Stumbled on a wild coffee fact from a 1920s newspaper ad

I was looking through old Seattle Times archives online for something else and saw a coffee ad from 1923. It said a 1-pound bag of good coffee cost 45 cents back then. Adjusted for today, that's about $8.50. I pay more than that for a single fancy drink now. It made me think about how much our coffee habits have changed in a hundred years. Do you know any other old coffee facts like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_thea2mo agoMost Upvoted

Found an old cookbook that said to boil coffee for 10 minutes, which sounds awful lol. They also used eggshells to settle the grounds, which is a wild trick. Makes you realize how much the brewing process changed along with the price.

angelaellis1mo ago

Wow, that eggshell trick is something else... never heard of that one. Honestly used to just assume old coffee was weak and bad, but they were putting in real work. Boiling it for ten minutes sounds like a punishment though. Makes you wonder what else we do now that will seem crazy in fifty years.

sam_anderson2mo ago

Always figured coffee got way more expensive, but guess it's our habits that really changed.