America is a coffee loving country! We drink 102 billion cups of coffee annually or 280.5 million cups per day. That’s a lot of coffee. But Americans aren’t the largest coffee lovers in the world. The largest coffee consuming country is the Netherlands.
The U.S. imports over 27 million 60 kg bags (a little over 132 pounds) of coffee each year. Retail coffee revenues total $36 billion in the U.S. each year. Thirty-four percent of coffee-drinking Americans prefer gourmet coffee, setting them back an average of $3.28 per cup. The average price for a plain cup of coffee is $1.38. While making coffee at home can be much cheaper per cup, it depends on how you make it. A cup of coffee made with a K-cup is about 66 cents while making it the old fashioned way with a drip pot and a filter, is about 28 cents. Of course, you have to add in the price of the coffee machine and the travel mug (my Yeti was $24.99 but worth every penny).
Now let’s talk about the types of coffee available either at home or at a coffee shop. Have you ever walked up to a coffee shop and wondered what the difference is in all those types of coffee being offered? Let’s see there is: American, Cappuccino, Flavored Coffee, White Coffee, Café Latte, Café au Lait, Café Breva, Café Macchiato, Café Latte Fredo, Café Mocha, Espresso, Espresso con Panna, Espresso Granita, Frappe, Turkish/Greek Coffee, Indian (Madras) Filter Coffee, Hammerhead or Shot in the Dark, Iced Coffee, Cuban Coffee, Arabica Coffee, Irish Coffee, Kopi Tubruk, Lungo, Ristretto, Melya, and Vietnamese Coffee.
After you decide the type of coffee you want, the next decision is the flavor! The flavors are, obviously, unlimited. One of the best flavored coffees I ever had was at a small coffee shop in Parkersburg, W.Va., close to the hotel where we were staying for a trial we had there. It was peanut butter mocha! I was a little leery of trying peanut butter coffee, but after one cup, I revisited that coffee shop on several more occasions for the peanut butter mocha coffee.
By the way, did you know that coffee was “discovered” by a goat herder that noticed his goats became a little over zealous after eating what has come to be known as coffee beans? What a grand (or should I say, grande) discovery!!
;)
