The Rise of Coffee
americanscientist.org
americanscientist.org
Awareness of microbes, boiling for sterility, and water treatment was a long time coming. Water was clean if far enough upstream, or you had a pristine well. In towns and cities, forget it. :)
Cities and towns have often historically been located next to rivers not only for transportation, but for agriculture, to remove waste, and for people to drink it. In order to have a "city" you have to solve the transportation of waste, which involves getting in water, and evidence for this goes back well before 3,000BC. The locations for cities were often chosen for good water quality, or avoided due to poor water quality. If water wasn't nearby, they'd pipe it in, and it they couldn't do that, they'd dig wells, often hundreds of em. In Rome, access to water completely transformed the idea of a city and built the biggest one in history up to that point. Cities often had not only public wells, but also fountains specifically for both drinking and hand-washing.
Some famous cities in history had poor access to water, and as they grew they suffered due to a lack of sanitation and clean water. But that has nothing to do with who drank what or for what purpose. All societies have drank different things for different reasons, but almost never due to an inability to get drinking water.
Even today, remote villages that are barely touched by modern man don't boil water or drink alcohol or tea. They just drink straight-up water, and 100,000 years of evolution has proved the idea that we figured out how not to die from it.
Tea was initially an elite drink in China, the expense in part explaining the rise of the rituals and ceremonies (and lots of equipment) surrounding it. Much the same happened with coffee.
Rome was indeed an exception thanks to their development and aqueducts, but that potable water was coming from well outside the city. In the outlying regions of the empire, without that infrastructure, wine seems to have been the usual, and water for bathing.
Remote enough is akin to upstream enough -- with no shite, washing and other pollutants, getting potable water from a remote spring or well is perfectly feasible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgcX0y1Nzhs
/s
That was the worst of it though. By day 4 everything felt back to normal. Hoping to keep this up for at least a month or two.
Such an awesome idea though.
In both cases they were gone after about a week or two, but I could see how it would be difficult for people who have an easy time smoking (low vs high sin taxes, happen to be at places where you can smoke all the time like your own car and home vs. a restrictive apartment and public transit, whether or not your friends also smoke all the time). My addiction was only for about 2-3 years, too, not half a lifetime like with some people.
Instead of staying up late doing things, I just go to bed and do those things in the morning. I find I don't waste as much time and I'm excited to wake up. Rolling out of bed is much easier when video games or a good book is waiting for me. I guess coffee could fill that, but I guess it's not as interesting to me as a hobby.
Caffeine can also be employed strategically for exceptional circumstances, but that's a less common application.
I've been roasting my own beans for 20 years, and one of the first things I learned is that hardly any beans are at their best right after roasting. Freshly roasted is OK, but the beans are outgassing for some time after that. 2-3 days rest after roasting improves the flavor of just about any coffee, especially the fruity dry process Ethiopians I like.
Feel free to email me (address in profile) if you'd like to talk about home roasting - always happy to kick it around with anyone interested.
Also visit https://www.sweetmarias.com/ for lots of information about green coffee and roasting, grinding, and brewing equipment. (I am not affiliated with them at all, just a long time customer.)
Caffeine pills work out to $0.05/cup-equivalent, aren't going to make you take bathroom trips, aren't going to give you bad breath, and aren't going to stain your teeth. I usually keep a few in my pocket in case I get randomly drowsy in a meeting or if I'm driving far. I haven't looked back, and I used to pull my own espresso and roast my beans.
I know people who can have coffee and fall asleep immediately afterwards, and have little to none urinary symptoms at all; and other people who’ll not sleep and / or need to pee frequently.
/rant. Bodies are weird.
Perhaps your symptoms are psychosomatic?
I'm confused. If you were at a level where you were roasting your own beans, I would think that was because you enjoyed the taste of coffee. You enjoyed it so much that you went out of your way to track down non-roasted beans and roast them yourself. This is not an act of cheapness, this is a labor of love. And you decided, "Nah, I just want caffeine. This bean juice is for suckers"?
As a coffee lover myself, how/why did you make that jump?
I really do like the taste, and I still do get an occasional cup about 1-3 times a month from a cafe, but it wasn't great for my body otherwise. I like the taste of cigars and booze, too, and they have obvious cons that preclude regular consumption. Coffee has cons for me too, even if I enjoyed it, so I just cut out my functional consumption for the sake of being alert and replaced it with a pure source that lacked these side effects.
My reasons are right there in the original post: "bathroom trips... bad breath... stain your teeth". Those things become more obnoxious as I aged.
Throw away java ;-)
I too was a student and I too tried to min/max. I found that caffeine via coffee hit me harder and wore off quicker. A pill was this slow drip effect that left me absolutely screwed for bedtime if I had it any time past 1pm.
Anecdotal but my conclusion is: they're not the same.
Maybe the coatings in your particular pill were different. I found gelatin capsules kicked in slower than pressed tablets that began to dissolve when they hit my saliva, but still lasted about the same. My tolerance to caffeine has always been high, though.
Unless you go to <insert-coffee-shop> not only for the coffee (social/working space/etc.).
> Caffeine pills work out to $0.05/cup-equivalent
Doesn't replicate the taste or all of the potential health benefits of coffee[0]
[0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/what-is-it-ab...
Edit: For purely budget reasons, the parent comment's points are valid.