The Coffee Thread

[alexander]

The Kona blend (which i am having right now, after having discovered it yesterday, and being one of the only k-cups i haven't tried yet), is light on the Kona side. Really it's a blend of a couple of medium roasts with a touch of Kona, to give you a smooth medium roast blend that doesn't get bitter and has a lingering floral aroma in your mouth ;) It doesn't at all resemble a full kona, with its winey properties, and delicate florals and aromas to which you can return and find more of, every time you take a sip, all the way through the coffee, but neither is kona a smooth coffee, it's probably smoother in medium roasts, as i tend to do more dark roasts, but if i recall correctly, medium roast kona has even more of the winey, floral notes in the body, then the harsher winey notes with only lingering floral taste i tend to enjoy in the dark roasts. That said, the Kona blend is not what i expected it to be, but it's not a bad thing, it's a good 11 o'clock cup (note here, i drink 2 cups of coffee, morning, around 8:30-9, tend to stick to heavy, dark blends, packed with flavor and with a certain bitterness to them, and then second cup around 10:30-11 when i prefer milder, medium roasts that are smooth and have a lot more subtlety to them...

 

Generally if i entertain guests, i tend to make coffee on more individual requests, which usually define how i make it and how strong they like their coffee to be and such, but i usually don't have a lot of guests.

 

Let me know how those pods work out, if you end up going that way :)

[Michaelangelica]

Coffee drinkers develop tolerance to anxiety

Thursday, 3 June 2010

 

by Maria Thuesen Bleeg

Cosmos Online

 

 

SYDNEY: The sensation of alertness that comes when you enjoy your morning tea or coffee may be an illusion, according to a new study.

 

Caffeine brings coffee drinkers back to but not above their baseline level of alertness. In fact, frequent coffee drinkers develop a tolerance to both the anxiety-producing effects and the stimulatory effects of caffeine, the researchers report.

 

“At a personal level the results tell us we don’t gain much, if anything at all, from consuming caffeine. Decaff tea and coffee is a good alternative option,” said psychologist and nutritionist Peter Rogers from University of Bristol.

 

Anxiety, alertness and headache

 

In the study, published this week in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, Rogers and his colleagues asked 379 individuals, the largest study so far, to abstain from caffeine for 16 hours. Then they gave them either caffeine or a placebo.

Coffee drinkers develop tolerance to anxiety | COSMOS magazine

Coffee drinkers develop tolerance to anxiety | COSMOS magazine

Seems to be nonsense, or just badly written, or is it past my bedtime?

I can't find any recent article by Rogers In The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=PNP

[webcreations]

I like both of hot & cold..

[Pyrotex]

HEB grocery stories in Texas now sell Ruta Maya coffee in kilogram bags (2.2 pounds). Whole bean only. Beans are shipped to Houston and roasted locally, then bagged and sent to stores same day. Organic, shade grown, Arabica, free trade. dark roast. The bag itself is the most air tight, vapor tight container I've ever seen short of a glass jar with a good screw top lid.

I grind my own bean in a Krups rotary blade grinder -- I make enough for about a week at a time.

I use a Krups drip coffee maker. Did you know that Krups spelled backwards is Spurk?

It's the best coffee I have ever had in the USA. Dark, smooth, deep, strong, but never bitter. Goes down like chocolate and silk.

The best coffee EVER was on a Parisian sidewalk in front of a 100 year old cafe, just north of the huge international train station.

[labelwench]

Staying at a motel while enroute to fetch a horse and derailed by extreme weather warnings. I observe that the complimentary coffee in the room is Van Houtte Medium Roast which sells for a premium at the retail grocery chain where I work.

 

Not gourmet perhaps but not too shabby either. Better than a lot of the other options out there.

 

At home we have a drip that gets the most use, a French Press, an Espresso machine and a perc. Our 'everyday' coffee is Pride of Arabia, a whole bean that when freshly ground yields a flavorful, medium cup of coffee that is free of any bitterness.

[labelwench]

Since making the above post, we have become owners of one of those K-Cup machines, simply because they got shipped to the store, the market seems to have been saturated and so we got them for a song. We had great fun for a time, experimenting with many of the brands and flavor options available and also invested in our own refillable inserts so that we can grind and brew the 'regular' coffees of our own choice because the cost of K-Cups is considerably more than whole bean coffee, even when you can get them on sale.

 

We still have our entire fleet of coffee making apparatus, but the K-Cup machine gets the most use because it really is fast and a great way to brew one cup, any flavor, fresh each time. It also dispenses piping hot water for tea, hot chocolate or any other recipe which requires same so it is more than just a coffee machine.

[Buffy]

The Cuisinart Brewers (we have orange and purple ones) still get the most use, but the Keurig's a close second and only because of the cost. Have tried the baskets, but futzing around with it and getting it packed juuuuuuusst right, means it's easier to throw a filter and fresh ground into the brewer (have a very fancy grinder that is preset to grind and number of cups, so you just press one button). Being total snobs we pretty much only buy Peet's because it's so much better than any thing else that comes in a K-cup....

 

Maybe kissing is sort of like nature's coffee, :phones:

Buffy

[Pyrotex]

Pyro love coffee.  Make Pyro laugh and run in circles.

[CraigD]

Pyro! Haven't seen you in ages!

[Pyrotex]

Well, it's been 3.14 Ages since I've been here.  Glad to see some familiar faces.  Well, avatars.

Buffy says this place is half over-run with crazies.  True?

Sounds like you might need a Troll Slayer.

 

Edited August 6, 2014 by Pyrotex

[Racoon]

Well, it's been 3.14 Ages since I've been here.  Glad to see some familiar faces.  Well, avatars.

Buffy says this place is half over-run with crazies.  True?

Sounds like you might need a Troll Slayer.

 

 

 

Pyrotex was going to build my Spaceship but then he took off...

[labelwench]

I am enjoying a morning repast of home made cinnamon currant bread, toasted, with butter and rhubarb marmalade that I made yesterday. A cup of coffee with French Vanilla cream to accompany this treat and a good start to this day.

 

[CraigD]

This thread seems like the right one for my favorite personal coffee story.

 

I and friends were at Rehoboth Beach, DE, early in the day and off season. Rehoboth has a boardwalk with the usual assortment of coffee places, one of which we dropped into. The barista there was by himself, and seemed inexperienced. My friends got mostly milk froth lattes in the biggest paper mugs the place had, 16 oz (0.45 L), while I asked for my favorite, espresso, a double. Befuddled, the barista got his containers and techniques crossed, and after several minutes of refilling and brewing, gave me a 16 oz mug full of espresso – which by my calculations, is about a 19-tuple.

 

I made off with it without correcting him, dumping a fist full (perhaps 30 packets) of sugar in it on the way out. Sweet and black - the way I like it.

 

I spent the next few hours walking the boardwalk sipping from this industrial/pharmaceutical-grade caffeine source, pacing myself by pausing when my vision threatened to start strobing. I’m pretty sure several major secrets of the universe were revealed to me, but seemed too obvious to take note of and distractions from whatever I enthusiastically wanted to do next, which involved art galleries, toy stores, amusement park rides, and much speech. A good time was had by all, but mostly by me. :)

[labelwench]

Has anyone on this thread tried 'Bulletproof Coffee'? If so, have you continued to use it and what is your opinion on it's taste and usefulness to you.

For those who may not have heard of it, here is a quick primer...

 

http://www.endofthreefitness.com/how-to-make-bulletproof-coffee-and-become-a-better-human/

[arissa]

We had a coffee catastrophe and ours died. Now I don't really drink coffee all that much anymore but my spouse does and while we got a quick replacement I am actually looking for "something better". Can anyone suggest a reasonably priced machine that does all of the wonders a true coffee fanatic would want?

[Pyrotex]

Me LOVE coffee!

Me chew beans.  Me drink boiling water.

Coffee GOOD!

[Buffy]

Like many similar things, coffee apparently does not make you more refined or sophisticated....

 

I wear brown shirts to protect against the combination of coffee and clumsiness, :phones: :cheer: :cup:

Buffy