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We kick off today's episode of Scatterbrained with a timeline of how coffee gets grown and produced. Then, John Green tests coffee life hacks from the Internet, involving everything from coffee ice cubes to a recipe for creamer. We learn some history with the origins of coffee drink names and the old coffeehouses of England. Finally, a scientific study about caffeine shows us the best way to study seahorse pictures.
Subscribe for new episodes of Scatterbrained every other Wednesday!
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John Green: @johngreen
Amanda Suk: @sukiestyles
Becca Scott: @thebeccascott
Elliott Morgan: @elliottcmorgan
Dani Fernandez: @msdanifernandez
Mike Rugnetta: @mikerugnetta
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Coffee Facts and Life Hacks! - Mental Floss Scatterbrained | Mental Floss
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0:00
Hi, welcome to Mental Floss Video. Today we're going to talk about something I hated as a child but loved today
0:05
Beer. Wait, no, apparently not beer. Romantic comedies. Nope. Coffee. Yes, coffee
0:21
There are so many coffee beverages, which you probably know from all those times your dad ordered a grande, no foam, no whip, no room, unsweetened, medium roast
0:28
Dad, that's just a coffee. But all those drinks which comprise the coffee panoply have some pretty interesting name origins and meanings
0:36
The first known English use of the word espresso was in 1945. According to Merriam-Webster, its full name, Café Espresso, literally means coffee made on the spot at the customer's request
0:46
Though other sources will tell you that it means pressed out. And by the way, the official pronunciation is espresso, even though expresso is popular
0:54
And hey, don't let anyone boss you around about it, okay? The Italian word macchiato translates to spotted, so your macchiato is coffee with a spot of milk
1:02
Latte is a shortened version of an Italian word that means coffee and milk
1:06
In Latin, lac means milk, which was where the Italians got latte, and English speakers get lactose and lactate
1:13
Speaking of which, the French word for milk is lai, so café au lai means coffee with milk
1:18
The drink name came into existence around the 18th century. Mocha is a coffee-exporting port city in Yemen
1:24
it was founded in the 14th century and by the 15th century its chief export was coffee to Europe and the Middle East
1:31
So back then mocha coffee just described coffee from that town And somewhere around the 19th century the chocolate and coffee beverage got the name mocha possibly in America
1:43
Frappe is French the name is derived from a French word meaning to hit frappe
1:48
But when the French are talking about drinks frappe means either iced or cold
1:52
Ordering a frappe or frap in different parts of the world will have different results
1:58
Maybe you're familiar with the Starbucks Frappuccino. It's a recipe and a term that they got from a Boston chain that they acquired, the Coffee Connection
2:05
Because of the location, the store may have been using the New England definition of a frappe
2:10
a milkshake, and probably the chino from cappuccino. I'm from Boston. I can confirm this is the case
2:16
On that subject, cappuccino has interesting beginnings. In 16th century Italy, a new order of friars was founded
2:22
Soon, they became officially known as the Cappuccini. They wore brown tunics with long hoods called Cappuccio
2:28
The brown color was much like the color of Cappuccin monkeys and Cappuccinos
2:33
which is how both of those things got their names. In Italian, ristretto means restricted
2:37
That explains why the drink is a short shot of espresso. A lungo is the opposite, a tall shot
2:43
It means long. And let's finish up with just coffee, which has origins in the Dutch word kofi
2:49
That came from a Turkish term originating from an Arabic one. The English word has been in use since the late 16th century
2:59
The internet has many coffee life hacks to offer, and I'd like to test a few because, for one thing, I am very tired
3:06
As the parent of young children, I am always very tired. So first, apparently you can make an individual cup of coffee using only a funnel, a coffee filter, and grounds
3:15
I mean to be fair this is how drip coffee is made essentially but we gonna give it a try here Oh you do need hot water and then you pour it through the funnel And you got to let it drip
3:27
Let me give it a try Not great, but you know, it'll do the trick. I'm gonna say a soft pass. Meredith
3:37
I need to know more about where these grounds came from. You mean like what part of the world is Costco
3:42
Yeah, yeah. I mean, are they like, is it like a single origin Ethiopian
3:46
Okay, Meredith has given me more information about the coffee in question
3:52
I'm a little bit of a coffee snob, I just realized while talking to Meredith about this
3:56
So I've got to just readjust my expectations. Because this coffee was purchased already ground from Costco
4:04
So even when there are passes, they're still going to taste a little bit like fails
4:07
Okay, now we're gonna use the coffee maker and we're going to attempt to heat milk while brewing coffee
4:14
So I'm gonna put some milk in this pot. That should be enough. I'm not a big milk in my coffee guy
4:20
Although, I might need milk in this coffee. And then, um, Abracadabra alakazam
4:26
Oh, apparently you have to, uh, flip the switch. A lot of grounds coming into the coffee there
4:38
What's the problem? Oh, oh, the filter. The filter. Oh, no. Oh, no, the filter
4:47
Oh, God. All right, so we had a little bit of a mishap. I don't really know how to make coffee, is the summary of it
4:54
But, um, we've got some coffee-like liquid. I mean, the milk is warm, so pass
5:05
But if that doesn't sound good to you, apparently you can also make your own creamer with milk and vanilla extract
5:11
Uh, I didn't get any exact measurements here, but I know from experience that vanilla extract is something that needs to be used in great moderations
5:20
Oh, God, that's plenty. That's going to be plenty. Disaster. The studio is gonna smell like vanilla forever
5:25
We're officially renaming the Mental Floss Studio, The Mental Floss Vanilla Flavored Studio
5:30
Alright, we're gonna mix this up and put it into my coffee
5:40
That's pretty good! Pass! Okay, here's a really popular one on the internet
5:43
If you like your coffee iced but not watery, the solution is to freeze coffee into ice cubes
5:49
and then you can put these either in coffee or apparently also in milk
5:53
I'm going to try it with coffee first. There goes my coffee ice cube into my coffee
5:58
I think it might need a second ice cube. And we're going to let that cool off for a minute while we prepare the milk one
6:08
Bada boom. Bada bing. All right. Coffee first. Always. Oh, that's good. That's really good
6:19
It's cold, but it's not watery. This on the other hand is very likely going to taste like milk
6:26
Yeah, I taste no coffee whatsoever. I mean, I suppose if I let them melt it would eventually taste like coffee-flavored milk
6:34
Nonetheless based on how much I enjoying this coffee iced coffee I gotta say pass Okay lastly if you purchase whole beans like you know a normal person then the internet claims that you can grind them up with a mortar and pestle
6:46
I mean, who owns a mortar and pestle, but not a coffee grinder? Okay, we're gonna try this anyway, here we go
6:55
Oh good lord. Oh good lord. I just, I believe in myself, and I believe in this dumb life hack
7:09
And also, this would be the first time that every life hack was a pass
7:13
I just need to keep doing it. Okay, it doesn't look exactly like coffee grounds, but I think I can make coffee from this
7:22
I'm going to try at least. Okay, I'm just gonna kind of put some coffee grounds in there
7:29
That does not look like coffee. But. But. A boy can dream
7:37
Here we go. That's pretty clear. It's awfully clear. It doesn't look exactly like coffee, but it looks more like coffee than it looks like water
7:48
Smells kind of like coffee. Ah, that's disappointing. Yeah, I mean, that's just not coffee, unfortunately
7:59
So I'm going to have to say it's a fail, although with notes of pass
8:07
When you think of coffee, one of the first things you think of is probably how you can grind up the beans with a mortar and pestle, of course
8:14
But also coffee shops. It turns out that they were very important places in London history
8:20
Back then, they were called coffee houses. So a man named William Bidoof was one of the first known Englishmen to write about coffee
8:29
This was in 1600 when it was a Turkish beverage. A decade later, a man named George Sands called it black as soot and tasting not much unlike it
8:38
Despite that, in 1652, the first coffeehouse in London opened. You can visit the site where it was located today at St. Michael's Alley in Cornhill
8:48
There's even a plaque recognizing the coffeehouse. It was run by a Greek man named Pascual Rosé
8:52
who once called coffee a miracle cure for pretty much any illness you could imagine
8:57
I agree. A coffeehouse boom followed. They were hugely popular spots for men only to debate, chat, and talk about the news
9:05
I mean, people there loved the news, regardless of how it arrived
9:09
As expert Dr. Brian Cowan lists in his book on coffeehouses, people got news in print, both licensed and unlicensed
9:17
in manuscript and aloud as gossip, hearsay, and word of mouth. Unfortunately, not many coffeehouse buildings made it into the 20th century
9:26
They weren't built to last. But according to the images we have, coffeehouses were probably wood from top to bottom
9:32
When they were first invented, there were long tables for a large amount of people to sit and engage with strangers about the news of the day
9:39
But later on, smaller booths emerged. The owner and their family often lived on site
9:45
Coffeehouses were sometimes just a single room within that residence. That's all generally speaking, though
9:50
how they looked and who was inside them really varied from place to place. Sir
9:55
Isaac Newton spent time debating in coffee houses Voltaire once called one dirty ill ill and ill lighted That a good review Now of course coffee houses weren without their predecessors Places like ale houses
10:09
inns, and taverns were already very popular spots for people to get rowdy. And coffee
10:14
houses weren't too different. But their invention did kind of mark a period of sobriety in London
10:19
Prior to coffee, people mostly drank alcohol because the city's water source wasn't safe
10:24
were drunk a lot more on the streets then. Historian Dr. Matthew Green theorizes that
10:29
the arrival of coffee then triggered a dawn of sobriety that laid the foundations for truly
10:34
spectacular economic growth in the decades that followed as people thought clearly for
10:39
the first time. The stock exchange, insurance industry, and auctioneering all burst into
10:45
life in the 17th century coffee houses. But even as the popularity of coffee houses rose
10:50
the reputation of coffee looking and tasting like soot stayed true. Other Englishmen compared it to oil and mud
10:57
Some coffeehouses did serve tea or even chocolate and food to go along with that soot coffee
11:06
Let's finish up with a scientific study published in 2014 in the journal Nature Neuroscience
11:11
Researchers from John Hopkins University wanted to learn about how caffeine affected human memory
11:16
But unlike the authors of many other studies, they wanted to learn how caffeine might enhance memory after some knowledge was already learned
11:23
So how did they do that? Well, they did a double-blind study. That's when neither the participants nor the researchers know who's in the experimental group and who's in the control group
11:31
There were 160 participants who looked at pictures of all sorts of objects, like saxophones, clovers, and seahorses
11:37
Five minutes after studying these photos, participants got either a caffeine pill or a placebo
11:42
The caffeine dose was a little lower than what you'd find in a tall Starbucks coffee
11:46
It's important to note that these people were not regular caffeine consumers
11:50
Before the pills, the researchers took salivary samples. They also took samples one hour later, three hours later, and the next day
11:57
Speaking of the next day, that's when the participants came back to have their memories tested
12:01
They were shown more pictures. Some were the same as the day before, some were totally new
12:05
and some were similar to the previous days but not quite the same. And they were asked whether each picture was new, similar, or old
12:12
It turned out that caffeine did have memory-enhancing effects. Interestingly, those who took the caffeine pill after studying
12:18
were more likely to recognize that a picture was similar rather than the same as the previous days
12:23
That's a special kind of skill. It's called pattern separation. And according to the researchers
12:27
that demonstrates an even deeper memory retention level. As for why, according to the researchers
12:32
caffeine might help jog memories by influencing the levels of certain chemical messengers in the brain
12:37
or the behavior of neurons in the hippocampus, a brain region important for memory
12:41
So if you ever need to study seahorse pictures, you know what to use as a study aid. When I was in college, I studied the morphological differences between East and West Nile African
12:48
crocodiles, and I found none. And I apparently should have been drinking more coffee
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