Did You Know! ~ Melitta Bentz

In this day of automatic everything, it’s easy to take housekeeping conveniences for granted. Refrigerators, ovens, vacuum cleaners, to name a few. And then there’s the ultimate. . .the coffee maker.

Yes, I love coffee. A morning without my cup of coffee is like the proverbial day without sunshine. I suppose we could discuss the possibility that I have an addiction to the stuff, but if I do, I’m not the only one. Even on television, people drink a lot of coffee. As I’ve mentioned before, my husband and I watch westerns on a daily basis, and no matter whether it’s Bonanza or Gunsmoke, someone is always offering someone else coffee.

Back then when you drank coffee, you were probably going to get grounds in your teeth. It was made by boiling water, then adding ground coffee and letting it sit for a while. Chester Goode on Gunsmoke had his own technique. He said, “Worst thing [people] do, they throw away the old grounds after using them once. . .You got to keep them old grounds, and you add a little fresh coffee every morning and let her boil.” Yikes! No wonder Doc cringed when he drank it.

Anyway, I wondered how coffee evolved in real life to the beverage we drink today. What I found out is that coffee drinking has a very, very long history, beginning with the Yemens. It’s so long, I don’t have room here to cover here.

But I did discover Melitta Bentz. (Does the name Melitta sound familiar?) This German housewife invented the first disposable paper coffee filter in 1908. Yay, her! Before her invention, she used the method of wrapping loose coffee grounds in a cloth and boiling the cloth in water, but she didn’t like the bitter taste and the sediment left behind. Melitta decided to filter her coffee using a piece of her son’s blotting paper in a brass pot perforated using a nail. Brilliant!

Melitta received a patent for her brewing design in 1908. On December 15th, 1908, Melitta Bentz and her husband Hugo started the Melitta Bentz Company. The next year they sold 1200 coffee filters at the Leipziger fair in Germany.

And thus a thriving business was born (along with lots of happy coffee drinkers). The Melitta Bentz Company also patented the filter bag in 1937 and vacuum packing in 1962. The Melitta company continues to thrive today.

And so I’m lifting a cup of coffee in memory of Melitta Bentz. Dankeschön. I am grateful.