Coffee Craziness! Trivia Quiz

Answer: The wine of Araby

Under Muslim law, wine is forbidden as it causes intoxication, so coffee was seen as an acceptable substitute, despite being a stimulant rather than a depressant. Although the Arab world monopolised the coffee trade in the 15th century and sultans issued a ban on exports of coffee cherries and beans, merchants and smugglers still managed to trade it around Southwest Asia, and it later reached Europe. For example, the Dutch introduced coffee to the Netherlands in 1616, growing it in greenhouses and exporting it to their colonies in Indonesia (hence the nickname of 'java') and India.

The coffee house culture originated in the Arab world, where they were known as 'qahveh kahneh'. They were popular haunts for traders and scholars, and were important places for exchanging information.

Answer: Finland

You might not associate Finland with coffee, but believe it or not, the Finns were found to be the world's biggest coffee consumers in 2022, with the average Finn drinking four cups of coffee a day and consuming an average of 12 kg of coffee a year. Finnish workplaces are also supposed to have two ten-minute coffee breaks a day. Scandinavian countries are big coffee fans on the whole, with Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Sweden in second, third and fourth and sixth place respectively, and the Netherlands in fifth place. Switzerland came seventh, Belgium eighth, and Luxembourg and Canada - the home of Tim Horton's - tied in ninth place.

(The dog pictured above is a Finnish spitz, a small hunting dog native to Finland. Kimi Räikkönen is a Finnish Formula One racing driver.)

Answer: Mustard

You'd expect mustard to go in a hot dog or a sandwich, but not coffee, surely? Yet Frederick the Great put the powdered version in his coffee and used champagne to dilute it instead of water. Despite this, he actually tried to crack down on coffee imports as he was worried about coffee ruining the Prussian economy and taking money away from Prussian businesses, and allegedly tried to encourage the populace to drink the more traditionally Prussian beer instead. He also insisted that coffee roasters obtained a licence from the government, but rejected the majority of applications, except for those from people who had a good relationship with his court. He complained about coffee becoming popular among the lower classes and hired soldiers to act as human sniffer dogs, sniffing out contraband coffee and arresting people without roasting permits.

Coffee with alcohol is not unusual in other countries; for instance, Ireland has the famous 'Irish coffee', a mixture of coffee and whiskey. Switzerland, meanwhile, has 'Luzerner Kafi', a mixture of sugary coffee and red wine, and the Belgian coffee house Wittamer's served a coffee drink called 'brûlot', which contained cognac set on fire.

Answer: Kopi luwak

When a civet eats a coffee cherry, the cherry is digested in the civet's intestines. Kopi luwak producers collect the excreted cherries, or raise civets in captivity with the purpose of making them eat and poo coffee cherries. Because of the way it is made, kopi luwak is one of the world's priciest coffees and even sold at up to $1100 per kilogram in 2010. Fraudsters have passed coffee using caged civets off as wild kopi luwak, as the authenticity of the genuine article is difficult to prove. Tony Wild, a coffee executive who imported kopi luwak to the West, started a campaign called Cut the Crap in protest against the cruel conditions in which captive civets are kept.

The other answers are Indonesian coffee drinks. Kopi durian is coffee that uses the notoriously smelly durian fruit as a substitute for sugar, kopi jahe is coffee with ginger, and kopi tubruk is made with fine, unfiltered coffee grounds.

Answer: Hawaii

The signature coffee of the state of Hawaii is Kona coffee, an Arabica coffee bean grown on the slopes of Mauna Loa and Hualalai in the North and South Kona districts. Samuel Ruggles introduced the coffee plant to Hawaii in 1828 from Brazil, while the English merchant Henry Nicholas Greenwell established the Kona brand. While many coffee plantations in Hawaii had converted to sugarcane plantations, the Kona plantations were on steep volcanic land that was unsuitable for planting sugarcane. In 2010, Kona coffee farms were threatened by a coffee berry borer infestation, with exported beans having to be quarantined. The Beauveria bassina fungus was imported in 2011 to control the infestation.

The pig in the photo is wearing a lei, a flower garland given as a gift on special occasions in Hawaii, such as graduation parties or weddings.

Answer: Milk

In Anglophone countries, if you go to a coffee bar and ask for a latte, the barista will know that you mean a caffè latte, or coffee with milk. However, if you're in Italy, you'll have to be more specific because if you ask for a latte, the barista may assume that you just want a cup of milk! (The respective words in Italian for 'tea', 'cheese' and 'wine' are 'tè', 'formaggio' and 'vino', incidentally.)

Other Italian terms that are common parlance in Starbucks and other coffee bars are espresso (a thick dark coffee with boiling water being forced through finely-ground coffee beans), macchiato (espresso with a little bit of milk added), and cappuccino (which has a steamed milk foam on top, and is actually Austrian in origin).

Answer: Chicory

The flower pictured here belongs to the chicory plant, and its roots were roasted and ground up to make a coffee substitute. It could either be added to coffee to bulk it out, or consumed on its own. One advantage of chicory (or disadvantage, depending on how you look at it) is that it does not contain caffeine. Other coffee substitutes in the Second World War included barley (mixed with chicory in France), ground-up acorns and grain.

Chicory is still used as a coffee flavouring today: Camp Coffee is a concentrated syrup made from coffee and chicory (and makes a great coffee milkshake when mixed with cold milk). Devout Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists use it as a coffee substitute, as their faiths forbid them from drinking coffee.

Answer: They became more energetic.

It's unknown just how true the story about Kaldi and his goats is, but it goes like this: he had taken his goats out to pasture, and noticed that they became extra frisky and refused to sleep at night as the result of eating coffee berries. Kaldi reported this finding to the abbot of a local monastery, who made a brew with the drink and noted that it helped him stay awake during evening prayers. News spread of this amazing energising drink, and thus coffee was born.

As a tribute to the apocryphal story, an Ethiopian coffee chain called itself Kaldi's. Other coffee shops have taken names such as Dancing Goat and Kaldi's Coffee.

Answer: Egg yolks

Cà phê trung is also known as 'egg coffee'. It is traditionally made with the beans of the robusta coffee plant, which have a particularly bitter taste, and also contains sugar, condensed milk and egg yolks. The egg yolks are beaten with the sugar and milk, and the coffee is then added. The cup is placed in a bowl of warm water to keep it warm.

Vietnam isn't the only country where coffee and eggs go together. In Sri Lanka, coffee can be mixed with egg and brandy, while in Sweden, one recipe involves mixing coffee grounds with an egg and simmering the mixture until the egg makes the grounds sink. Kopi talua is an Indonesian variant from West Sumatra.

Answer: The Nutcracker

'The Nutcracker' is one of Tchaikovsky's most famous ballets, and is based on 'The Nutcracker and the Mouse King' by ETA Hoffmann. The titular Nutcracker turns into a handsome prince after a battle with the Mouse King and his forces, and takes the heroine Clara to the Land of Sweets.

The Sugar Plum Fairy, the ruler of the Land of Sweets, organises a celebration of sweets from around the world in Clara's honour. They have Spanish dancers representing chocolate, Arabian dancers representing coffee, Chinese dancers representing tea, and Russian dancers representing candy canes.

At the end of the ballet, all the sweets perform a waltz together.