Caffeine Trivia 06.06.14

Cowboy Coffee – Early on, coffee was prepared in America in a similar manner to how it was prepared in Ethiopia. Green beans were roasted over a stove, ground in a mortar and pestle and then boiled on the stove until done. This didn’t have the same ceremony that Ethiopia had – it was just the common and simple method of brewing coffee. This method is called “Cowboy Coffee” today – used the longest by real cowboys on cattle drives and frontier camps of the early West, who had only a campfire, a hand grinder and a large pot to make coffee. Typical camp supplies were bags of pre-roasted coffee and a hand powered grinder. One coffee company, ‘Arbuckle’s Coffee’ put a peppermint stick in each bag of coffee. Camp cooks rarely had to grind the coffee, as the cowboys would volunteer to grind the coffee — as long as they got to keep the peppermint stick.