Koffie tijd
The Dutch are coffee drinkers. This taste wasn’t acquired when they settled in America, but extends back to Europe, to the late 1600’s. By the year 1700, the Dutch were the largest suppliers of coffee in Europe. Dutch merchants sourced beans from Yemen and planted them in Indonesia and India. These merchants soon discovered the economic value in raising and harvesting coffee, so they began importing it to the Netherlands. The Dutch also influenced the development of coffee plantations in South and Central America.
Coffee was first enjoyed only by the elite wealthy class as a luxury. Elegant coffee houses served coffee, tea, chocolate, and other imported treats. As coffee became more affordable, it grew in popularity among the rest of the population. Coffee has become a social beverage, central to Dutch culture.
To order a beverage and food for a proper Dutch koffie tijd, or coffee time, we must first learn some vocabulary.
To order a small beverage, you would ask for a kopje, or a cup. To order a larger one, you would request a mok, or a mug.
If you prefer a latte with milk, you would order koffie verkeerd. But if you wish to drink black coffee that is strong an flavorful, you would request normal coffee, or just koffie. You could also emphasize that you want your coffee without milk, and you want to drink it black, so then you would order zwarte koffie.
If you would like something to eat with your coffee, you could choose from appelbak (apple pastry), ontbijtkoek (breakfast cake), boterkoek (butter cake), vlaai (fruit tart), or poffertjes (small, fluffy pancakes).
In the Netherlands, specialty shops serve cold drip coffee even though it requires special glass equipment and makes small batches. The most common style of coffee is made with hot water filtered through coffee grounds and drained into a large pot.
Koffie tijd occurs at specific times throughout the day, usually at 10:00 a.m. and again at 3:00 p.m. This tradition is a short pause in the day for rest, socializing, and hospitality. These times line up with the breaks we took in the day on the farm. Sometimes coffeetime was closer to 9:30 in the morning, depending on how long choring took. The afternoon coffeetime might stretch to 4:00 so that kids coming home from school could participate. This was especially the case if someone had a birthday to celebrate. Then the menu would definitely include cake as well as ice cream.
The world’s largest coffee roaster is Jacobs Douwe Egberts.
The largest coffee auction is The Dutch Coffee Auction.
I relied on the website weaverscoffee.com for much of the information in this blog post.
