WHY I DRINK RICE COFFEE

Article by Tom Lewis ©2013

"I drink rice coffee every day."

First a little history. The term 'coffee' as we know it has been around for a while. Rice as a beverage on the other hand has been around for several millennium. So where does "rice coffee" come from?

If we consider that the making of 'coffee' is based around the roasting or baking of several species of an evergreen shrub of the genus Coffea, we have coffee.  Now envisage that the roasting or baking of rice grain from the monocot plants Oryza sativa (Asian rice) or Oryza glaberrima (African rice) will produce a similar result, that being rice coffee.  Yes I know coffee lovers will not see the comparison but the basic principle is the same.  A Ferrari and a Porsche are vehicles with different pedigree but they are both cars. We don't run around saying i want a Coffea or Oryza beverage please, do we.

Enough of the technical. Visualize at some point in time, maybe after a meal of rice and a mongolosaurus, the leftover rice grains remained on the open fire roasting. Someone added water which boiled and hey presto we had our first brew, rice coffee. Crude but perhaps satisfactory and delightfully unexpected.

Perhaps the historical difference is coffee cultivation first took place in Southern Arabia; the earliest credible evidence of coffee-drinking appears in the middle of the 15th century in the Sufi shrines of Yemen. 

Chinese legends attribute the domestication of rice to Shennong, the legendary Emperor of China and inventor of Chinese agriculture. Genetic evidence has shown that rice originates from a single domestication 8,200–13,500 years ago in the Pearl River valley region of China. There is not much written history on rice as a beverage, however Japan seemed to have concentrated on rice wines, whilst the Koreans made a beverage called Hyeonmi cha similar to rice coffee. Yet most of the Asian countries drink a rice coffee beverage in some form.

None of this has to do with why I drink rice coffee. Rice coffee is just one of those things, like acupuncture that has avoided European culture for centuries. Do I dislike coffee? No of course not. I do like to have a choice. I found rice coffee, tried it, liked it, now drink it.  In fact I drink it throughout my day. I rarely drink 'coffee' and have been known to take my rice coffee to restaurants and ask for a pot to be made to share with friends at our table.  Many of my friends now drink rice coffee which is good because they now have it in their pantries as well. 

Are there health benefits to rice coffee? Yes there are many health benefits to drinking rice coffee, as there are with coffee and tea and the many alternatives on the shelf. Again another choice to meet your health desires.

What does it taste like? I guess you can say it is similar to coffee depending on the type of coffee you drink. It is instant rice coffee so there are no restrictions as to how you want to make it. The standard milk and sugar, or you can add spice like cinnamon, chili, nutmeg, or cream, rum, even chocolate flakes. You can even have it chilled with ice. 

"why I drink rice coffee" by Seeker

Of course not everyone is going to be a rice coffee drinker. Some will even dislike it without trying it. I am not going to preach to you. If you're interested, do your research but you won't find it on the supermarket shelf, unless you're in Asia. Western culture has not ventured this far yet, but we are starting to use more spices like curry, cumin, cinnamon, chili, pepper, garlic, in our cooking. So maybe one day we will see more rice coffee.

If you are a rice coffee drinker leave a comment and let me know where you get yours from. If you have tried it and don't like it leave a comment just the same.  If you're interested and want more information, leave a comment and I'll try to answer it.