Gourmet Coffee Beans

Latte’s popularity is now greater than cappuccino in the UK.

London – The latte has overtaken the cappuccino as Britain’s favourite coffee - with 227,000 cups downed every hour.
Britons now consume 935 million lattes every year, enough to fill 561 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
The firm Costa Coffee has seen its latte sales rise 10 per cent this year and say hit TV shows have increased the popularity of the latte.
Mike Lawless, head of UK Marketing for Costa, said: “Customer research showed lattes have become the most popular drink for the first time in our 35-year history.”

Here in South Florida we have had the original Latte now for several decades, its called Cafe con Leche. This is the identical drink but with more sugar and made with Cuban coffee.

I have to report this cool looking volcano eruption in Indonesia. The cone looks very much like the Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica which was the inspiration for our trademark and picture on our packaging.

Washington – A team of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists from the Cascades Volcano Observatory (CVO) in Washington state has spent three weeks in Indonesia, working with the government there to evaluate the threat of volcanic eruptions.

Their work included studying Mount Merapi in central Java, a 9,800-foot peak considered the most dangerous of Indonesia’s 129 active volcanoes because of the large nearby population, a frequency of severe eruptions, and increased activity in past weeks.

Mount Merapi´s threat is magnified because it is near Yogyakarta, home to more than 1 million people, and located less than 20 miles from the volcano’s summit, according to a May 17 USGS press release.

More than 100,000 people also live within hazardous zones on the flanks of the volcano. During the past 12 years, Mount Merapi erupted six times.

Mount Merapi began showing signs of new unrest in summer 2005, with an increase in seismic activity that prompted the Merapi Volcano Observatory to conduct volcano hazard education programs in villages on the volcano’s flanks. Read full article.

Legend has it that 90% of the world’s coffee can be traced to a simple act of theft. The Dutch were the first to bring coffee to the new world and cultivate it commercially. The mayor of Amsterdam in 1714 sent Louis XIV of France a coffee tree. About nine years later a young naval officer, Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu stole a seedling from this tree and brought it to his home in the Caribbean. De Clieu took special care of the seeding despite the harsh voyage. He planted it in Martinique and 50 years later there were more than 19 million coffee trees on the island.

It is believed that that all of the trees in the West Indies came from this single seeding. Missionaries, traders and colonists tooks seedings to other islands and throughout Latin America. Coffee became one of the New World’s most profitable crops by the end of the eightenth century. This one seeding is responsible for the existence of coffee farming in the New World.

Italians first brought coffee to Europe. The first shipment came from Turkey to Venice in 1615. Coffee houses had opened in the major European cities of Paris, Marseilles, Oxford, London, Venice and Exeter by the mid-seventeenth century.

The Coffee shops of Europe became platforms for intellectual discussions and had a nickname, “penny universities” which was the price to enter. Women were not allowd in English coffee houses and were exclusively for women.

The coffee house that was frequented became associated with a man’s politics. At the height of the coffee house popularity in London, they were denounced as places for treasonous activities. So much so that King Charles II attempted to ban them but it was reversed due to popular demand.

To determine the exact number of cups does take some measuring to pinpoint it. It is a learning process. I first put the cup setting to grind the projected amount in my burr coffee grinder then I measure the coffee grounds from the container to find the best setting. This also varies depending on the type of ground fine or coarse. A less for for fine a grind because the grounds are more compact and and more for coarse.

In my Cusinart Burr Coffee Grinder, if I want to grind a different type of coffee, such as decaf for a single pot, I usually pull out my blade grinder since emptying out hopper and the blades is a major project.

To keep my beans fresh I usually only fill the bean hopper about half-way. The top does keep it sealed so I would not worry too much.

A “coffee industry problem” is that a true cup of
coffee is 6 oz. but the majority of coffee makers use
4 oz. The correct measurement is 1 tablespoon for each
6 oz. then adjust to taste. To get there you need to
measure your water with a measuring cup and measure
your cup with a measuring spoon. After you do this a
few time you can figure out exactly how much water and
your grinder settings for a great cup of coffee.

I have a Capresso coffee maker that I bought last
month and just went throught this process to fine tune
how I like my coffee. For the 10 cup water level I use
the the 4 1/2 cup grind setting with the grind set two
notches below the mid-point.

Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. is testing a coffee-flavoured gum, known as Doublemint Kona Creme, in 7-Eleven stores across the country. Available for about 99 cents in 17-stick packs, the gum is an offshoot of the company`s Wrigley`s Coffee Gum, reported by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Coffee Gum, which has garnered a niche market since its introduction in China last year. Consumers shouldn’t look to this for a caffeine fix. I purely is a a coffee flavored gum.

Hawaii is the only state where coffee is grown in the USA. There are 6,500 acres of coffee on Hawaii’s five major islands that produce 7 million coffee beans. The largest producer is Kauai and the most famous is Kona.

The trees arrived in 1825 after the Governor of Oahu, Chief Boki, acquired them in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

I believe humans get a lot done, not because we’re
smart, but because we have thumbs so we can make
coffee.

-Flash Rosenberg