Coffee Break

It’s been a while since I’ve had time to browse the coffee-loving how-to’s over at eHow, but I couldn’t let this month finish up without posting at least one more batch of great coffee recipes and hints from my other home. If you’re looking for something different to do with your coffee, here’s a handful of coffee counterfeit recipes from the folks who love coffee over at eHow.com.

How to Make Green Mountain Coffee Drink The Vermonter

by dlkass

Try this fabulous to-die-for coffee recipe, a counterfeit of a coffee drink served at Green Mountain Coffee in Vermont. And thank dlkass for dropping it in my mailbox so I wouldn’t miss it. Coffee and maple… mmmm…

How to Make a Coffee Coolata at Home

by  klnygaard

As a born and bred East Coast girl, I’m passionate about my Dunkins, so I can tell you with certainty that klnygaard’s Coffee Coolata recipe really does taste like the real thing. The only thing missing is the big plastic cup - really, you NEED to drink it through the straw to get the full effect!

How to Make McDonald’s Iced Coffee

by eHow Food and Drink Editor

Another fabulous fake - if you love Mickey D’s iced coffee, this is the recipe for you. Slide on down to the comments section for a bonus Mickey D sugar-free French Vanilla iced coffee recipe by eHow member  TLB117.

How to Make a Delicious Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino Recipe

by  ElectricalNut

What would a post about fabulous coffee counterfeits be without at least one Starbucks recipe? This one is easy to make, and even includes instructions on how to make strong coffee that’s “almost” espresso. Give it a try and save your Star$ for something else!

Yes, really. No, not drinking with it. Washing with it. Washing with coffee has a lot of benefits for your skin - including the possibility that it may protect your skin from skin cancer. Scientists first discovered the link between caffeine and skin cancer prevention back in 2002, but a research team made up of dermatologists around the country recently announced that they think they know HOW caffeine prevents skin cancer.  According to an article in the most recent issue of Journal of Investigative Dermatology , caffeine can helps prevent or delay the progression of skin cancer by triggering apoptosis, a fancy name for pre-programmed cell death. In other words, caffeine tells the cancerous cells to commit suicide.

The researchers took skin cells that had been damaged by UV light in the same way that pre-cancerous skin cells are damaged, and treated them with caffeine. They found that the caffeine interrupts cancerous cells by stopping the formation of a protein that’s vital to their growth. In fact, caffeinating the skin cells doubled the number of damaged skin cells that died. The researchers believe that it explains the coffelation they’ve seen between coffee consumption and a lower risk of skin cancer. They’ve also been experimenting with applying caffeine directly to the skin with “promising results”.
My suggestion? Enjoy all the benefits of coffee by soaping up with some delicious-smelling Coffee All-Natural Handcrafted Soap. Our great-grandmothers knew that coffee soap was good for lots of things - that’s why a bar of coffee soap often sat on the ledge above the kitchen sink. All natural soap made with fresh coffee grounds is a natural deodorizer - perfect to keep your hands from smelling like garlic or fish for the rest of the evening. The coffee grounds also gently exfoliate your skin and stimulate circulation to encourage healthy skin growth.
Of course, you can always try making your own coffee soap the way my grandmother used to do it.

1. Save up scraps and bits of soap until you’ve got about two cups full.
2. Grate up the scraps using a cheese grater.
3. Put them in a saucepan with about 1 cup of water and 3/4 cup of fresh ground coffee.
4. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.
5. Pour into flexible silicone molds  - Jello molds work just fine - and allow to set for at least four hours. Overnight is better.
6. Pop the bars out of the molds and allow them to air dry for 2-3 days before using your new homemade coffee soap.

And you thought coffee was just for drinking!

That’s my generic coffee mug over there - the one that I automatically grab first thing in the morning to fill with magic brew. It’s just the right weight for my hand, and holds a very generous 12 ounces of aromatic, fresh, home-roasted coffee. Even my roommate, who respects no one’s ownership rights, knows better than to touch my Bloom’s Coffee mug.

Coffee mugs make great gifts for coffee lovers. If you really want to please a coffee lover, though, pay attention to their favorite mug before you buy them a new mug as a gift. The size, shape and weight all contribute to how the mug feels in your hand, and can actually affect the taste of the coffee. If your favorite coffee lover typically drinks his coffee out of a heavyweight coffee mug with a generous handle, he’s not likely to appreciate a pedestal coffee mug or a coffee cup and saucer.

This is a mug I could love. The bell shape actually enhances the flavor of your coffee, just like the bell shape of a wine glass enhances the flavor of a fine wine. The slight curve at the lip makes it comfortable to sip from - and reduces the chance of dribble from the coffee rim. The handle is large enough to hold comfortably - I hatehatehateyhate coffee cups with those tiny little loop handles.  Seriously. I know it sounds completely silly, but it’s all in the ergonomics.

Do you have a favorite coffee mug? What makes it special to you?

Love your coffee? Here are 13  facts about coffee that might surprise you.

1. Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world. The only world commodity that is traded at higher volumes on the world market is oil.
2. There are two basic species of coffee in the world - Robusta coffee, which is generally considered to be lower grade, and Arabica coffee, which is considered to be higher grade. Most of the coffee sold in the world is Robusta, and the largest producer of Robusta coffee in the world is Vietnam.
3. Robusta coffee, which is often used in instant (or soluble) coffee, has more caffeine than Arabica coffee.
4. While darker coffee roasts like French roast coffee seem stronger than light coffee roasts, they actually have less caffeine than their lighter counterparts. That’s because some of the caffeine is destroyed when the coffee beans are subjected to high heat for longer periods.
5. Likewise, espresso has less caffeine than drip coffee. Espresso is made by forcing hot water through ground coffee under high pressure. This limits the amount of time that the water is in contact with the coffee beans, thus extracting the flavor but leaving a lot of the caffeine behind.
6. Green coffee beans keep for up to a year with no change in quality if they are kept in a cool, dry place.  Once the coffee beans are roasted, however, they begin to lose their flavor after about 48 hours.
7. Ground coffee loses its freshness the fastest because far more of the bean is exposed to air and light, which leach away the flavor. That’s why coffee tastes best if you grind it right before you brew it.
8. Coffee cuppers have identified over 600 different unique flavors in coffee - rivaling the unique flavors that blend to make a glass of wine memorable. The flavor of coffee is dependent on region, climate and weather, and is affected by the way it is dried, stored and roasted.
9. The United States imports 30% of the world’s coffee crop. That’s a full 1/3rd of all coffee grown in the world. The average U.S. adult drinks 3.4 cups of coffee a day, or about 26 gallons of coffee a year.
10. More than 50% of U.S. adults drink at least one cup of coffee a day - but they are not the world’s largest coffee consumers. That honor belongs to Finland, followed by West Germany. Finland drinks about 5 cups of coffee per adult per day.
11. Coffee is grown in 53 countries around the world, all of them located between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. The coffee industry employs more than 25 million people worldwide.
12. Worldwide, we drink more than 400 billion cups of coffee a year. Japan ranks third in coffee consumption - so much for tea drinking, hm?
13.   Most of the world’s coffee is still picked by hand, one bean at a time. An experienced coffee picker can pick about 7 baskets of coffee beans a day, each weighing 50-100 kg. The picker will be paid between $2 and $10 per basket of coffee cherries. Once the coffee cherries are dried and roasted, the coffee beans from that basket will sell for about $110.

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The Zelco Brisk Brew portable coffee maker caught my eye as I was browsing window-shopping through the coffee makers and coffee gadgets at Cooking.com.

I’m all about neat new products for making coffee, and this one is a nifty little machine. The Zelco Brisk Brew coffee maker is billed as a portable travel coffee maker, and it’s aimed at those who hit the road for business and other trips, but hate leaving their coffee at home. It’s a great alternative to hotel coffee.

Now, you can’t really see just how neat the Zelco Brisk Brew really is in this picture because you’ve got no comparison picture. At 4″ by 5″ by 3″, it’s a little bit bigger than two packs of index cards stacked together when it’s all put together and tucked into the little carrying bag that comes with it.

It comes with a permanent filter that sits inside a brew basket and all of that packs inside the water receptacle when not in use. The included 8 ounce cups slides over the top of the brewer, making a compact little package that takes up less room in your suitcase than a single shoe.

The reviews on the Zelco Brisk Brew are almost uniformly positive, especially among people who travel a lot and often end up in rooms with no coffee maker. It has a switch to convert it from 110v to 220v power so that it doesn’t grumble about being used in European hotel rooms. In fact, according to most reviewers, the Zelco Brisk Brew brews up a cup of coffee even faster with the higher power delivered by European outlets. Cleanup is easy - just empty and rinse the filter, rinse out the brewer an put it back together. The Brisk Brew can be used with E.S.E pods and standard coffee pods, making cleanup  even easier - no grounds to dispose of - just the used coffee pod.

Brew time is a little slow - about 3-5 minutes to brew an 8 ounce cup, but the second cup brews faster. At under $50, it can make up its cost in just one trip if you’re a big coffee lover and your tastes tend to run toward Starbucks and coffee shop coffee.

I’m a sucker for coffee gadgets, so file this one under my Wish List - even though my travel these days tends to be limited to walking distance radius.

More good news for coffee drinkers - according to an article in the U.S. News and World Report, coffee may lower the risk of stroke. Dr. David Liebeskind of UCLA headed up a study that took a look at the coffee drinking habits of about 10,000 people over 40. Liebeskind’s group correlated their history of stroke with the amount of coffee that they drank. The results seem to suggest that people who drink coffee have a statistically lower risk of having a stroke. Those who drank at least 2 cups of coffee a day cut their risk of having a stroke by 2.9%. Those who drank 6 cups of coffee or more per day decreased their risk of having a stroke by 5%.

That’s just the latest good news for people who love their coffee. In January, another study in Stockholm strongly suggested that people who drink  coffee have less risk of developing dementia associated with Alzheimers disease. That study followed 1,400 people for 20 years, interviewing them about their coffee drinking habits and correlating those with their development of Alzheimers and dementia. The study - which is echoed by other studies that show improved memory fucntions in those who drink a few cups of coffee a day - showed that those who drink 2-5 cups or coffee a day were less likely to develop Alzheimers disease.

In addition, there were a number of studies released last fall which associated moderate coffee consumption with a decreased risk of developing diabetes, and a lower risk of heart disease for women.

Of course, not all the news is good. A study released in Durham University in the UK back in January linked high coffee consumption with an increased risk of hallucination. Of course, they’re talking about  sucking down 7 or more cups of caffeinated instant coffee (which is often mostly robusta, which is higher in caffeine than arabica coffee) at a sitting. You’ll get the same effect from sucking down as much black or green tea, dropping a couple of Vivarin tablets or drinking a few Red Bulls.

It all comes down to common sense. Most recent studies into coffee consumption and health show that drinking coffee is nowhere near as bad for you as we once thought. It probably doesn’t stunt your growth, and it could even be good for you, as long as you’re not stupid about drinking it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me - it’s just about 8 on a Sunday morning, and I haven’t even got around to putting on a pot of coffee. I’ve got a batch of fresh-roasted (yesterday morning) Guatemalan robusta and Mexican arabica waiting to be brewed. To your health, coffee lovers!

A while back, I wrote about how to steam milk for your cappuccino without an espresso machine and someone asked if there was a solution for people without a microwave. Yes, in fact, there is. You can just heat the milk in a small pot of hot water on the stove after shaking it up.

Adventures in Coffee Roasting 

So since I was feeling adventurous this morning, I decided to roast up a batch of coffee beans in my trusty air popper. I’ve got the timing on that down pretty well to where I can pour the coffee beans into the air popper and walk away to do other things. Silly me, this morning I decided that the other thing I’d do is roast another batch of coffee beans in a frying pan on the stove. I’ve been meaning to try it so… what the heck! Two batches at once, right? And then I can compare to see which I like better — all at the same time that I’m getting ready to steam up some milk to have in my coffee. Because y’know, there’s no sense in doing things the EASY way - what’s the fun in that?

Now to complicate things even further, the popcorn popper plugs into the wall on the south side of the kitchen and the coffee beans are roasting in a frying pan on the north wall of the kitchen - and the kitchen is a very lovely, generous 18 feet across - with a kitchen table in the middle of it. And wouldn’t you know that both batches of coffee beans - both on the stove and in the air popper - hit first crack and started singing merrily away at precisely the same time? So picture me dancing back and forth from one side of the kitchen to the other, lighting just long enough to shake the frying pan, stir the coffee beans in the air popper, give the frying pan a shake, peer in to the top of the air popper to see how the beans are doing… it was a wild five minutes. And then in the middle of it all, my sixteen year old son staggers into the kitchen wrapped in his comforter, stares at me and groans, “You’re roasting coffee at 6 in the morning?? ON MY VACATION?? You’re not going to GRIND the COFFEE too, ARE YOU??”

Poor thing. Never mind that it was actually 7:15 at this point, and that he regularly wakes me up at 4:35 on school mornings to complain that he woke before his alarm clock went off again. I informed him that I was, in fact, going to grind the coffee before brewing it, because otherwise, really, there’s not much use in drinking it. And I did exactly that - LOUDLY.

It is now 7:53 AM. I am thoroughly enjoying a cup of fresh-roasted, fresh-brewed coffee (because I just didn’t have the patience to let it sit for a few hours to mellow) topped with frothed, steamed milk. The coffee is my own custom blend of Mexican and Ethiopian Sidamo. My house smells deliciously of roasted coffee and brewed coffee - two very different aromas - and all is quite right with the world.

Unless of course, you are a 16 year old teenage boy who was planning to sleep in this morning and now you find yourself unloading the dishwasher and getting ready to fill it back up again. Kinda feels like payback for all those mornings I could have slept till 7:15 if he hadn’t woke up before the alarm and felt compelled to share the misery.

Oh, Joe, say it ain’t so! Starbucks announced earlier this week that they’re rolling out their own brand of instant coffee. The new Starbucks product - I hate to even call it coffee - is called Starbucks Via, because y’know, Starbucks would never be so crass as to call something “instant coffee”. You’ll be able to buy Starbucks Via in cafes across the country. Yes, you heard that right - you can buy instant coffee to take home with you at Starbucks starting next month.   The coffee comes in boxes of individual packets - one packet makes one cup - at 3 packs for $2.95 or 12 packets for $9.95.

My favorite investment site, Motley Fool, has quite a lot to say about the idea of Starbucks dumbing down their product line. Alyce Lomax views it as a desperation move - another cost-cutting measure by the coffee giant. I’m actually wondering if it might not be a very shrewd move on Starbucks’ part. Consider the fact that people are showing a strong tendency to drink their coffee at home these days - or make coffee at their desks in the office. There’s still a big market for General Foods International Coffee and other instant coffees, after all. How many people would be willing to shell out $3 to have an instant Starbucks fix in the top drawer of their desk?

Further evidence against this being a “desperation move” for Starbucks are the reports that the company has been developing the instant coffee product for close to 20 years. Why would they be aiming for instant? It makes sense if you step outside a U.S.-centrist mode and think globally. The fact is that there’s a huge international market for instant coffee - one commenter at the Fool puts the value of that market at about $17 billion - and Starbucks has been showing a definite tendency to aim at that larger market. Witness their announcement that they are sourcing Chinese coffee for their Chinese stores - and expanding it to the international market later this year - last month.

A few of the folks commenting in that thread have tasted Starbucks VIA and claim that it’s -good-, and if it really is a good, high quality product, it may just find a home in the instant coffee niche.

Now, I personally don’t care for instant coffee - I have to use double the amount of coffee granules to get a cup strong enough for my tastebuds - but I do have instant coffee in the house. I picked up a little box of Folgers individual packets a while back to do a taste test for an article I was writing. I hadn’t had a cup of instant coffee in over 20 years - with the exception of a couple of cups of International Delight “coffee beverage” which is actually more powdered milk and flavorings than it is coffee. The taste test was enough to remind me that I don’t really care for “soluble coffee” - but my 17 year old son discovered the box yesterday and LOVES it. He’s stashed the last three packets of Folgers crystals to take with him and keep in his desk at school for those days when he forgets his meds - he takes Concerta to help control his ADHD, and caffeine is a decent substitute if he forgets. He usually sugars brewed coffee to hyper-sweetness, but drinks this with just milk so… maybe he’d like Starbucks VIA. I’m not sure if I’m willing to pay a buck a pack for it, though.

How about you? Do you drink instant coffee? Would you try Starbucks instant coffee? If it were available, would you pick up a pack to take with you to places where you can’t brew up a cuppa? Or is Starbucks just …er… watering down their brand?