Coffee Drinking Geniuses

With its stimulating effects, it’s not surprising that coffee was adopted as the drink of geniuses during the seventeenth century, the so called Age of Enlightenment.

Some of the greatest thinkers of our time emerged during this period, but how much can we owe their genius to their consumption of coffee? Apparently, quite a lot.

While coffee promotes high levels of thinking by keeping people more alert and giving them the energy needed to increase their productivity, it was the establishment of coffee houses that helped to mould the minds of many famous thinkers.

Great thinkers, such as Voltaire, Rousseau, and Benjamin Franklin, were coffee connoisseurs, who spent a great deal of time in the intellectual atmospheres of European coffee houses. In fact, funnily enough, many people attributed Voltaire’s publication of Candide in 1759, which has a manic quality, to his reported consumption of 50 cups of coffee a day. There’s a lot to be said for what a few cups of coffee can do for you!

So will enjoying a delicious shot of espresso turn you into a genius? Unfortunately, we cannot promise that it will. However, we can promise that it will give you the energy and drive to help you to power through your workday, so, as the geniuses say, Voltaire on.

Don’t believe us? Just ask these guys:

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a short opera about coffee

The famed Baroque composer and pianist was also a notable coffee fiend. Though he’s not well regarded for his humor, he turned an amusing poem by his frequent collaborator, Picander, into The Coffee Cantata in 1732. The cantata mocked public outcry about the rise of the Vienna coffeehouse scene. At the time, coffee was regarded as a dangerous societal “vice.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven took his coffee with exactly 60 beans per cup.

The notoriously temperamental Beethoven once asked the above question wryly after frightening away an unwelcome companion. The famed composer was obsessive about his coffee, and would count by hand 60 beans per cup, according to his biographer.

Benjamin Franklin hung out at coffee shops before it was cool.

While living in London, Franklin lived the sweet life of the coffee shop freelancer, where he would hold political meetings, play chess and just hang out listening to good conversations. He even instructed his sister to send his mail to his favourite London coffee shop. Ever the industrious businessman, Franklin sold his own coffee beans, and he advised never embarking on a boat travel without one’s own coffee provisions, as the captain might run out.

Voltaire is said to have drunk 40-50 cups of coffee a day.

Voltaire, the famous satirist who wrote “Candide,” is perhaps one of the most avid coffee addicts in history. He reportedly consumed somewhere between 40 and 50 cups of joe a day, apparently of a chocolate-coffee mixture. He lived into his eighties, though his doctor warned him that his beloved coffee would kill him.

Teddy Roosevelt drank a gallon of coffee a day.

The 26th U.S. president would typically add five to seven lumps of sugar to the drink, though he eventually switched to saccharine.

L. Frank Baum had four or five cups of coffee with cream and sugar each morning.

The beloved writer and creator of the Wizard of Oz series relied on his morning cuppa to get his creativity flowing. He’d drink with breakfast upon rising at 8 a.m.

So if you need an excuse for a coffee, apart from giving you energy and drive to help you power through the workday, there you have it. From the mouths of geniuses!

Grab a coffee from your local Ferguson Plarre Bakehouses today