Image Source: POPSUGAR Photography / Taylor Saputo
You drink it all the time, but how much do you really know about coffee [1]? These 15 fun facts (and hacks [2]!) might surprise you.
- It's the second most valuable commodity [3] in the world, behind oil.
- You can chill coffee beans or grounds [4] for a more flavorful brew at home.
- Coffee used to be classified as a "possible carcinogen leading to bladder cancer [5]," but the World Health Organization's research has concluded that is (thankfully) not the case.
- You can actually die from too much coffee. But don't worry, you'd have to drink more than 100 cups to consume the lethal dose of caffeine [6].
- A grande coffee from Starbucks has the four times the amount of caffeine as a Red Bull [7].
- There are essentially two types of coffee beans: Arabica and Robusta [8]. Technically, there are dozens of coffee-bean varieties, but these are the two that are cultivated for drinking. Robusta beans have twice the amount of caffeine as Arabica.
- Aerating your coffee [9] is the easiest way to transform it from flat to flavorful and slightly frothy.
- Coffee beans come from a plant. Basically, coffee is a cherry-like fruit [10] that has a coffee bean in the center — check it out!
Image Source: Flickr user brandonthemandon [11]
- There's one Starbucks coffee you can only get at the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Seattle [12] and nowhere else. And yes it's worth a trip.
- There's a coffee shop that sells coffee in a waffle cone [13] (seriously).
- Rinsing the paper filter with hot water before brewing will make your pour-over coffee taste better [14].
- Seattle has the most coffee shops out of any US state [15]; it has roughly one shop per 2,200 people.
- Finland is the world's most caffeinated country [16].
- Americans drink 400 million cups of coffee a year [17].
- There are lots of health benefits of coffee [18], including improved memory.