Gourmet Coffee Beans

Try to figure out what this picture is made from.

Artist assistants stand next to 3,604 cups of coffee which have been made into a giant Mona Lisa in Sydney , Australia . The 3,604 cups of coffee were each filled with different amounts of milk to create the different shades!

Ethiopian coffee exporters, accused of hoarding in Africa’s biggest producer, must accept lower global prices and sell stocks, the head of Ethiopia’s new commodity exchange said on Friday.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi issued a stern warning to exporters during a private meeting with industry players last week, threatening to “cut off their hands” if they did not release stocks they were holding in the hope of better prices. Eleni Gabre-Madhin, chief executive officer of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX), said Meles used very strong language and had likened the exporters’ behaviour to a strike. “He gave them a stern talking to, and I think it was all done to say ‘You need to adjust to the new reality’,” she told Reuters in an interview. “I think the message was fairly clear: the market is out of line, there is evidence of stock-keeping or stockholding, and it looks like it’s for reasons that are not going to turn around.”

Ethiopia prides itself as the birthplace of coffee. It earned more than $525 million from exports of 170,888 tonnes of mostly high quality arabicas in 2007/2008 (June/July) — about 60 percent of the Horn of Africa country’s foreign exchange revenue. Some 15 million smallholder farmers grow the beans, mostly in the misty forested highlands of its southwestern region. But Eleni said overall production this season was forecast to drop 14.7 percent from an annual average of 330,000 tonnes, and some southern zones had seen almost total crop failure. “This is very dramatic,” she said. “But, unfortunately, we don’t think expectations have been adjusted.” “DOUBLE SQUEEZE”

The ECX was set up to replace a murky auction system that was often abused by market players, and it began trading coffee at the start of December. Since then, it has traded beans worth 196 million Ethiopian birr ($17.90 million). Meanwhile, coffee prices on the global market have fallen by more than a third in the last 12 months. Benchmark arabica futures on ICE were trading around $1.205 per lb on Friday, down 29 percent from a peak of $1.696 in February 2008. “There is awareness that there is a production shortfall domestically, so we’re in a kind of double squeeze, as I see it, between downward pressure from the world market and an upward pressure from the domestic market,” Eleni said. “So that is at the heart of this misalignment of our market right now.” The local currency has also plummeted 10 percent over just the last month, which she said had also encouraged some buyers to delay purchases in the hope of cheaper deals. The ECX, which has also been trading agricultural commodities like maize, wheat, corn and sesame since April, requires sellers to produce warehouse receipts and buyers to show pre-trade deposits in banks.

This month it increased its storage charges to commercial levels to remove what Eleni called a “perverse incentive” to hold onto stocks, while also reducing storage periods. Since the global credit crunch was likely to curb foreign investment and development aid to Ethiopia, she said Meles felt entitled to speak frankly to exporters who received concessional loans and other support from his government. “He said ‘I would be the last person to tell you not to make profits’,” she said. “However, he said that if what you do … hurts our national economy, then as a society we have to put some checks and balances in place. He was very gentle, but his point was clear.

Kingston – Tropical Storm Gustav lashed Jamaica Thursday, tearing roofs off buildings and uprooting trees while bringing heavy rains. Local officials ordered the evacuation of low-lying areas as forecasters warned of floods and landslides. The airport in Kingston was closed and buses stopped operation. Word on the coffee crop is still early but it cannot be good considering Tropical Storm Fay also visited the island last week.

The Cayman Islands are next in the slow-moving Gustav’s itinerary today and a hurricane watch is in effect there. The latest death count from the storm is 51 in Haiti and eight in the Dominican Republic.

Coffee traders continue to monitor action of Tropical Storm Gustav, though for now, little potential for damage to the coffee stocks in New Orleans warehouses is seen, sources said.

Last year’s July issue of Wired Magazine “What’s Inside” expose on Red Bull. I am sure many of us like me have no idea so this will be surprising for some.

Glucose – Sugar water

Taurine – Also known as 2-aminoethane-sulfonic acid, this was originally isolated from bull bile in 1827. Don’t worry as this in now made sythetically.

Glucuronolactone – Not many studies are available that ascertain what this can do for you.

Caffeine – Ahh, the driver of coffee. Increases concentration and reaction speed improve emotional stat and boost metabolism.

Niacin – Also used to lower cholesterol. This increased the HDL, good cholesterol, is in such low amount that you will not be able to use this as an excuse to drink to improve your pipe work.

Sodium Citrate – Used as a preservative in soft drinks and soft cheese. This helps convert glucose into lactic acid during exercise that has been proven to improve athletic performance.

Inositol – Found in animal muscle, this carbohydrate has been found to reduce depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic attacks and agoraphobia. This sounds great but you will need to drink 360 cans per day to make this chemical meaning for you.

Chieti, Italy – A new analysis of the GISSI-Prevenzione trial shows that moderate coffee intake does not appear to have any effect on future cardiovascular events in patients who have already had an MI. Dr Maria Giuseppina Silletta (Consorzio Mario Negri Sud, Santa Maria Imbaro, Italy) and colleagues report their results online December 3, 2007 in Circulation.

Silletta stressed to heartwire, however, that the findings can really be applied only to patients eating a Mediterranean diet who drink coffee prepared in the Italian way. Most of the participants in this study drank mocha or espresso coffee, which is unfiltered—the ground coffee beans are in contact with hot water for only a very short time, Silletta explained.

“We will tell patients that it is no problem for them to drink a moderate amount of coffee (two to four cups per day) after a heart attack, there is no cause for concern,” she said. But she noted that her team could not draw conclusions about very high coffee intake because of the small number of patients included in this category.

First to evaluate effects of coffee on a large prospective cohort of CHD patients

The Italian researchers explain that many studies have looked at the association between coffee consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease, “but the issue remains controversial.” Case-control studies suggest a harmful effect of coffee drinking on the risk of CHD, whereas prospective cohort studies show conflicting findings. And more recent studies have shown that coffee consumption may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes, they say.

But evidence is scarce on the association between coffee drinking and cardiovascular events among patients with documented CVD, they point out. Hence they decided to analyze data from a large cohort of patients who had had an MI and were enrolled in the GISSI-Prevenzione trial.

In their analysis, they included 11 231 patients with recent MI (within past three months), the majority of whom were male (n=9584). Usual dietary habits were assessed at baseline and updated at 0.5 and 1.5 years. Coffee consumption was categorized as never/almost never, low (less than two cups per day), moderate (two to four cups per day), or high (more than four cups per day).

The main outcome measure was the cumulative incidence of cardiovascular events (cardiovascular death, nonfatal MI, and nonfatal stroke). A total of 1167 events occurred during the three-and-a-half-year follow-up, with no significant differences found between the various categories of coffee drinker.

And when they analyzed stroke, MI, and sudden cardiac death separately, they also found no significant differences in CV events between the different levels of coffee drinkers. The findings on sudden death are of particular interest, they say, because there has been concern that drinking coffee might increase fatal arrhythmias.

“The present study is the first to evaluate the effects of coffee consumption on a large prospective cohort of patients with established CHD. Ultimately, coffee consumption did not change the risk of CHD events, stroke, and sudden death,” the researchers note.

Coffee and CVD: A controversial issue Silletta et al go on to discuss why the issue of coffee and CVD is so controversial. For example, two recent studies showed, respectively, a J-shaped association between coffee intake and the risk of CHD and a U-shaped association, they note.

“Can the discrepancies between the results from different studies ever be reconciled or explained?” they wonder. They discuss several factors that may have affected the conclusions of various studies, particularly the earlier ones, such as recall and selection bias, inadequate adjustment for confounding factors, and publication bias.

Other difficulties in interpreting results include variations in cup size, brewing methods for coffee preparation, amount of caffeine contained in coffee beans, and the multitude of biologically active substances that are contained in coffee—”all could contribute to misclassification of exposure and may in part explain some conflicting results.”

In addition, the development of tolerance to the effects of caffeine among habitual drinkers “adds to the complexity of the effects of coffee” and may make it hard to extrapolate short-term metabolic studies to long-term use of coffee, they conclude.

Source: www.theheart.org

With prices of gourmet coffee approaching sticker-shock levels, scientists in Illinois are reporting development of a method to “fingerprint” coffee to detect when corn has been mixed in to short-change customers. Such adulteration of Brazilian coffee is among the most serious problems affecting coffee quality – with cereal grains, coffee twigs, and brown sugar sometimes mixed into the genuine article. The research focuses on detecting corn, probably the most widely used adulterant.

The study describes development and use on six popular coffee brands of a method for analysing one form of vitamin E in Brazilian coffee. Because roasted corn samples have high concentrations of vitamin E, it serves as a fingerprint for adulteration with corn. In laboratory tests they found that one brand of Brazilian coffee contained almost 9 percent corn. Although noting that their results are preliminary, the scientists say their new method appears to be “a significant improvement” over existing tests to detect corn adulteration. Source: Science Daily.

Milan – According to the International Coffee Organisation, Hurricane Dean may have damaged Jamaica’s coffee harvest, half of which is of the Blue Mountain variety.

The hurricane may have damaged coffee-processing infrastructure. Mudslides may block roads, delaying the start of the harvest, according to German research- company F.O. Licht

“Coffee farms are fairly resilient to hurricanes,” Pablo Dubois, head of operations at the ICO, said in a interview. “What is most under threat are the processing plants. There may well have been damage there.”

Norman Grant, president of the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS), said a preliminary assessment shows that the agricultural sector has been hit hard.

Reports are that banana fields in St. Mary and Portland have been ravaged, while cane fields in St. Thomas and St. Catherine suffered significant damage.

“From livestock to traditional tree crops to the non-traditional, (including) the coffee crop that had looked absolutely brilliant, but with the type of wind it might have suffered reasonable to substantial losses,” Grant said.

The JAS president said that because many roads remain blocked, the organisation was unable to access rural farmers to provide detailed information of the sector’s loss.

Milan – According to the International Coffee Organisation, Hurricane Dean may have damaged Jamaica’s coffee harvest, half of which is of the Blue Mountain variety.

The hurricane may have damaged coffee-processing infrastructure. Mudslides may block roads, delaying the start of the harvest, according to German research- company F.O. Licht

“Coffee farms are fairly resilient to hurricanes,” Pablo Dubois, head of operations at the ICO, said in a interview. “What is most under threat are the processing plants. There may well have been damage there.”

Norman Grant, president of the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS), said a preliminary assessment shows that the agricultural sector has been hit hard.

Reports are that banana fields in St. Mary and Portland have been ravaged, while cane fields in St. Thomas and St. Catherine suffered significant damage.

“From livestock to traditional tree crops to the non-traditional, (including) the coffee crop that had looked absolutely brilliant, but with the type of wind it might have suffered reasonable to substantial losses,” Grant said.

The JAS president said that because many roads remain blocked, the organization was unable to access rural farmers to provide detailed information of the sector’s loss.

Coffee lovers the world over are unknowingly drinking coffee that was illegally grown inside one of the world’s most important national parks for tigers, elephants and rhinos, according to an investigative report released by World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Illegally grown coffee from Indonesia is mixed with legally grown coffee beans and sold to such companies as Kraft Foods and Nestle among other major companies in the United States and abroad.

WWF tracked the illegal cultivation of coffee inside Indonesia’s remote Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park (BBS) all the way through its export routes to multinational coffee companies and the shelves of grocery stores across the United States, Europe and Asia using satellite imaging, interviews with coffee farmers and traders, and by monitoring coffee trade routes.

Trade of illegal coffee is possible because neither exporters nor importers have any mechanisms in place to prevent the illegal beans from entering the supply chains. Bukit Barisan Selatan, a World Heritage Site on the southern tip of Sumatra Island, is one of the few protected areas where Sumatran tigers, elephants and rhinos coexist. It has already lost nearly 30% of its forest cover to illegal agriculture, most of which is for coffee production.

Indonesia is the world s second-largest exporter of robusta, a kind of bean often used in instant and packaged coffee sold in supermarkets. At least half the country s coffee is exported through the port of Lampung, adjacent to the national park. WWF s investigation found farmers growing coffee on more than 173 square miles of park land (about two-thirds the size of Chicago) and producing more than 19,600 tons of coffee there each year. Most wildlife has already abandoned the sections of the park that have been illegally converted to coffee plantations. Illegally grown coffee is exported to at least 52 countries.

The Alliance for Coffee Excellence, Inc. (ACE) is pleased to announced the addition of Costa Rica to its prestigious Cup of Excellence® competition line up for 2007. The Specialty Coffee Association of Costa Rica (SCACR) recently announced its plans to hold the international cupping week during May 14th to 18th and the auction June 21st. Cup of Excellence supporters are already signing up to be included on the jury and to bid at the auction.

“With the new joint venture between COE and the Specialty Coffee Association of Costa Rica we are looking forward to motivate the Costa Rica coffee producers to continue improving their agricultural coffee practices and milling, that as a result will turn into exceptional coffee quality lots,” explained Gema Siri the SCACR Executive Director. “Through the COE Program we hope more international roasters fall in love with the quality we are producing and also open new opportunities for specialty coffees of Costa Rica to be known worldwide as one of the best coffees of the world,” she continued.

Five Central American countries are now part of the Cup of Excellence program which manages the selection of the country’s finest coffees during a very stringent 3 week process involving 2 different juries. “Costa Rican coffees are known world wide for their quality and are an important part of any specialty coffee company”, explained Susie Spindler, Executive director of ACE. “These coffees will be an exciting addition to our exemplary coffee line up and will bring many buyers to the auction”.

The winning farmers will be presented their Cup of Excellence award during an emotional awards ceremony on the evening of May 18, 2007 when farmers, press, dignitaries and the international jury anxiously will await the winners’ names to be announced.

The Costa Rican program will mark the thirty-third competition for the Cup of Excellence program since it’s beginnings in 1999. Other current countries to host the program include Brazil, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Colombia. The Cup of Excellence program is managed by the non-profit Alliance for Coffee Excellence, Inc, The state of the art Cup of Excellence auction has been managed in partnership with CommoditiesOne, a leading software development firm since 2002. For more information about the Cup of Excellence program, to become a member and to learn more about Costa Rica’s finest coffees log on to www.scacr.com