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Coffee Connoisseur's Secrets

Coffee is far more than simply the brew that wakes people up in the morning. Coffee shops dot the city streets around the world with specialty coffee drinks drawing lines of customers. We will share the nuances of coffee from how to select the roast that suits your palate, to secret recipes of your favorite specialty drinks. We even have some marvelous recipes using coffee as a flavoring or spice to add a very special touch. If you love coffee, you will love these secrets. affiliate


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The Coffee Connoisseur's Secrets

Thursday, August 23, 2007

How To Make Espresso: The Perfect Espresso Martini Recipe

Learn How To Make Espresso: The Perfect Espresso Martini Recipe

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Keurig Single Cup Brewer and K-Cups Coffee, Tea & Cocoa

Keurig K-cups Coffee, Tea & Cocoa For Keurig Single Cup Brewers.

Did You Know That You Can SAVE $2.00 Per Box Plus Get Free Shipping On K-Cup Coffees For Keurig Single Cup Brewers?

K-Cups Coffee Club From Green Mountain Coffee For Automatic Coffee Delivery Of Your K-Cups Coffee, Tea, & Cocoa For One Cup At A Time.

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Wednesday, August 22, 2007

A Coffee Brewing System Without Heat Proves Its A Contender When It Comes To Taste

My Coffee Is Cold!

By Jon Bonné MSNBC

Updated: 4:13 p.m. PT Aug 20, 2004

Toddy Cold Brew Coffee SystemThe more you think about it, the more clear it becomes that hot-brewed coffee is by no means a culinary dictate. I personally gave up drip coffee for espresso years ago, finding that filtration brought too little flavor and too much caffeine into the mix.

Others find regular coffee too acidic. Of the estimated 54 million Americans who suffer heartburn, according to the National Heartburn Alliance, three-quarters say it can be caused by beverages.

Cold-brew coffee systems largely solve these problems, which may be why Toddy claims 20 to 30 percent of its customers are coffee lovers who find regular brews too much to stomach.

No heat, no plug
It’s not an immediately comfortable transition. The technology is profoundly low-tech: a plastic pitcher with a fabric filter, sitting atop a carafe that catches the finished product. No electricity needed, just gravity, a pound of ground beans and nine cups of cold water. That and 10 to 12 hours steeping time.

“We live in a culture that almost demands something be complicated,” says Brett Holmes, a partner in Houston-based Toddy Products. “It’s got to have a plug.”

The resulting concentrate is strong stuff. Toddy recommends three parts of either hot or cold water to one part concentrate, depending on how you like your coffee, not unlike an Americano.

During a two-week test in the MSNBC.com newsroom, the 3-to-1 ratio was rarely used, given our preference for maximum coffee in minimum time. My own fave was 1-to-1 with cold nonfat milk.

As it turns out, cold brew is familiar to the caffeinated elite. Many die-hard coffee fiends swear by systems like Toddy, which retails for $35, or the similar Filtron. Seattle’s Best Coffee fessed up earlier this month that they have for years used industrial-sized Toddys to brew concentrate for cold coffee drinks, and will now sell Toddy systems in their stores.

None other than Seattle’s Best founder Jim Stewart brought Toddys into the chain’s back rooms because they could turn out flavorful coffee without astringent or chemical qualities. Even after the coffee chain was bought by java megalith Starbucks, it opted to keep its own brewing traditions, including the Toddy.

“We’re not just trying to make up another of what everybody else is doing,” says Shannon Jones, Seattle’s Best’s director of field marketing.

Breaking the rules
The more you think about cold brew’s weirdness, the less weird it seems. After all, coffee has been around since before 1000 A.D., depending on whose version of history you believe, yet it was initially thought to have been eaten as a berry, not brewed.

Who decided on the drip method anyway? Prior to the early 1700s, when the Europeans developed a rudimentary coffee filter known as a biggins, coffee grounds were usually left in the brew. It wasn’t until 1908 that a German housewife named Melitta Bentz devised a paper filter for drip.

Even the precise espresso process — now a backbone of coffee consumption — wasn’t engineered until 1901. So why should the world be governed by the laws of Mr. Coffee?

“I can serve hot or cold coffee at the same time, and I can serve a large group without standing in the kitchen for a good 30 minutes pouring hot water through a drip filter,” says Toddy fan Kristin Yamaguchi, who first bought one to conserve space in her tiny Yokohama, Japan, kitchen.

Yamaguchi became an instant convert. While she prefers coffee cold, she not only enjoys hot Toddy but unlike regular coffee, can drink it later in the day and without food.

Four decades ago, a similar rethinking of coffee norms prompted the creation of the Toddy, due to sell its one millionth unit this fall.

In 1964, a newly graduated chemical engineer named Todd Simpson, ordered coffee in a small cafe in Guatemala. He received a small carafe of cool concentrate and some boiling water, which set him wondering whether his mother — who couldn’t otherwise stomach coffee — might be able to enjoy the cold stuff. She could, he devised a formal brewing device and the Toddy business was born.

Smoother on the stomach
Though coffee aficionados have murmured about it for the past 30 years, Holmes and his former college roommate, Strother Simpson — Todd’s son — now hope to take their contraption to the big leagues, including a marketing campaign, a redesign of the plastic pitcher and a line of ready-to-mix bottled coffee and tea concentrates. (As many Southerners will attest, tea can be cold-brewed, too.)

Where cold brew truly comes from is a total mystery. The Simpsons believe it may be an ancient Peruvian method, and coffee concentrates first showed up in 19th-century America. Another theory traces it back to Java. The trail seems to stop there.

What’s apparent, though, in Toddy’s independent lab tests and in our own less scientific tastings, is that cold concentrate contains far less acid and a good bit less caffeine.

Toddy claims to brew up two-thirds less caffeine than regular coffee; in a side-by side test using Starbucks’ regular blend, the Toddy version had a pH of 6.31 and 40 mg of caffeine per 100 grams of coffee, while Starbucks store-brewed clocked in at a pH of 5.48 and 61 mg of caffeine. (Lower numbers on the pH scale, which is measured logarithmically, denote more acid.)

In a beverage near you
Not all our newsroom testers were convinced. One enjoyed the taste but thought the mechanics of cold brewing were a bit much. (He compared it to a fondue pot.) Another suggested coffee fans who cherish a full dose of acid and caffeine might be turned off. There were inevitable comparisons to instant coffee.

Still, a carafe of concentrate remained fresh over a week, with no dulling of flavor. It even avoided absorbing the tastes of the newsroom refrigerator’s other contents — possibly the first beverage ever to avoid that fate.

Potential uses kept emerging. Camping trips. Coffee ice cubes for undiluted iced lattes.

Seattle’s Best recently announced it will take over café operations at more than 400 Borders locations, so Toddy concentrate could soon appear across the nation — though you might not know you’re drinking some. (Seattle’s Best’s Naughty Toddy and JavaKula iced drinks, among others, feature it.)

I’m likely to stick to my espresso machine at home. But cold-brewed coffee may just become a regular work habit, and not just because the always-overheated communal coffee pot fills me with dread.

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Organic Coffee Roasters; Fair Trade and Organic Coffee

CoffeeAM is a certified Organic Coffee Handler and Processor by the Georgia Crop Improvement Association Organic Certification Program (GCIAOCP). They abide by the standards established by the National Organic Program.

Why is this so important? Anyone can sell certified organic coffee, but only Certified Organic Coffee Handlers and Processors can legally roast organic coffees.

If your source for organic coffee is not a legally certified handler, they are purchasing their beans pre-roasted and pre-packaged from another source.

CoffeeAM is dedicated to bringing you the freshest organic coffee available online. They buy organic beans raw and roast and package them prior to shipping.

They have worked very hard to obtain their certification to insure our customers recieve the freshest coffee at the best prices! Check out their products, you will be more than pleased by the quality as well as the prices. Buy purchasing larger quantities, you will recieve the best bargain on organic coffees.

Bolivia Colonial Caranavi Organic Coffee 5 lb. Bag $31.25 1 lb Bag: $10.95
Colombia Cafe Organico Mesa de los Santos Organic Coffee 5 lb. Bag $34.75 1 lb Bag: $11.95

Costa Rica 'La Amistad' Organic Coffee 5 lb. Bag $38.95 1 lb Bag: $11.95
Decaf Organic Swiss Water Peru Coffee 5 lb. Bag $34.75 1 lb Bag: $10.95


Fair Trade Coffee: Central American Beneficio 5 lb. Bag $34.75 1 lb Bag: $10.95
Organic Galapagos Island Estate Coffee 5 lb. Bag $49.95 1 lb Bag: $13.95


Organic Guatemala "Santiago Atitlan" Coffee 5 lb. Bag $31.25 1 lb Bag: $10.95
Organic Mexico Coffee 5 lb. Bag $31.25 1 lb Bag: $9.95


Organic Peru "Andes Gold" Coffee 5 lb. Bag $31.25 1 lb Bag: $9.95
Sumatra 'Gayo Mountain' Organic Coffee 5 lb. Bag $36.25 1 lb Bag: $10.95


Java Queen International is an authorized coffee merchant for CoffeeAM's organic coffee

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Selecting The Right Coffee For During Or After Your Meal

Most holiday dinners are made and presented with lots of care and attention to the taste of the food. But paying attention to what's in the cup can also affect what's on the plate. When entertaining this year, make holiday dinners more memorable by pairing the right coffee with your meal.

The level of roast — light, medium, medium-dark or dark — dictates the intensity of each coffee and helps determine what foods it will pair with best. The general rule is, the richer the food, the darker the coffee needed to balance the flavor.

While most people think of coffee as an after-dinner drink, it can be served throughout the meal. When serving coffee with dinner, a non-flavored roast is best. Most holiday meals are very rich, so a medium or medium-dark roast is best to balance the richness of the food. A "Colombian supreme" or medium-dark blend is a great compliment to holiday dinners.

If serving a coffee over the course of a meal, be sure to keep the coffee fresh. Java Queen International CEO, Donna-Lee Moore-Stout, recommends keeping coffee fresh and hot during and after a meal by using air pots. Coffee can get "burned" by sitting on a hot plate meant to keep it warm. Coffee can also lose freshness if exposed to air for more than 20 minutes So she suggests that you use freshly roasted coffee beans, grind your coffee just before you make your fresh pot of coffee and use an air pot to keep coffee hot — without burning it — and fresh for several hours.

After dinner, consider offering a selection of coffees to match the range of desserts that are offered. When pairing desserts and coffee, consider the richness of the dessert. Light roasts, because of their delicate flavors, go marvelously with light desserts, but are overwhelmed by rich desserts. Conversely, rich sweets are best answered by dark coffees that can stand up to the flavor. Many holiday desserts, such as pecan pie, pumpkin pie or rich chocolate cakes, should be served with a darker coffee, like a deliciously smoky French roast. Flavors also make great complements to dessert.

You can also indulge in holiday flavors without the guilt by selecting a flavored coffee instead of dessert. Many premium coffees have special roasts, such as pumpkin spice coffee or peppermint, just for this time of year. Favorites such as French vanilla or hazelnut also are great after-dinner coffee flavors.

Coffee tip: To maximize its freshness, open coffee as close to the meal as possible and keep it in an airtight container. (Don't keep coffee in the fridge or freezer, where there can be condensation or food odors.)


Java Queen International Offers Freshly Roasted Gourmet Coffee And Gourmet Loose Leaf Teas.

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Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Cold Brew Coffee Hot Trend! Cold Coffee Recipes

Cold-brew coffee is a hot trend

Brewing java in the fridge creates a trendy but low-tech drink


02:56 PM CDT on Tuesday, August 21, 2007
By KAREN ELIZABETH WATTS / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News



EVANS CAGLAGE/DMN
Make shots with cold-brew coffee concentrate and heavy cream, and serve with a bite of chocolate for an after-meal sweet. If summer's heat has left you feeling bitter and overextracted, think cold brew, as in cold-brewed coffee.

Fans say cold-brewed coffee is less bitter than coffee that's been subjected to heat. And while there are gadgets for producing cold-brew, you can make it with no special equipment. The technique is so low-tech that anyone with running water can enjoy it.

The following recipes were tested with Parisi Artisan's Bolivian organic dark roast coffee from Costco. The description states that the blend is "rich and sweet with hints of milk chocolate and a nuance of honeysuckle." It made a perfect cold brew.



Karen Elizabeth Watts is a Kansas City food stylist.


BASIC COLD-BREW COFFEE


10 cups of cold water

1 pound coffee, medium grind


Place ground coffee in a large container. Pour water over coffee. Refrigerate container for 12 to 24 hours.

Strain elixir through a coffee filter, and strain it again. (Sometimes, it is a good idea to strain it again, just to make sure no grounds made it through.) Refrigerate and use as needed. Makes 6 cups of cold-brew concentrate.



FLANK STEAK MARINADE TO WAKE YOU

½ cup cold-brew coffee

¼ cup soy sauce

¼ cup vegetable oil

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

3 tablespoons dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon minced garlic

2 large flank steaks


In a large zip-top bag, combine coffee, soy sauce, oil, vinegar, sugar, ginger, pepper, salt and garlic. Add flank steaks to marinade, and refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours.

When ready to cook, remove steaks from marinade, reserving marinade. Grill steaks to desired doneness.

Pour marinade into a skillet and bring to a boil. Allow to boil for at least 3 minutes, reducing liquid by half. Serve with grilled sliced flank steaks. Makes 2 to 4 servings.


USING COLD-BREW

Use treat sticks and paper cups to make Frozen Café pops with milk and cold-brew coffee concentrate. ICED COFFEE: Add 1/4 cup cold brew to 1 cup of cold water. Serve over ice.


ICED COFFEE WITH MILK: If you prefer milk in your coffee, begin with the same 1/4 cup cold brew and add 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup milk. Serve over ice.

BABY MOCHA CAKES (pictured): Using your favorite chocolate cake mix, simply replace the water with the cold-brew concentrate, adding the perfect coffee undertones to the cake. A regular cake mix makes 6 to 7 dozen "baby cakes" in mini muffin pans. The cooking time should be decreased to 6 minutes (at 350 F). Top finished cakes with buttercream icing, cocoa powder or powdered sugar.




Baby Mocha Cakes are infused with cold-brew coffee, which replaces the water in the recipe. SHOTS SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED (pictured): Fill a martini shaker with ice and add 1/2 cup cold-brew concentrate and 1/2 cup heavy cream. Shake and strain into shot glasses. Serve with a bite of chocolate for a perfect after-meal sweet.

FROZEN CAFÉ (pictured): If you don't have a frozen treat mold, you can make your own. In a small plastic or paper cup, freeze your favorite blend of cold brew and milk in layers. To keep a stick in place while freezing the first layer, tightly cover the cup with plastic wrap, and poke the stick through the middle into the liquid. After the first layer is frozen, the plastic wrap can be removed for freezing the rest of the layers.

CAFÉ BUTTER
Place 2 tablespoons cold-brew coffee, 1 table- spoon vanilla and 2 sticks softened, unsalted butter into bowl of food processor and pulse with metal blade until coffee and vanilla are incorporated into butter. Refrigerate until ready to wake up pancakes or toast.

COFFEE ICE TIPS
•Freeze cold-brew coffee in an ice-cube tray.

•When making iced drinks, use half regular ice and half cold-brew coffee ice, avoiding the proverbial meltdown of an iced coffee drink.

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Grocery Store Coffee Sales Continue To Fall! Coffee Roasters Coffee Delivery Popular.

Maxwell House, Folgers Fade as Consumers Shell Out for Premium Brands
By Emily Bryson York

Published: August 20, 2007

A correction has been made in this story. See below for details.

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- How is it that Maxwell House and Folgers, a decade ago the unrivaled kings of coffee, ended up on the back burner?
Folgers has increased spending and launced a new campaign, but has changing consumer behavior altered the coffee market?

The short answer is Starbucks -- or, more accurately, a cultural shift in how Americans drink coffee that has largely been driven by its ilk. Although Folgers and Maxwell House still control the bulk of supermarket ground-coffee sales, the total $29 billion coffee industry has become more about grabbing a paper cup on the way to work rather than brewing coffee at home.

Coffee shops
In 2001, Datamonitor estimated that retail channels, including supermarkets, drug stores and discount clubs, accounted for 50% of U.S coffee sales. But by the end of 2006, that share had fallen to 34%. Meanwhile, the total market climbed more than 50% during the same period, according to Datamonitor, and is expected to grow another $10 billion to $39 billion by 2011, driven mainly by coffee shops.

"It's a complete shift in thinking by the consumer," said Lauren DeSanto, analyst with Morningstar. "You suddenly had premium coffees come available, and people responded well, by really opening their wallets."

Not only are people drinking anywhere from one- to two-thirds of their java outside the home, but specialty brands are increasingly invading the supermarket aisles that were once the purview of Maxwell House and Folgers. And they are seeing success: Brands such as Newman's Own, Intellegentsia and Green Mountain are all gaining market share, largely at the two titans' expense.

Patrick Schumann of Edward Jones said the old reliable brands aren't likely to pick up any lost sales. "The brands that have been established as being higher-quality really are the brands that are going to be able to show continued momentum," he said.

Note to Kraft and P&G
Translation: If Kraft and Procter & Gamble want to save, rather than sell, their coffee businesses, they're going to have to make a product their own executives will drink.

"These companies don't throw very many people at it," said Dan Cox, president at coffee-tasting service Coffee Enterprises, who worked with McDonald's to turn around its coffee business in 2005. "What does their president drink? It doesn't work unless it comes from the top down."

Mr. Cox pointed to the boots-on-the-ground efforts of regional roasters and their tendency to hire people who are passionate about coffee. P&G and Kraft, by comparison, rely more on TV advertising than the grass-roots marketing that has built brands such as Starbucks.

But even traditional ad outlays have fallen for one supermarket stalwart. Kraft spent only $17 million on Maxwell House last year, according to Ad Age's Leading National Advertisers report, down more than 33% from $25.6 million the year before. Folgers, meanwhile, spent about $73 million in measured media -- up more than 137%.

For P&G, which controls 35% of the ground-coffee market -- valued at $2 billion in food, drug and mass merchandisers excluding Wal-Mart, according to Information Resources Inc. -- the outlook is somewhat sunnier than at Kraft, which IRI said holds 34%. P&G also owns Millstone, which has had fair success in the grocery channel, and is licensing the Dunkin' Donuts name for a supermarket brand. "We saw an opportunity to drive incremental growth with a great-tasting brand that has high customer loyalty," said Folgers spokesman Bryan Brown.

Folgers' latest effort
Folgers launched an ad campaign this summer from Publicis Groupe's Saatchi & Saatchi, New York, featuring Chandra Wilson from "Grey's Anatomy" and TV journalist Lisa Ling.

P&G's total coffee sales were $727 million for the 52 weeks ended July 15, IRI said. Yet lingering production problems from Hurricane Katrina (P&G's facilities are in New Orleans) and increasing commodity prices have made business difficult and a sell-off likely.

Kraft, meanwhile, has announced that it's switching its coffee blend from cheaper robusto beans to fuller-bodied Arabica. "We believe it's going to put Maxwell House on a new growth trajectory," said spokeswoman Bridget MacConnell.

Kraft also has a licensing agreement to market Starbucks-branded coffee in grocery stores. According to the company, its Starbucks grocery business grew 8% in 2006 and has already risen 11.4% percent in 2007.

But according to IRI, Kraft's Starbucks-brand whole-bean sales in supermarkets totaled $108 million in the 52 weeks ended July 15, just a fraction of Maxwell House's $697 million. So why, then, if Starbucks is selling briskly in street-corner shops, aren't consumers buying more of it at the supermarket to brew in their kitchens?

Home brewing
"Most consumers have a difficult time making a decent cup of coffee at home," Mr. Cox said. "They don't own commercial brewing equipment and they're impatient."

That makes all the more serious signs that Maxwell House has been flagging. The company sold its Texas roasting facility earlier this year, and activist shareholders have been pushing for divestments.

~ ~ ~
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Kraft no longer roasts its own coffee. The company has roasting plants in Jacksonville, Fla. and San Leandro, Calif.

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Gourmet Coffees - a Brief Overview of Beans

by Jerry Powell


The coffee plant has two main species. There is the Coffea Arabica, which is the more traditional coffee and considered to be superior in flavor, and the Coffea Canephora known more commonly as Robusta. Robusta tends to be higher in caffeine and can be grown in climates and environments were Arabica would not be profitable. Robusta is also typically more bitter and acidic in flavor. Because of this Robusta tends to be less expensive. High quality Robusta is also used to blend espresso for more bite, and to lower costs.

A little known fact is that some coffee beans improve their flavor with age. It is the green unroasted beans which are aged; the typical length of time is 3 years, though there are some houses which sell beans aged to 7 years. Aged beans have a fuller flavor and are less acidic.

Growing conditions, soil types and weather patterns during the growing season all contribute to the flavor of the bean, creating the differences in flavor from points of origin, such as Kenya or Brazil. However, roasting adds its own flavor, sometimes to the point that it is difficult to tell where the beans originated from, even by experienced cuppers.

The lighter the roast the more the natural flavor of the bean remains. This is why beans from regions such as Kenya or Java are normally roasted lightly, retaining their regional characteristics and dominate flavors. There is a method of roasting in Malaysia which adds butter during the roasting producing a variety called Ipoh White Coffee.

Beans roasted to darker browns begin to taste more like the method of roasting than the original flavors. Dark roasts such as French or Vienna Roasts tend to completely eclipse the original flavor. Roasting to whatever degree, while adding stronger flavor does not effect the amount of caffeine of the bean.

Fry pan roasting was popular in the 19th century, since the beans were normally shipped and purchased still in their green state. You simply poured the green coffee beans in a frying pan and roasted them in the kitchen. This process took a great deal of skill to do in a consistent manner. Fry pan roasting became much less popular when vacuum sealing pre-roasted coffee was perfected. However, in order to vacuum seal roasted beans, you had to wait for them to stop emitting CO2, as roasted beans do for several days after the roasting process. What this meant was that vacuum sealed coffee was always just a little stale as the flavors begin to turn bitter and deteriorate in just about a week after roasting.

Home roasting is once again becoming popular with the creation of computerized drum roasters which help simplify the process. There are some people who have found methods of effectively roasting beans using their hot air pop corn makers.

The region the bean is from as discussed before is a primary factor to the type of flavor you can expect from the brew, though it is very true that 'new' or unexpected tastes come from every region.

Arabia and Africa grow their coffee beans in high altitudes in the rich black soils of Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and Tanzania. The flavors of these beans are distinct and of legendary status.

The Americas coffees are grown in near rainforest conditions in areas such as Colombia, Costa Rica and Guatemala. Coffees of the Americas tend to be very well balanced and aromatic.

The Pacifics includes coffees from Sumatra, Java, New Guinea and Sulawesi, which are as various in flavor as the islands they come from.

Then there are the exotics such as certified Jamaica Blue Mountain and certified Hawaiian Kona. These are rare indeed and can go for as much as $60.00 per pound.


About the Author
Jerry Powell is the Owner of a Popular site Know as Gourmet911.com. As you can see from our name, we are here to help you learn more about different kinds of Gourmet food and Wines, Coffees from all around the world. http://www.gourmet911.com/

Click Here For Your Perfect Cup Of Coffee In Whatever Roast You Love.



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