To get a coffee bean, the seeds need to undergo a series of long and carefully monitored processes, not to mention having to be handpicked one seed at a time. Once the beans are ready though, they are used to create some of the most popular products in our society, not to mention most every other society around the world.

The basic drink we call coffee:

Calling something coffee is a lot like calling something wine. It’s a general label applied to a whole whack of different drinks. Basically though, coffee is something that’s created by filtering hot water through ground up coffee beans. Drunk plain, also known as black, or with milk, cream or sugar, it’s amongst the most widely consumed drinks in the world.

Like wine, which differs based on the types of grapes used and the region in which they’re from, coffee is affected by the type of bean used to make it. The flavor of a coffee bean differs greatly depending on what kind of plant it’s from and where in the world it was grown, not to mention the ripeness of the bean when it was picked. The flavor of a cup of coffee is also greatly dependant on how the beans were roasted, and how recently that took place. Beans may be roasted anywhere from twelve to thirty minutes, resulting in what is known as a light, medium or full roast.

A little fancier and you have espresso:

Espresso is a very popular version of coffee, and tends to be consumed more in Europe than in other parts of the world. Like regular coffee, it is made from roasted coffee beans and, in fact, the same ground beans can be used for either beverage. Also like regular coffee, the type and quality of espresso depends on the type of beans and roast that were used.

What makes espresso different is the way the drink is extracted from the beans. Hot water, but not boiling water as is the case with coffee, is pressurized and forced through ground coffee. The result is a much more concentrated form of coffee. In espresso there is as much as fifteen times the amount of coffee in a given amount of water. Because of the concentration, espresso is a highly caffeinated form of coffee and is served in shots.

For those who don’t like strong, is Americano:

Americano is basically espresso, but weaker. The drink is believed to have been born because American soldiers in WWII found the European way of drinking coffee too strong. As a result, their espresso was cut with hot water.

And then there’s cappuccino and cafe lattés:

Again, these are variants on espresso. These are two of several types of drinks formed by adding milk in different variants, creating unique coffee experiences. A cappuccino is espresso mixed with milk froth, and a latte is one that’s mixed with steamed milk. All of these drinks, along with others, are born out of the coffee bean. The best part of all of it is getting to discover your favorite.

The coffee plant:

The coffee you drink comes from what are commonly referred to as beans and the beans come from plants. There is more than one type of plant, though. In fact, coffee is actually a word that refers to an entire genus of plants that are made up of nearly a hundred individual plant species. Small trees or shrubs, originally native to tropical parts of Asia and Africa, some of the plants are the source of the seeds used to make the drink.

Also spelled Coffea, the species of this genus that produces the best quality coffee beans is called Coffea arabica. The quality that coffee is most famous for, caffeine, is actually used as these plants’ defense against wild animals. Caffeine is a natural toxin that would harm feeding animals.

The word coffee:

The word coffee was popularized in the English language at some point in the seventeenth century. There are, however, traces of the word as early as the century prior. It came to the English language through one language that had already taken it from another.

As far back as can be traced, the word originates from one of two Arabic terms. One of them is qahwat al-bunn, which means wine of the bean, and the other is a geographic area known as Kaffa. At some point this gave origin to the Turkish word kahve, which was later translated into English as the word we use today.

Coffee as a drink:

No one really knows how Coffea plants wound up being turned into a drink. There are many legends and stories that try to explain it but the truth will likely never be known. What is knows is that the drink has existed since at least the ninth century of the Common Era, but is sometimes dated back to as early as the fifth century.

The drink is made through what is now a long and heavily specialized process of cultivation, harvesting, processing and preparation. In almost all cases, seeds are actually handpicked and then put through a few normally low tech treatments. Huge industrial machines then roast the seeds until they resemble the beans most of us are familiar with. The actual drink is created by filtering boiling water through the ground beans. Many different steps can be taken, or altered, to create a wide variety of similar beverages.

Types of drinks:

Coffee itself can take several different forms. One popular variant is espresso, a highly concentrated version of coffee that is served as a shot. Cappuccino is another famous form of the drink, which is basically one part espresso and one part milk. Beyond that are countless commercialized forms of the drink designed to make it more popular amongst consumers. These include things ranging from iced coffee to instant coffee. Of course, everyone has their favorite.