Everyday millions of people around the world begin their day religiously with a morning cup of coffee. Though today we easily identify coffee in its beverage form, it wasn't always this way in the beginning.
Throughout history, coffee has taken on several physical transformations, initially serving as an energy source when nomadic tribes combined coffee berries with animal fat as an early form of an energy bar. Later it was consumed as a tea, then wine, and finally to the beverage we've come to identify today. But how much of coffee’s chemical composition do we actually know?
Over the past half century scientists have made significant progress which has allowed them to unlock the nearly 1,000 compounds found in roasted coffee. In this issue of Coffee Science we’ll briefly discuss a family of compounds called ‘alkaloids’ which serve an important role in coffee’s unique chemical composition.