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.

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.

The famous hot coffee lawsuit against McDonalds awarded an 81 year old women $3 million dollars. The Public outrage for self-responsibility was immediate. How can someone spill coffee on themself then sue for damages from the company that served the coffee? When you look at the details and circumstances one may feel as sympathetic as the jury who awarded her the damages.

The lady sustained third-degree burns on her groin, butt and inner thighs. She had to undergo skin grafts and was hospitalized for one week. This was not the first time someone complained to McDonalds about their excessively hot coffee and the court revealed that they received at least 700 reports of coffee burns and settle suits for up to $500,000. It was not a surprise to McDonald’s that their coffee was too hot so this proved their negligence.

So you can image the little old lady who when to McDonalds trusting the brand with her safety. No wonder why the jury gave her such a large award.

The Specialty Coffee Association of America annual covention opens this weekend in Charlotte and is expected to draw 8,000 attendees. That would make it among the higher-attended conventions ever held.

It probably won’t top the more than 10,000 last year who went to Seattle last year, the hot spot for specialty coffee. The southeast U.S. is a fast growing segment for gourmet coffee.

It looks like the Coca Cola Company is jumping into the coffee restuarant industry. The beverage giant has been suffering from declining sales in its sugar water catagory and is naturally looking for brand extentions. Taking on Starbucks will be a difficult task especially with a lackluster name such as Far Coast.

TORONTO — It’s a small deal that could pack a big pop, or just a little fizz. Coca-Cola has quietly leased a 4,000-square-foot retail space in Toronto, according to a report in Forbes. While it’s just a storefront, it foreshadows what insiders say is the Atlanta-based beverage giant’s dreams of dunking Starbucks in its own brew.

The lease, for a space that is much larger than the average Starbucks space, went into effect April 1, the same day Coca-Cola drench the world in Coca-Cola Blak, which a spokesman describes as a carbonated “Coca-Cola Classic-based beverage that finishes with a rich essence of coffee.”

But the spokesman declined to discuss or even confirm the Toronto lease, which was confirmed by real estate and design industry sources in Manhattan and Toronto. Coke was represented in the deal by CB Richard Ellis, which also refused to discuss the transaction, according to the report.

Coke’s spokesman did confirm that the Atlanta company has trademarked a hot-beverage brand name, FarCoast, although he would not elaborate further. “Far Coast is a brand that we’ll be launching in the future. It’s a hot brewed product,” said the spokesman. “We don’t comment on any future activities.” Read full article.

The latest finding may be the reason why past studies have conflicting results that coffee may be bad for your heart. The underlying factor is a genetic link in some people that may cause over 2 cups per day to increase their risk of a heart attack. Here is one of several articles that hit the news wires today based on a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Here’s a real caffeine jolt—heart attacks might be a risk for coffee drinkers with a common genetic trait that makes caffeine linger in their bodies, a study suggests.

Research on more than 4,000 people in Costa Rica found that about half had the trait and were considered “slow caffeine metabolizers.” The other half had the opposite trait, which caused their bodies to rapidly break down or metabolize caffeine, and coffee-drinking in this group appeared to reduce heart attack risks.

Among slow-metabolizers, those who drank two or more cups of coffee daily were at least 36 percent more likely to have a nonfatal heart attack than those who drank little or no coffee. Even higher risks were found for younger slow metabolizers—those under 50. They were up to four times more likely to have a heart attack than slow metabolizers in their age group who drank little or no coffee. Read full article.

The National Coffee Association reports that among coffee drinkers, taste is the No. 1 criteria in choosing their coffee. Now McDonalds is offering premium roast coffee to hold onto their market share. Currently one out of ten cups of coffee drunk out of home is at McDonalds.

The association also reports that last year, 108 million Americans spent more than $19 billion on coffee.

Nobel peace prize winner Oscar Arias, who is awaiting official confirmation as president, faces a formidable challenge if he is to make good his pledge to turn Costa Rica into Latin America’s most developed nation. Arias earned the 1987 Nobel peace price for helping to end civil war in Central America in the 1980s.

Born into coffee wealth, Arias and his brother increased their family’s wealth and power through investment in sugar plantations, alcohol production and real estate.

More great news for coffee drinkers. This one is a surprise. No wonder a coffee shop is not such a bad idea to go for a date.

A new study shows female rats that got their first shot of caffeine before mating were quicker than uncaffeinated females to scurry back to a male rat after sex.

The caffeinated females weren’t just looking for company. “It looks as if they wanted to have sex again,” researcher Fay Guarraci, PhD, tells WebMD.

Might caffeine also rev up women’s sex lives? Maybe, but it’s too early to say, says Guarraci, an assistant professor of psychology at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

The study, titled “Coffee, Tea, and Me,” is due to appear in an upcoming issue of Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior. Read full article.

Next time for her birthday forget the chocolates and go straight for the gourmet coffee.