Good Water for Good Coffee!
A recent study from the Swiss World Wildlife Fund International proved that bottled water is no safer or healthier than water that comes from the tap. But the real question about water preference has always rested on the question of taste not safety. As it happens, however, the issue of safety strongly affects the issue […]
Caffeine Benefits Boat Sails onto the Mainstream
We’ve been touting the incredible list of caffeine’s health benefits for some time. (See our post, “Caffeine: Unexplored Source of Pharmacological Treasures.) However, ever since the first use of coffee in the Yemen around 1500, many nay-sayers have been trying to brand coffee and caffeine as harmful and dangerous. That’s why we find it encouraging […]
Spending on Coffee a Significant Expense for Many
How much are you spending on coffee in a year? Maybe more than you realize. A recent study shows that Americans consume an average of three large cups of coffee per day. Some of this coffee is made at home and doesn’t cost very much to brew. However, a great deal of this coffee is purchased at […]
Coffee Tasting – Jamaican Blue Mountain
My friend Casey gave me a half pound of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee beans for Christmas, and today I performed a taste test against my favored Guatemalan Huehuetenango. I first prepared a small pot of the Huehuetenango, grinding the beans fairly finely and making enough for five six-ounce cups (three ten-ounce cups). I drank two […]
Coffee Faucet — Turn the Handle for a Cup!
An interesting innovation in the world of coffee preparation is a device called the Scanomat TopBrewer. It looks like a spigot that is mounted on a kitchen counter without a sink. Turn the handle and coffee is automatically prepared and delivered into your cup! The undercounter installation conceals a set of components that enable you to […]
Caffeine Content Doesn't Lie! Does Starbucks Use Cheap Robusta Beans After All?
There are two major varieties of the coffee plant: Arabica and robusta. All the best tasting coffee, imbued with rich, subtle flavor, is made from arabica beans. Harsher and more bitter coffees are brewed from robusta beans. The only reason robusta varieties are used at all is that they are hardier plants and cheaper to grow and harvest. […]
Coffee Tasting – Tanzanian Mbeya
As I mentioned in a post on this web site last week, a friend of mine gave me some Tanzanian Mbeya beans as a gift. As I am not very familiar with African coffees, I tested them first against the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans I described last week. While the Yirgacheffe were brightly floral in flavor, […]
Coffee Tasting – Ethiopian Yirgacheffe
As I promised in my last post, here I compare the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee to the Guatemalan Heuheutenango that I currently favor. The Yirgacheffe has a distinctive flavor, caused partly by the fact that it is wet processed. Here is a summary of dry processing versus wet processing. Dry Process Dry process, also known as […]
Coffee Tasting – Central American
Well, Bennett has asked me to be a guest contributor. So I’ll rehash some of my taste tests of various coffee beans and then survey some new ones. My first test was the Guatemalan Huehuetenango versus the very expensive Hawaiian Kona. Well, after a careful comparison of the $54 a pound Hawaiian Kona to the […]
Mystery Ingredient in Coffee Adds to Caffeine's Alzheimer’s Disease Protection
It’s been known for several years that caffeine can help stop the development of Alzheimer’s disease and even reverse some of the decrements in mental function caused by the disease. However, according to a new study of mice published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, coffee may afford additional protection to stopping the progression of […]
