In 1981 a court in Flensburg, Germany ruled that a Pharisee coffee must contain at least two centiliters of rum hidden under its whipped cream, or the cafe was committing consumer fraud. Legend says the drink was invented to hide liquor from a teetotal pastor who, on discovering it, called his congregation Pharisees. This tour of world coffee starts with the physics of extraction: Melitta Bentz’s 1908 paper filter, the French press, the 1830s vacuum brewer, the moka pot of the 1930s, and espresso machines that spread in the 1950s with Gaggia, forcing water through fine grounds at up to nine bars.

Temperature changes everything. Cold brew skips harsh chlorogenic acids but tastes one note, and Japanese flash brew drips hot coffee straight onto ice. Turkish coffee, recognized by UNESCO, is boiled in a cezve, while Indonesia’s kopi kothok boils grounds with sugar and Brazil’s café tropeiro drops a glowing ember into the pot to settle the grounds. Then come the rule breakers, from Kyiv’s 2016 flat red, made with steamed orange and pomegranate juice, to Tim Hortons’ double double and the off menu Wayne Gretzky.

• Cuban coffee whips the first drops with sugar into espuma, and scarcity once led people to stretch coffee with roasted chickpeas or split peas.
• Senegal’s café Touba roasts beans with selim pepper, Hanoi whips egg yolks into egg coffee, and Indonesia blends avocado coffee.
• Rhode Island’s official state drink is coffee milk.
• Caribou Coffee holds a trademark on Depth Charge, its name for drip coffee with a shot of espresso.
• A Wayne Gretzky is nine creams and nine sugars, roughly 54 grams of fat and 99 grams of sugar in a 14 ounce cup.