Wild West Coffee

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Photo courtesy of Folger's Coffee

Readers and writers of Western fiction are always interested in the verisimilitude that historically accurate references provide. When it comes to coffee, quite a bit of which cowboys and other men of the West drank on a regular basis, it was, more often than not, Folger's in their cups.

The fact that such men enjoyed a morning cup of joe is reflected in the fact that they made room for sacks of coffee beans aboard their wagons, the additional weight be damned.

Photo courtesy of White Buffalo Trading Co.

The beans were green, though, so they had be roasted over an open fire or atop a stove before they were fit to use—after they were ground. Since boiling the grounds didn't guarantee there'd be no grounds in the resulting beverage, the coffee was poured into a saucer, blown upon to cool it, and then slurped to filter out any stray grounds that might remain.

Photo courtesy of Folger's Coffee

As this process suggests, it took time to brew up a decent cup of coffee. James Athern Folger would make the process easier, buying out the partners in Pioneer Mills and renaming it the James A. Folger Company. When he died in 1889, his oldest son, James A. Folger II (1835-1889), took over as the company's president, and expanded the business. In 1963, the company was sold to Procter & Gamble. Today, the coffee is a member of “the J. M. Smucker Company's family of brands.”

Photo courtesy of Find-a-Grave

John Arbuckle's coffee was also a Wild West winner. By using “an egg and sugar glaze” that contained “Irish moss,” he “sealed in the flavor”of unground roasted green beans, selling them in “one-pound bags” as Arbuckle's Ariosa Coffee.

Photo courtesy of on target shooters nz

Arbuckle also began to include such offerings as “coupons . . . scissors . . . . [and] peppermint candy.” On cattle drives, cooks bartered the candy for the service of a cow hand who'd agree to turn the coffee grinder's crank.

Later, he ground the beans as well, saving his customers the time and trouble of grinding them themselves.

By the time he died, in 1912, Arbuckle had become a millionaire several times over, thanks to his coffee.