. The stories they tell
are more or less on the order of the Arabian Nights, though perhaps
even less suitable for mixed companies--which for the rest are
never found in coffee-shops. These men are sometimes wonderfully
clever at character monologue or dialogue. They collect their pay
at a crucial moment of the action, refusing to continue until the
audience has testified to the sincerity of its interest by some
token more substantial.