Who Discovered Coffee?

Who actually discovered coffee?

The honest answer is: we don’t really know.

The most famous story credits an Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi, who supposedly noticed his goats becoming energetic after eating red coffee cherries. He tried them himself and discovered their stimulating effect.

It’s a great story. But there isn’t solid historical evidence that Kaldi actually existed.

What we do know is that coffee’s earliest documented history traces back to Yemen, where coffee cultivation and the drink we recognise today were being developed by the 15th century. From there, coffee culture spread across the Middle East and eventually around the world.

So what was the first coffee ever recorded?

There isn’t a single documented “first cup.” Coffee was likely consumed in different forms before the drink became the brewed beverage we know today. Historical records from Yemen in the 1400s provide some of the earliest reliable evidence of coffee being cultivated and consumed as a drink.

I love that we can trace so much of modern coffee culture back to something that started centuries ago. And the way people brewed it has changed just as much as the coffee itself.

If you’re curious about how Singapore has developed its own coffee traditions, I wrote more about it in Brewing Techniques and Singapore’s Coffee Identity.