Coffee in America

Although the American colonists drank some coffee, like their British cousins they preferred tea until the Boston Tea Party of 1773, after which it became a patriotic duty to switch to coffee. “Tea must be universally renounced,” John Adams wrote to his wife, “and I must be weaned, and the sooner the better” (Pendergrast, 2010, p. 15). American coffee consumption grew in the first half of the 1800s, particularly after the War of 1812 temporarily shut off access to tea. By that time Brazilian coffee was cheaper and closer anyway.