11 Things You Didn't Know About Your Cup Of Joe In Honor Of National Coffee Break Day

Earl Wilson, a once famous journalist and gossip columnist said, "Science may never come up with a better office communication system than the coffee break." In many ways, he was right.

The coffee klatch — from the German Kaffeeklatsch, literally "coffee gossip" — still exists, but it has gone mobile and is liberally interpreted as more people work from home, grab a quick cup from a kiosk or food truck, or do their work on a laptop in the thousands of coffee shops that dot our urban landscape.

We consume gallons of this dark brown elixir, but most of us don't really know much about where it comes from or how it's made. Today is National Coffee Break Day, and it is the perfect day to celebrate coffee and its back story. So grab a cup and read on.

We've compiled a list of things you might not know about this mighty energy-boosting bean and the beverage it yields.

It takes three to four years before a coffee tree bears fruit. A coffee bean is actually the seed inside that fruit — a berry, called a "cherry berry" in the industry — which is grown on trees that can reach 30 feet tall and live for up to 200 years. Modern cultivation methods keep the trees shorter so it's easier to reach the berries for handpicking.

Christmas is a time of giving, so to celebrate the season, order a caffè sospeso when you head to your local barista for a coffee break. A caffèe sospeso, or "suspended coffee," is a hundred-year-old Neapolitan tradition whereby you order one cup of coffee but pay for two — an early form of "pay it forward." The barista keeps track of the caffè sospeso and can give it to someone later who may be in need but cannot pay. This tradition died out after World War II, but has been making a comeback in Naples, is gaining popularity in Europe, and has spread to 19 countries, but is sadly only regularly practiced these days in America in Houston and Portland, Oregon.

Fifty countries grow coffee worldwide, including the United States (almost entirely in Hawaii), most along the Bean Belt, but some like Yemen, grow coffee in arid, inhospitable conditions with little access to water. Which is admirable since it takes about 2,500 gallons of water to take the average coffee plant from seedling to tree, bear fruit, cultivate, harvest, process, and eventually sell on the open market.  

In the eighteenth century, Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach had sopranos singing the praises of coffee in his secular, comedic cantata entitled, Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht (which means "be still, stop chattering"). The music was first performed in Leipzig, Germany, sometime between 1732 and 1735, and thanks to coffee's part as a catalyst in the plot, and its popularity in Europe, the cantata became known as Kaffeekantate.

Treat your roasted coffee beans like a bottle of fine wine: Keep them away from too much moisture, sunlight, air, and heat. Try to keep the air as neutral-smelling as possible, as coffee beans absorb odors easily. From the moment the beans are roasted, they begin to decline in quality and should only be bought in small quantities and stored properly in an airtight container in a cool, dry, and dark place. You'll be rewarded with better tasting brew if you do.