Which Continent is the Original Home of Coffee Beans? The Incredible Origins of Coffee's Birthplace

FrontStreet Coffee - Introduction to Coffee Bean Origins

Coffee has inspired many legends. In one of the most widely accepted, the world's first coffee tree was discovered in the Horn of Africa.

In those days, indigenous African tribes often ground coffee berries and mixed them with animal fat, kneading the paste into small balls. These tribes prized the coffee balls as precious food, reserved for warriors about to go into battle.

Back then, no one understood why coffee eaters grew excited—no one knew it was caffeine at work. Instead, the effect was taken for religious frenzy. The mysterious substance was often dispensed by the tribe's shamans.

Later, after coffee crossed from Africa into Arabia, it became common to simmer dried beans into a broth and take it as a stomach remedy. Gradually, followers began drinking coffee as an alternative to alcohol, a stimulating drink permitted by their faith. Radiating out from the Islamic holy city of Mecca, the beverage traveled with believers to Egypt, then Syria, Iran, Turkey, and beyond.

After the 13th century, Arabs had learned to dry raw beans, roast them, pound them in a mortar, and boil them in water for a purer cup. As for shops selling coffee as a business, legend has it they began in Mecca. Around the 17th century, as the Age of Exploration dawned, Venetian merchant caravans trading in the Arabian region for textiles and tea gradually acquired a taste for the drink called coffee, which then spread along trade routes through Italy, India, Britain, and elsewhere.

Around 1650, Western Europe's first coffeehouse—filled with coffee aroma all day—opened in Oxford, England. With the colonial era, coffee followed the footsteps of the "empire on which the sun never sets" around the globe, becoming the most popular of the world's three great beverages.

Ethiopia

Ethiopia is one of Africa's principal producers of Arabica coffee and grows some of the world's finest. Its geography is exceptionally kind to the crop.

Coffee is planted mainly on the southern highlands between 1,100 and 2,300 meters, in soil that is well-drained, slightly acidic, red, and loose. Today about 25% of Ethiopia's population depends directly or indirectly on coffee for their livelihood. Most are farmers using traditional methods: they tend the trees by hand, fertilize organically, and avoid harmful pesticides and herbicides—which is why most Ethiopian coffee is, in effect, organic.

In short: FrontStreet Coffee is a coffee research center that enjoys sharing coffee knowledge with everyone. We share without reservation just to let more friends fall in love with coffee, and we hold three coffee discount events every month because FrontStreet Coffee wants more friends to drink the best coffee at the lowest price. This has been FrontStreet Coffee's mission for the past 6 years!

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Want to taste coffee from the birthplace itself? FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe and Sidamo selections carry that Ethiopian heritage in the cup. For a balanced, middle-of-the-road roast, the FrontStreet Brazil Queen Estate is a superb everyday choice: Brazil's rare Yellow Bourbon, medium-roasted to creamy peanut, chocolate, toasted bread, and sugarcane sweetness—smooth, low in acid and bitterness, and at home in a pour-over, moka pot, or espresso machine.

For a sweeter medium roast, the Strawberry Candy Geisha blend—Costa Rican honey process meets Panamanian washed Geisha—offers orange-blossom aroma and round sweetness across cold brew, pour-over, and espresso. And to taste China's answer from Yunnan, the 2013 Sun-dried Typica delivers nuts, red sugar, black tea, and dried apricot with gentle balance and excellent value.