15 Things You Probably Never Knew About Coffee

By Erin Cullum
POPSUGAR Photography | Taylor Saputo
POPSUGAR Photography | Taylor Saputo

You drink it all the time, but how much do you really know about coffee? These 15 fun facts (and hacks!) might surprise you.

  1. It's the second most valuable commodity in the world, behind oil.
  2. You can chill coffee beans or grounds for a more flavorful brew at home.
  3. Coffee used to be classified as a "possible carcinogen leading to bladder cancer," but the World Health Organization's research has concluded that is (thankfully) not the case.
  4. 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.
  5. A grande coffee from Starbucks has the four times the amount of caffeine as a Red Bull.
  6. There are essentially two types of coffee beans: Arabica and Robusta. 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.
  7. Aerating your coffee is the easiest way to transform it from flat to flavorful and slightly frothy.
  8. Coffee beans come from a plant. Basically, coffee is a cherry-like fruit that has a coffee bean in the center — check it out!
Flickr user brandonthemandon
  1. There's one Starbucks coffee you can only get at the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Seattle and nowhere else. And yes it's worth a trip.
  2. There's a coffee shop that sells coffee in a waffle cone (seriously).
  3. Rinsing the paper filter with hot water before brewing will make your pour-over coffee taste better.
  4. Seattle has the most coffee shops out of any US state; it has roughly one shop per 2,200 people.
  5. Finland is the world's most caffeinated country.
  6. Americans drink 400 million cups of coffee a year.
  7. There are lots of health benefits of coffee, including improved memory.