Posts Tagged ‘Brewing’
Posted on October 2, 2008 - by deCadmus
Playing Now on the Small Screen
I’d like to thank the Food Network Academy for this honor… in particular Alton Brown and Mario Batali, both of whom have been such a great influence on me, and, of course, my family for all of their support.
Move over, Vaynerchuck!
Posted on April 24, 2008 - by deCadmus
Pinching Pennies, Counting (Coffee) Beans
The economic downturn is beginning to get to folks’ bottom line — their coffee money.
Java junkies looking to pinch pennies are sipping less expensive coffee drinks, brewing at home or going cold turkey altogether. The shift is hurting both small-time coffee shops and giants of joe such as Starbucks, which said Wednesday that it expected lower second-quarter profit and full-year earnings than it originally projected because in-store sales and traffic had declined.
Historically, coffee is one of the last things to go from consumer budgets… but that history of spending doesn’t necessarily account for a more modern affectation: the five-buck-a-cup über café latte.
Those who haven’t given up the coffee-shop routine are buying less expensive drinks: drip coffee rather than a caramel macchiato, or an iced coffee instead of a frappuccino.
“Fancy coffee has had its run,” said Dean Trucco, owner of Stir Crazy, a boutique coffee shop on Melrose Avenue.
While brewed coffee — both at home and in the coffee house — should be poised to make a come-back, what might that mean for the five-buck-a-cup Clover-brewed single origin? We’ll see.
Posted on March 25, 2008 - by deCadmus
Coffee Tech: Remaking the Vac Pot
Oh… shiny! Don’t let the modern lines fool you… it’s not a new brew technology but a new take on the classic vac pot, from designer Lina Fischer. I have wine bottle-stoppers that look the like brewing end of this thing… wonder if that’s where the inspiration came from?
[via Gizmodo]
Posted on March 17, 2008 - by deCadmus
How to Make the Perfect Irish Coffee
It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and you’ve imbibed your customary pint or three (or four or five) of Guinness and now you’re settled in at the bar, waiting for your designated driver to shuttle your tipsy self safely home. Good for you! Why not reward yourself with an Irish Coffee?
Now you may have experienced a sad, pale imitation of Irish Coffee1, be it enthroned in a place of honor at your local Irish pub, or found only far down the menu at your local bar… a cuppa joe, a jigger of whiskey, and a towering pile of whipped cream with — saints preserve us — a cherry on top. So, on second thought, maybe it’s better to wait till you’re safely returned to your own kitchen, where you can brew up an Irish Coffee that’s worth the wait.
To begin, we need to choose our whiskey.2 There’s one camp that swears by Jameson. There’s another that swears by Bushmills. Furthermore, these camps have a long history of swearing at each other.3 We are going to neatly sidestep this whole brouhaha by choosing Tullamore Dew, instead. No, not because we are diplomatic souls, but because Tullamore Dew is a better whiskey. (Whoops. There goes another argument.)
Having chosen our spirits, we can now choose our coffee. Why? Because unlike the folks behind the bar at the pub, we’re not going to use whatever mass-market, canned coffee they’ve got stewing on a hot-plate. Unlike them, we actually give a damn about the coffee. That’s why.
The flavors and aromas of Tullamore Dew are malty, somewhat sweet, with lemony notes and a hint of charred wood. I think these flavors play nicely with an Indonesian coffee, much as though the whiskey were the Central American component in a Central / Indo coffee blend. A medium-roast Sumatran coffee does the job nicely, though a darker-roasted Guatemalan coffee would do in a pinch. If you insist on Jameson for your whiskey — Jameson being a sweet, heavy-bodied whiskey — then reverse the recipe, use the Jameson as you would the Indonesian component and pair it with a mildly brisk coffee from Panama or Colombia, maybe a dark-roasted Costa Rica. And if you really, really want to use Bushmills, well… why not just have another Guinness and call it a night?
The Recipe:
- One ounce Irish Whiskey
- Five ounces fresh-brewed coffee
- Two teaspoons light brown sugar
- About two tablespoons heavy cream
Hardware:
- Footed Irish Coffee glass, or whatever you’ve got that’s clear, heat-safe and holds 8 ounces.
- Small bowl and whisk, or cocktail shaker
- A tablespoon
The Prep Work:
Preheat your glass with hot water. Brew coffee. Pour a couple of tablespoons (per drink) of heavy cream into bowl and whisk lightly, only until the cream takes on some body. We’re not making whipped cream here, only thickening it a bit. (If you’ve got mad mixmaster skills and you’re serving a crowd you can do this with a cocktail shaker.)
Putting it all together:
Dump the hot water from your glass. Pour in one ounce of whiskey, and spoon in the brown sugar. Mix the whiskey and sugar together; they’ll warm nicely from the heat of the glass. Add fresh-brewed coffee to within an inch of the top of the glass. Pour slightly thickened cream over the back of a tablespoon to rest, gently, in a layer on top of the coffee. A tip: don’t skip the sugar, even if you’re not generally inclined to take a sweetened cup. The presence of the sugar helps to float the cream on top. Besides, it tastes wicked good.
Don’t stir! Much of the pleasure of this drink comes from the contrast of the hot, sweet, spirited coffee through the cooler layer of cream floated on top. If any of your guests should stir their Irish Coffee, a wicked penalty is simply to not make them another, no matter how much they beg.
Beannachtam na Feile Padraig!
Notes and Links
- There’s a bit of an historical kerfuffle over where Irish Coffee first landed in the United States. The Buena Vista Cafe, at the foot of the Powell & Hyde Street cable car line in San Francisco makes a good claim. So does Tom Bergin’s Tavern in Los Angeles. The original mixmaster, however, was Joseph Sheridan, chef at the seaport of Foynes, in County Limerick, Ireland. Foynes served as the port of call for flying boat service in the 1930s, and Joe took to welcoming chilled and weary airline passengers with hot coffee spiked with a slug of Irish Whiskey. We can well imagine this made Joe a popular guy. ↩
- Let’s get this straight first off… Irish Whiskey is indeed spelled with an ‘e’. It’s the Scotch counterpart that’s lost its latter vowel… presumably wandering somewhere in the heathered highlands, even still. ↩
- Bushmill’s is distilled in Protestant Northern Ireland, Jameson’s in the Catholic south. Order the wrong whiskey in the wrong pub and you’re likely to find yourself shown the door, at a minimum. ↩
Posted on January 13, 2008 - by deCadmus
Just Say No…
For me, one of the signs of coffee obsession is that on most any trip to the grocery store I’m compelled to take a stroll down the coffee aisle… just keeping tabs, I guess. This trip I noticed the following:
- Dunkin Donuts has moved in. Big time. This wasn’t a surprise… in my neck of the woods (New England) they’re saturating the airwaves with a whole new line of commercials. And when I say saturating, I mean there are currently significantly more DD ads on the television than political ads. Yeah… that many.
- Emeril Lagasse has his new line-up of bright blue coffees out there, too, so thoroughly private-labeled it’s impossible to discern who actually roasts it. (Timothy’s makes Emeril’s K-Cups… I don’t know if they do the whole bean, too.)
But what really struck me is this: even though every single one of the coffees that I looked at — Dunkin Donuts, Emerils, Peet’s, Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, Melitta, Folger’s, Equal Exchange and many, many more — was packaged in what appeared to be laminated, heat-sealed bags with one-way valves, virtually all of them were offered in pre-ground coffee, only.
That’s a damn shame.
There’s a whole host of complex chemical reactions that happen when coffee is roasted. The clock starts ticking… some volatile aromas waft away within hours, flavors fade in days. The coffee is for all intents and purposes rusting. Those fancy laminated bags do a pretty darn good job of slowing this process by taking oxygen out of the mix… but grinding those coffee beans exposes vastly more — several orders of magnitude more — of the coffee’s surface area to the ravages of this process of oxidation. Ground coffee immediately begins to stale.
Supermarkets, of course, have limited shelf-space. There’s a tremendous bit of calculus (and often as not, some exchange of legal tender) to determine what brands get put where, in what varieties, and quantities. Multiple styles of the same product — say, whole bean and ground — are frowned on. Discouraged, even.
If a roaster is given four slots on the grocery shelf, and if that roaster offers more than four varieties of coffee, well then… he’s in a fix. He can offer two coffee varieties in both whole-bean and ground, or he can offer four varieties, all of them pre-ground. Which do you s’pose he’ll choose? Mmmhmm. Why? Because 99% of folks buying that coffee — even the premium brands — just don’t realize what they’re missing.
Just say no to stale, pre-ground coffee.
There’s a world of difference between coffee you buy pre-ground, and coffee you grind yourself. Grinding your own coffee — fresh, just before brewing — is the single, most dramatic thing you can do to improve your coffee. Honestly. It’s like the difference between corn-on-the-cob that was picked fresh just a few minutes ago, and stewed, creamed corn; a dry-aged Kansas City rib-eye and a freezer-burned hamburger patty, or filet of sole and a fish stick. The thing is, pound for pound, whole bean coffee doesn’t cost you any more than the stuff that’s already ground, so why would you buy your coffee any other way?
Just say no. Don’t buy it. Find your grocery manager, and insist they carry whole bean coffee. Or find a local roaster who treats their coffee with the respect it deserves.
Posted on October 31, 2007 - by deCadmus
Keurig vs. Tassimo: A Single-Cup Showdown Update
Autumn has blown into our neck of the woods with a mighty draft of whirling leaves, the aroma of wood smoke wafting from neighbors’ hearths, and — hey, this is new — a raft of folks banging on an increasingly-dated review of single-serve coffee machines here on Bloggle. I guess there’s nothing quite like a cold spell to put folks in touch with their inner caffeine junkie… or maybe folks are already looking ahead to their holiday gift lists.
Whatever the reason, an update to the single-serve marketplace is long overdue. So, let’s get to it…
The Tassimo Lineup
Designed and distributed by Braun1 , manufactured by Saeco, and with its coffee supply produced exclusively by Kraft and its army of licensed brands, when the Tassimo launched two years ago it painted itself as the smartest single serve coffee brewer yet.
Certainly the Tassimo’s got brains. Like the Keurig brewers, this brewer relies on a micro-processor to manage brew volume and temperature. More, the Tassimo automatically adjusts brew volume, temperature — and even some aspects of how its pump drives the brew cycle — to match the parameters of beverage you wish to brew. How? Well… it reads, of course. But we’ll get back to that.
Offered in two models –the TA 1400
The Keurig Team
Now in its third generation of home brewers, the always-evolving Keurig line currently includes the “Elite” B40
The B40 and B60 are built on the second-generation “B50″ platform, and both feature a similar, generally symmetrical shape. The B70 is the first example of Keurig’s latest brew technology, and is a bit of a departure, too, in its overall design. It has a somewhat more aggressive stance — perhaps a bit of attitude. More, it has an updated brewing system that extracts more coffee flavor and aroma from each brew cycle than the B40 and B60 models.
Keurig’s approach is at once more focused and singular than Tassimo’s. A Keurig brewer makes coffee — brewed coffee — and it does it well. Its microprocessor is wired only with the fundamentals of coffee brewing — time, temperature, turbulence and water-to-coffee ratio — and it’s tuned to deliver consistent results. You push a button, you get coffee. That’s it.
Consequently, there’s no brewing espresso with a Keurig. No cappuccino, and no latte, either. That’s not to say that other drinks aren’t available… you can get a decent cup of hot chocolate in a K-Cup, and quite good tea. But these are products that have been tuned to the specific brew parameters of the Keurig brewer, and not the other way around.
Notes and Links
- Kraft has recently entered into an agreement with Bosch to manufacture its brewers (seeing as how Gillette/Braun was purchased by its rival, P&G.) Bosch manufactured and distributed brewers are scheduled to be in market in Spring ‘08. ↩
Posted on August 9, 2007 - by deCadmus
Revealed: The New and Improved Keurig B70 Brewer
There’s a new single-cup brewer in town… two of them, really. But you might not notice, ’cause Keurig slipped them into production without much fanfare.
The first is an updated Keurig ‘Elite’ B40… the entry-level single cup model. The new model adds a second, larger-volume brew button to its control panel. It’s a feature probably most welcome to tea-drinkers — and it’s especially welcome for iced tea fans — as a 9.25 ounce setting isn’t one I’d recommend for getting the most flavor out of a coffee K-Cup — even an Extra Bold selection.
And then there’s the update to Keurig’s ‘Platinum’ B70… It’s a tiny change — one that you wouldn’t notice to look at it — but you can’t help but notice in the cup. Keurig has tweaked the brewing system itself — specifically, the brewing needle that pierces the K-Cup. 
The change creates more turbulence within the K-Cup during brewing, which, in turn, extracts more flavor from the coffee. (Turbulence — along with dwell-time and temperature – is one of the critical factors for brewing coffee.)
The results? Pretty remarkable, really. I’ve been brewing coffee with one of the first production B70s daily for several weeks now, and it makes a decidedly bolder cup at all brew volumes. More, it makes a cup with more distinctive flavors, too. Green Mountain’s Extra Bold Espresso Blend now finally reveals its dry berry top note, the Extra Bold Kenyan AA offers distinctive wine and blackberry flavors, and the Extra Bold Fair Trade Organic Sumatran Reserve is at once rich, and earthy and ever so slightly mossy.
That’s not to say that you have to brew an Extra Bold K-Cup to appreciate the upgrade. Whether your K-Cup of choice is a Signature Blend or a Partner Blend (PBS Blend is especially tasty with the brewing system upgrade) or even coffee from another roaster (I’m okay with that… really!) I think you can appreciate the results. And, if you’ve found yourself on the fence between brew sizes, the new brewing system may make that larger brew volume just the ticket for your tastes.
So how can you get one? Well… at the moment that’s a bit tricky. Green Mountain has the new B40 in stock now, and should have the B70 near the end of this month, though you can place an advance order today. Amazon is taking orders for the new B70 now, for delivery in October.
Update: Erin at Keurig tells me that the Keurig web site is stocked up and ready to sell you a second-generation B70 today. Thanks for the note, Erin.
Psst… wanna know a secret?
So what if you should you see one in the wild, on a retailer’s shelf? How will you know if it’s a first or second-generation brewer? Chances are that you won’t find a first-generation brewer right now… I think the B70 is out of stock pretty much everywhere as it’s proved rather popular. If you do, however, here’s how you can identify the new B70… Take a look at the stainless steel cover for the drip tray. If its center cutout is a circle, then it’s the first generation B70. If it’s a star, it’s a second-generation model.
A Follow-up: This may or may not prove useful, as apparently some number of first-generation brewers got the new “star” drip tray, too. On the other hand the retail box for the new brewer now clearly reads that it’s got “new brewing technology”.
Posted on May 12, 2007 - by deCadmus
More Voices, More Views, More Coffee
Some updating to ye ol’ Blogroll is somewhat overdue, at least so far as the college of coffee blogs goes. There’s lots of interesting new voices out there — folks who are pushing the envelope on roasting, brewing, pulling shots and delivering an over-the-top customer experience — and at the same time making some of the old-guard “coffee men” raise their eyebrows, first in alarm, and then in appreciation for what they find in their cup.
- Stephen Morrissey is barista trainer at Bewleys Coffee Co in Dublin Ireland, and his site — Flying Thud — documents his adventures in coffee. Lots of espresso porn, of course, but he’s also a fan of the drip. His posts will make you pine for European coffee shops you’ve never been to.
- Barrett Jones is a Canadian national barista champ and until recently worked the bar at Vancouver’s most excellent Caffe Artigiano. His site — Dwell Time — offers a glimpse of the extraordinary Vancouver coffee scene.
- Stephen Leighton’s blog — Has Bean — offers the perspective of a coffee guy who sources and roasts some fairly stupendous coffees, which sadly I know by reputation, only. (The reputation is certainly deserved: UKBC winner James Hoffman poured his way to the top of competition with a Has Bean custom blend.) Stephen’s been known to drop by here from time to time to offer an insightful comment or two.
- And last but not least — Barismo — a Boston based group blog contributed to by Jaime, Ben, Ben and Silas. Their writing spans coffee roasting, cupping and delivering a top-tier coffee experience in the coffee house. Oh! And they have a shiny cool tamper design.
Go visit one and all. Frequently. Maybe they’ll each get the hint to post more often.
Posted on May 11, 2007 - by deCadmus
Eva Cafe Solo — She’s a Keeper
Not so very long ago I offered a quick (and cheeky) review of the Eva Cafe Solo. Here’s a snippet of that review (or you can read the whole thing):
Consider the Eva Solo. Part chemistry set, part little black dress (in neoprene, no less) this Danish design is a pretty sexy number. And it’s perfect for brewing darker coffees that have needs. You know the type… coffees that want to cuddle a little. Coffees that want to steep. Coffees that just won’t reveal everything they’ve got without a little extra intimacy.
Posted on April 3, 2007 - by deCadmus
The Eva Solo CafeSolo™
So you’ve got a taste for the dark stuff and want to get the most of your crand cru bean. But a coffee press leaves you cold. Literally. What was just a few minutes ago steaming coffee in a rocket hot coffee press just isn’t so hot when it comes to pouring a second cup. And you always want seconds, right? Of course you do. 
(more…)
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Hello.
Bloggle is the online playground of Doug Cadmus, a usability guy, writer, photographer and sometime dramatist who moved to Vermont for the coffee. When not writing, reading or walking his old, blind golden retriever, he roasts coffee in his garage and is the Web Guy for Green Mountain Coffee in Waterbury, VT. Flickr Photos
