coffee drinking

In the early 19th century, coffee drinkers found alternatives for coffee in times of coffee shortages . This was found, among other things, in the ground and roasted roots of the chicory plant.

However, Chicory does not contain caffeine, so it has never really supplanted coffee as the national drink! Real coffee was therefore always preferred.

In time,  also other new variants for coffee were  introduced, but not only for plain coffee, but  also (flavor) improvers such as coffee syrup or burnt sugar.

In the war and crisis years of the 20th century, chicory coffee as well as roasted and caramelised sugar varieties such as molasses received a boost. The surrogate coffee was widely drunk as a substitute, in the absence of real coffee.

Molasses is a by-product with many applications, infact a by-product in the production of sugar from sugar cane or sugar beets.

Just like chicory, molasses is no longer in favor as a replacement or improver for coffee, after all, a coffee shortage has been behind us for some time now. But for each new period there seem to be other applications within the food chain for these versatile residual flows, so that nothing is lost.

The coffee culture is pre-eminently an area where recycling and reuse of residual flows have been used for a long time!

Read the whole article at:    Innovation Media magazine