How to choose coffee and not make a mistake, a delicious invigorating drink eliminates fatigue

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No one except Russians cares about what kind of word coffee is, although in the modern world there is not a single corner where it is not drunk. Each country has its own name for this wonderful drink and prepares it according to its own recipes.

Words ending in “e” in Russian are generally classified as neuter, which is why debates in the philological community about the word “coffee” continue. In Russia, the consumption of the drink began in the 17th century.

Then it was called “kofiy” or “coffee” and belonged to the masculine gender. That's why it's a masculine word. This is also written in the main Russian dictionaries of Dahl, Ozhegov and Efremova. But over the years, the letter “th” at the end of the word disappeared and the result was “coffee,” which has survived to this day.

This was the reason for the appearance in Lopatin’s dictionary at the beginning of the 21st century of information about the admissibility of using it in the neuter gender.

• What type of word is coffee and how to say it correctly

Consider the degree of roasting

• If you don’t like a strong drink, look for coffee beans with a light (Scandinavian) roast; it goes well with cream, milk, and is endowed with a soft and delicate taste. The grains are light brown in color, with a matte, “dry” surface.
• When choosing a medium roast (American roast, “regular roast”), be prepared for the coffee to have light fruity notes in its taste. Suitable for daily use.

Price of coffee on the market

Coffee connoisseurs who prefer dark roasting should take note of the following types:

• With Viennese (city) roasting, the coffee beans become brown, their surface is slightly “oily”, and a slight glossy sheen appears. It is characterized by sweetish notes and caramel shades.
• Strong Spanish roast. The grains are dark brown. The finished drink has a noticeable, noble bitterness and astringency.
• The drink, made from double continental roasted beans, is characterized by a thick, rich bitter taste, lacking subtlety.
• The highest degree of coffee roasting (Italian) gives the drink an overly bitter taste; The oily sheen of the grains is quite intense. The result is a classic bitter coffee with a velvety, rich, expressive taste, which is recommended to be consumed before lunch.

What does the word coffee mean?

The first mentions date back to the 17th century. The ancestor of the invigorating drink is considered to be the town of Kaffa in Ethiopia. Since time immemorial, coffee trees have been grown there to produce coffee beans, although their drink is called completely differently - “buno” or “bunna”.

There is an opinion about the origin of the word from the Arabic “qahwah” - activating, but with a small caveat: it meant a type of wine. The Turks also have a similar word “kahve”. Depending on the characteristics of the language and the pronunciation of individual sounds, this word (or koffa) began to be called in a special manner among different nationalities.

The drink came to Russia in 1724 and was called differently everywhere. In Russian there were even such variations as “kof”, “kofa”, “kefa”, “kohei” and “cafe”. In modern Russian, in current dictionaries the word is written “coffee” and belongs exclusively to the masculine gender.

The spelling of this noun has acquired an unambiguous status and other variants have become unacceptable. Despite the different spellings, the meaning of the word coffee has always remained the same for all consumers of the drink - invigorating, increasing energy.

All about coffee beans

Everyone, everywhere, has long understood that nothing can be better than a natural product. How to check the naturalness of coffee? The question is complex. Only whole coffee beans can be checked for naturalness; this can be seen even by a layman. With ground and soluble, this can only be done in a laboratory. This is another plus for coffee beans. This product has the following advantages:

The most famous coffee brands

• retains aroma and taste longer;
• allows you to prepare an exclusively natural drink without any additives;
• makes it possible to vary the grinding option to prepare coffee in different ways;
• has a bright and rich aroma and taste;
• gives a thick foam when cooking;
• good for health.

The disadvantages of the product include the high price and increased time spent on grinding and preparing the drink. When buying coffee beans, wondering which variety is considered the best - Arabica or Robusta, it is important to pay attention to their ratio. As a rule, manufacturers blend several varieties of coffee to obtain a good taste. In the narrow sense, it is a combination of aromatic, noble Arabica with bitter and invigorating Robusta.

True gourmets roast and grind green beans themselves

Sometimes in stores you can find a product consisting of 100% Arabica coffee. This means that coffee from these beans exudes a wonderful aroma, but produces a weak infusion and pronounced sourness. If you add a little robusta to this coffee, the infusion will acquire a balanced taste and the necessary strength due to containing more caffeine.

Good coffee beans usually come from the continent - Brazil's Santos is the world market leader. Its best harvests are used for the production of elite products, while others are used for blending. Colombia is another major coffee producer, also producing high-quality Arabica beans. Products from Africa are less valuable due to the instability of quality.

What is the gender of the word coffee?

It is immediately necessary to clarify that in Russia the word coffee is masculine and this noun is not declined. In any case, in writing, in works of art, in the menu there are no other options.

But according to the new rules, in oral speech it is allowed to talk about this drink in both the masculine and neuter gender. To say he or it is not really considered a mistake.

However, people working in the coffee industry never allow this to happen. For example, for a barista the phrase “strong coffee” is unacceptable.

In this matter, there is no need to rely on the world history of drinking the drink. In different countries, not only its name is different, but also its genus. For example, in Arabic it is generally feminine, in English it is strictly masculine, and the Turkish name is neuter. Therefore, in Russia, one should rely on information from traditional, official dictionaries, and not guess what type of coffee.

These restrictions apply only to the word itself in the sense of a drink. If we judge a tree with beans, then it is a neuter genus - a coffee tree.

Rules for storing coffee at home

Coffee is quite picky in terms of storage conditions. Thus, external environmental factors (including: humidity, direct sunlight, extraneous aromas) can negatively affect its taste and aroma and destroy them. After purchase, it is advisable to pour the coffee beans into an opaque container with a tight-fitting lid, and place it in the refrigerator on the middle shelf for no more than 20 days (these recommendations are extremely relevant for ground coffee).

It is allowed to store coffee beans in the freezer when there is a need for long-term storage (to do this, they are packaged “in portions” in bags and the air is removed from them).

Coffee beans have a much longer shelf life, so it is recommended to grind them immediately before use, so you can preserve the taste for a long time. If you roasted the coffee beans yourself, it is preferable to use them immediately. Or put it in containers with dense additive lids; The main condition is not to forget about ventilation (once every two days), since the grains emit a special gas. The ideal conditions for ground coffee are a dark, cool place.

The main rule for storing instant coffee is that it should not be left in places with high humidity and near strong-smelling foods (for example, spices), since it has the inherent ability to absorb moisture and foreign aromas; the ideal option is a sealed dry container, and it should not be large and the contents should completely fill it (remember, the less the product comes into contact with oxygen, the longer it will retain its taste properties). If you prefer to leave the coffee in the bag after purchase, then every time you remove the mixture from there, try to roll up the free edge as tightly as possible, thereby removing excess air from the bag (a paper clip will help you with this).

Grinding coffee at home

However, the rich aroma of beans, even of a high-quality drink, may weaken after some time and begin to be felt only after grinding. If after such actions and proper storage the smell does not revive, you can try to “revive” it. Place the grains in a bowl and rinse under running water (no more than two minutes), then dry them in a frying pan without adding vegetable oil (remember to stir constantly!). If such manipulations do not produce results, you will have to purchase new coffee.

How coffee became neuter

Language, like all living things, undergoes changes over time. Some words go out of use altogether, some are modified, and many words come from outside or are born at the behest of time. Therefore, in such a situation, it would be fair to reconsider the life of language in society and make changes to dictionaries based on the results obtained.

• The word “coffee”: what kind, all the secrets of spelling and pronunciation

If more than half of native speakers begin to use certain words on a regular basis, then it is worth listening to the voice of the people. For example, few people know that “metro” (neuter gender) comes from “metropolitan” (masculine gender) and they rightfully say that it is the (St. Petersburg) metro.

“Coffee” is just from this list. For the second century now, the use of the word coffee in the neuter gender has been increasing, therefore, in order to eliminate disputes, the Ministry of Education and Science legalized this phenomenon by its order.

Since 2021, the use of the word coffee in both the masculine and neuter gender is considered correct.

Setting priorities: the emphasis on the word latte

Correct pronunciation will be a great addition to a delicious drink in the morning. Let's start with the emphasis. Quite often, baristas hear an incorrect order for a coffee drink, but no one dares to correct it. After all, the client is always right.

So latte or latte? It should be remembered that the stress should be placed on the first syllable in a word. That is, the correct way to pronounce the name of coffee is Latte. This option is the correct one. And to be sure, you should understand the origin of the name of the drink.

Which syllable is stressed in the word?

Many people pronounce "latte" with the wrong accent. To make sure it’s correct, let’s reveal the secret of the origin of the name. From Italian the translation of latte sounds like milk. This ingredient is the main one in the recipe for making a delicious drink.

Opening the dictionary

To correctly pronounce the names of coffee, it would be a good idea to look into your usual spelling dictionary. The emphasis in the word latte is on the first syllable. The entry in the dictionary is also confirmation. The Italian origin of the lexical unit determines this stress variant. In this language, the vowel on the penultimate syllable is stressed.

What's the rule

In order to no longer wonder how to correctly spell this word in a sentence, you need to know one simple rule. The word "coffee" is never declined or changed by case. Whatever the phrase, its spelling always remains the same - in the nominative singular case. Now the neuter form is also allowed. In other languages, this name also sounds almost identical.

For better memorization, you can use image words, for example, cafe - coffee. The technique is very simple. In the first word, the last vowel “e” is stressed, so its spelling is not in doubt (unless, of course, you write “cafe”, which is a mistake). You remember this word-image and subsequently associate it with the second word, which contains a dubious letter.

Example sentences

For clarity, the following examples can be given:

• After making sure that everything was in order in the room, I went down to the hotel restaurant to have a cup of coffee.
• In the middle of a hot summer, a person’s energy may decrease, but drinking a cup of aromatic coffee in the morning and moderate physical activity will help quickly return the body to its former vigor.
• When I returned to the cafe, my coffee was already cold and I had to order a new one.

The name of the drink "coffee" is often used in combination with the place where it is served, for example, an ice cream parlor. You should also remember the spelling of the ice cream parlour, how it is written - together or separately. As a rule, such words are written with a hyphen.

Spelled incorrectly

It would be a mistake if you start inflecting the word “coffee” in a sentence (coffee, coffee, coffee and others) or write the letter “e” at the end - coffee.

Reviews

Kirill: Of course, I’m always in a hurry to get to work, and I also need to drop my child off at school on the way, but I only make Turkish coffee and only natural coffee. There is so much chemistry in our lives that adding it to this drink is simply unacceptable. I always buy only natural grains, I look at how they look, to see if there is anything suspicious, then I grind them and my wife and I prepare the most aromatic drink in the world.

Inga: Soluble for me is black water with an incomprehensible taste, the best is only ground or grain!

Oksana: During my student years, any coffee was used, and instant coffee was in first place; we drank it with condensed milk before exams. Now I prefer to grind the grains myself before cooking.

Svetlana: I prefer ground Jardine - it combines a reasonable price and good quality. Lavazza has recently deteriorated, in my opinion.

Meaning of the word

The concept of “coffee” came to us from the Arabic language – “kakhwa”. It has two common meanings:

1. An evergreen tree growing in the tropics. There are over eighty species of this plant, but only two are of food and agricultural value to humans - robusta and arabica.
2. A food product obtained by roasting and grinding coffee beans - the seeds of the coffee tree. It is used to prepare the world's favorite aromatic and invigorating drink. After careful processing, instant coffee is obtained in the form of granules or powder.

Differences in types of coffee

• Sublimated (frozen). Coffee crystals (sublimate) are obtained by freezing the brewed liquid and then evaporating it under vacuum. After which the already dehydrated mass is crushed, obtaining granules of irregular shape. The sublimate of a high-quality drink is dense, does not crumble, large, with sharp corners, and has a light brown color; In comparison with other types of instant coffee, we can say that it retains more nutrients and taste. The minimum percentage of caffeine in frozen coffee is 3% (this is a good indicator). There should be no coffee “dust” at the bottom of the package with such a product; if it is present, it means the production technology has been violated.
• Granulated. The resulting fine coffee powder is pressed with the addition of a small amount of moisture. This coffee has a porous structure; granules can have different shapes and sizes.
• Powder (emulsified). The production technology comes down to spraying coffee extract in a stream of hot air.

Best Instant Coffee Brands

In conditions of limited time or in the absence of a coffee machine, instant coffee comes to replace grain coffee - just mix a spoonful of powder with boiling water and the aromatic drink is ready.

To obtain a soluble powder that does not require brewing, the grains are first fried in production, then crushed, the soluble components are washed out of the particles using water (extraction process), then the moisture is evaporated in one of two ways:

Under the influence of hot air, agglomerate granules are obtained;

Sublimation with preliminary freezing of the wet extract and grinding it into solid form. Next, water is removed from the granules using a vacuum. It turns out to be freeze-dried coffee.

The taste of evaporated and freeze-dried coffee is almost the same, but the price of the first is slightly lower than the cost of the second type of product.

Rating of the best coffee brands