Coffee is ready!

Whether as espresso, caffè latte or filter coffee - coffee is one of the most popular beverages worldwide. The coffee bush, from whose seeds coffee is made, originally comes from Ethiopia. Through the mediation of the Turks, the black beverage reached Europe in the 17th century. The first coffee houses were soon established here, for example in The Hague in 1664 and shortly thereafter in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The towns on the Lower Rhine were in close economic exchange with the Dutch long-distance trading cities. As a result, the new beverage soon became popular here as well. Around 1700, coffee was also drunk for the first time in Neuss.

Until the middle of the 18th century, coffee was an expensive imported good, drunk from exquisite Chinese porcelain tableware. But only a few decades later, the pick-me-up coffee had become a popular drink enjoyed by all classes of the population. Neuss potters even produced coffee pots and milk jugs for the small purse, as excavation finds show.

Good coffee beans remained expensive until recent times. Therefore, people often made do with all kinds of coffee substitutes, even if the infusion brewed from beechnuts or acorns was only remotely reminiscent of real bean coffee. The infusion made from roasted barley was called "muckefuck" - a corruption of "mocca faux", false coffee. At the end of the 18th century, substitute coffee made from the root of the chicory became popular.

There have always been different views on how to make the perfect coffee. The ways of preparing coffee are therefore diverse. They range from Turkish mocha to filter coffee, percolator coffee and espresso.