Costa Rica Coffee Culture and the Surprising Numbers Behind It

I just read a statistic that I find difficult to believe. According to worldpopulationreview.com, Hong Kong consumed a heart-racing 43 kilos of coffee per capita in 2023. This has to be some kind of record. I combed through other websites and found no other place or year anywhere close to this number.

I thought I drank a lot of coffee. I go through a 250 gram bag a week, or about 13 kilos annually. In Hong Kong in 2023, I wouldn’t even have been considered a serious coffee drinker. Imagine how frantically zanged they must have been with that much high octane java flowing through their veins.

Even considering that Hong Kong figure an outlier, Costa Rica is still nowhere close to the top of the list of the countries that lead in annual per capita coffee consumption, which I also find hard to believe. According to cafely.com, we rank 28th. Twenty of the countries ahead of us are in Europe. The long, dark, cold winters may have something to do with it.

Luxembourg, of all places, is number one, with an average per capita of 20 kilos. In comparison, we only consume a bit over 4 kilos per person, according to this website. Which means I drink three times the coffee of the average Tico. Which also means that I am running out of things to find hard to believe.

These charts do not specify the quality of the coffee consumed, nor if decaf is included. One of the first major differences I encountered with coffee when arriving in Costa Rica had to do with quality. I started drinking coffee in my early twenties. I always had a cup to get going in the morning, and the times I worked long hours or double shifts, I would drink it mainly for the caffeine.

I still remember the brackish, bitter, tongue-scalding cups of coffee dispensed by every US office vending machine of the 1970s and 80s. Taste and quality meant nothing. The temporary boost of energy was the only reason to drink it.

Here it is hard to find bad coffee. There are over 100 domestically grown brands available and the worst I have sampled was like gourmet java compared to the vending machine swill I remembered. Costa Rica grew about 1.1 million 60 kilo bags in the past year, with exports accounting for about 80% of all production. That leaves about 14 million kilos for local consumption, which works out to even less per capita than the numbers given by cafely.com.

Maybe it is the people I associate with that make me question the numbers. The last job I had working with Ticos, there was an always brewing pot of coffee. As soon as someone drank the last cup, the filter was refilled, and the coffeemaker filled and cranked up.

In general here, coffee may be offered any time of day, under any situation. My sister-in-law lives on the other side of town, about a 45 minute walk, and we often go on foot to visit. No matter how hot, no matter the time of day, she always offers me coffee, first thing. Not water, not a sweet refresco, always a cafe caliente con azucar.

She claims that drinking hot coffee on a hot day can cool you down. Supposedly, the heat from the coffee triggers increased sweating, which, upon evaporation, removes more heat from your body than the drink initially adds. I’m not sure how this equation works as I am usually already wet with sweat on arrival.

There is no age limit either. I have seen kids still in diapers drinking it from a baby bottle. I remember arguing with my wife when she served it to our kindergarten aged children.

Coffee has been around for centuries. Wild plants date back one thousand years to modern-day Ethiopia. It was first harvested, roasted and brewed in Yemen in the 15th century. Coffee plants were first brought to Costa Rica in 1779 from Cuba, with commercial production beginning for the first time in 1808. It was first exported in 1820, just one year before the Central American countries declared joint independence from Spain.

I am now drowsy from staring into my laptop screen and writing for the past hour. It’s 3pm, sunny and warm. No problem. Time for another cup of joe.

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المصدر: Tico Times