How America’s Coffee Got Bad… and Then Got Great

Beloved by Americans, coffee had to go through a lot of stages before becoming the industry it is today. Despite coffee beans growing largely outside the U.S., coffee has been embraced as America’s unofficial national beverage since as far back as the Civil War, when it was a staple of soldiers’ rations. While different regions around the world have had their own ways of making coffee palatable (mostly with spices and sugar) for centuries, it wasn’t until the mid-1800s that producers began roasting beans, which made coffee both an effective stimulant for the exhausted troops and a drink that actually tasted good, a quality largely missing from the American coffee scene before that point in history… read more >