Pu’er Coffee

 Today, vacuum packaging is a perfectly ordinary way to keep food fresh. But if we turn the clock back to the early 19th century, preserving coffee over long-distance transport was a serious challenge. Once coffee beans are roasted, they oxidize easily and lose their flavor quickly. If someone could solve that problem, it would be nothing short of a technological revolution. That’s exactly what we’re exploring today: who invented vacuum packaging for coffee, and how this invention went on to carry a coffee brand through more than a century of history. Before we get to the invention itself, we need to understand a coffee brand with over a hundred years of heritage—Hills Bros. Coffee, from the United States. As early as 1873, Old Austin Hills, a shipyard worker, traveled from New England to California with his two sons, Austin Herbert and Reuben Wilmarth. After settling down, the younger Austin and R.W. (as Reuben was usually called) began selling coffee, tea, and dairy products from...

 Coffee has long been one of the most important threads running through European history. But what many people don’t realize is that coffee also has its own “dark history.” When coffee first arrived in Europe in the late 16th century, it immediately raised alarm within the Christian church. This black beverage from the “infidel” Muslim world was once condemned as “the devil’s drink.” By the 18th century, this suspicion was still very much alive in Sweden. King Gustav III firmly believed that coffee was harmful to the human body and regarded it as a kind of poison. In order to prove coffee’s dangers, he organized what would later become one of the most infamous human experiments in coffee history. Although the scientific validity of this experiment is highly questionable by modern standards, it nevertheless revealed something remarkable: as early as the 18th century, humans had already discovered that coffee was, in fact, non-toxic. To understand this story, we first need some histo...

  “Once, I was their moonlight — pure and rare. Now, the moon still shines, but no one looks up anymore.” 1. A Name Written in Gold My name is Geisha . Most people think I’m a coffee variety . But the truth is far more complicated — and far more human. In the chronicles of Specialty Coffee , my name is written in bold, shimmering ink across the opening pages. They call me legend , queen , benchmark — a measure of whether a cup of coffee is worthy of the world’s finest tables. At auctions, I’ve set prices that made headlines. My flavor has been called divine : a burst of jasmine, the sweetness of citrus and bergamot, and a tea-like body as smooth as velvet. And yet, tonight, as I gaze up at the stars over a quiet estate in Baoshan, Yunnan, I feel a strange sense of confusion. Is this the same sky that watched over the village of Gesha, Ethiopia, seventy years ago? My name is the same — but I, somehow, am not. 2. The Forest and the Mistake My story began with a beautif...

  Coffee is originally from Ethiopia, with its use documented only in the 15th century. It is said that Sufi monks in Yemen were the first to drink coffee, which helped them stay awake during their night prayers.   In the early 15th century, coffee spread to Mecca and subsequently throughout the Middle East. Travelers later brought coffee to Europe. In the early 17th century, some Catholics suspected coffee was the devil's drink and urged Pope Clement VIII to ban it. However, the Pope tasted the drink himself and, to their surprise, gave it his blessing. Coffee then gradually became popular in Europe.   In his book, *The Travels of Four Englishmen and a Preacher into Africa, Asia, Troy, Bythinia, Thracia, and to the Blacke Sea* (1612), William Biddulph described his first impression of tasting coffee in Turkey: "The most common drink is one called Coffa, a black drink made from a paste called Coaua, which resembles peas. The preparation involves grinding the beans and boi...