Smells so lovely when you pour it,
You will want to drink a quar't
Of coffee.
It's delicious all alone, it's
Also good with doughnuts.
Black coffee.
Coffee stimulates your urges,
It is served in Lutheran churches,
Keeps the Swedes and Germans
Awake through the sermons
Have a pot of it today,
I'm sure you'll say it's awfully
Good coffee.They are wonderful musicians
Playing various positions
With coffee
When you play a violin
You don't want beer or gin
Just coffee.
Coffee helps your pizzicato
Makes your pilot run on auto
Nice attack when you are bowing
Even when it's snowing
Even if you play piano in a town in Indiana
Try coffee.A Prairie Home Companion, Coffee Jingle
As I sit here drinking my freshly ground and brewed cup of coffee, I am inspired to write about it.
My coffee comes from Trader Joe’s. Normally I prefer their Sumatra blend (Organic, Fair Trade), but on my last shopping adventure, I picked out a regular, good ol’ French Roast (Organic, Fair Trade). Why? Well, it was $2 cheaper, and my rent’s gone up a bit in the last month or so. Now that I’m in Wisconsin, I may start buying at a local coffee shop because I know they roast their own beans. Buying freshly-roasted beans makes for incredibly awesome coffee!
Fair Trade Certified coffee is slightly more expensive than regular coffee. This is because Fair Trade supports the lives of the farmers who provide me with my indulgent habits. The farmers are given fair prices for their beans, and are helped with community development and environmental stewardship. I am pretty ok with paying an extra couple of dollars to help out.
My coffee is whole bean. It comes in a nitrogen-flushed can to preserve the freshness. I would prefer it to come in a valve-sealed bag, but it doesn’t. That’s ok; I believe the coffee shop I’m probably switching to does use valve-sealed bags to pack their coffee in.
The can I have is kept on the kitchen counter. My coffee beans never go in the freezer. Contrary to popular belief, storing coffee beans in the freezer is a very bad idea. Why? Your coffee beans will absorb the moisture from the freezer, which will destroy the oils that give them their wonderful flavor and aromas. Your coffee beans will also absorb other flavors from your freezer. Coffee beans like to absorb things. I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t want my coffee tasting like spaghetti sauce and Italian sausage.
My coffee beans are ground on an as-needed basis. This keeps the oils from breaking up, and keeps air from going through my beans. I don’t want stale coffee.
Now on to brewing my coffee, which is my favorite part!
Some will tell you that a burr grinder gives you the best ground coffee. My opinion is that burr grinders are over-rated and an unnecessary expense. I have a nice grinder I got for $19 at K-Mart that has settings on it. You can grind 4, 6, 8, 10, or 12 cups worth of coffee beans, and you can grind those beans to a fine, medium, or coarse ground. For my most regular use, I grind 4 cups (4 tablespoons) on the coarse setting. I hold a button down, and my grinder grinds until it’s done and shuts off on its own. That’s right. It has a kind of built in timer so I don’t have to think about how many seconds I need to grind for.
Once ground, I dump the beans into my French Press. The French Press is my preferred method of brewing coffee. Why? Well, I’ve mentioned oils before. These oils are what give coffee its flavor. When you use a regular coffee pot, with a paper filter, these oils are absorbed into the paper and don’t make it to your coffee. Your coffee is not as flavorful and delicious. With a French Press, the beans (and their oils) are directly placed into hot (never boiling!) water, where they brew into something wonderful. Even Folgers’s coffee has more flavor when brewed in a French Press!
The beans steep in the hot water for about 4 minutes. Then I push down the plunger to separate the beans (now empty of their essence) from the coffee, and I pour my coffee into a coffee cup that holds nearly all of the 32 ounces of ambrosial liquid I just brewed. Sometimes I add some 2% milk. Skim milk is too watery, and whole milk is a little too thick to mix properly. The reduced fat milk seems to work just fine.
And then I have my wonderful cup of coffee!
But the cup I started with earlier is now in my tummy. :-)
For a little more information on Fair Trade and Ethical Commerce, please visit here.
I think that was more than I ever needed to know about coffee, especially since I don't drink it.
~C
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haha.
Sorry about that. I got a little carried away...
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I don't have patience for the french press, but you are right about the paper filters and the oils (Plus, wasteful!). I got a reusable metal screen filter, and my coffee is much better than it was before.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/ediblewoman
Are you using the kind of brewer where the coffee drips into a thermos-type of thing? The hot plates burn the coffee a little bit on normal brewers.
The metal screen filter is a good idea. I may invest in one, with a drip maker, for when I'm making coffee for more than just myself. My French press only does enough for me.... or maybe 2 people if I want to settle for a small cup of coffee. :-P
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No, but my machine has a setting that allows us to turn the hot plate off as soon as it finishes brewing, so the plate doesn't even have a chance to heat up all the way before it shuts off. Then we transfer it to a thermal carafe. We wanted this model because it has a timer, so we can wake up to brewed coffee, and it matches our appliances, but it didn't come with thermal carafe. That is its one flaw, as far as I'm concerned.
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oooh fancy. :-)
The only flaw in my French Press is that I only get coffee as a reward for not feeling lazy in the morning. :-P Also, it's not very fun to clean.
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Hear, hear!
But I must say that it was interesting, at least.
And that's comin' at ya' from yer local redneck hippie.
--
The Story of Myself
What's the difference between a nitrogen-flushed can and a valve-sealed bag? I don't drink coffee (though can't live without my daily cup of tea), so I haven't really paid much attention...
Oh, and Fair Trade rocks :D
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When coffee beans are roasted, they release CO2 for a while, which affects the flavor and aroma of the coffee. The beans in the valve-sealed bag are able to release these gases. The beans in the can are not, and so, before being placed in the can, all the CO2 has to be released from the beans first, or the can will expand from the gases. In order for the beans to release the gases, they have to sit around for a while, and go a little bit stale.
The beans in the bag don't have to sit around, because there's an outlet for the gases.
The nitrogen flushing keeps oxygen from getting to the beans, which preserves them longer, but the beans in the bag are still going to be fresher. :-)
The more you know... :-P
Oh! And French presses are good for brewing loose leaf tea, as well. They're kind of a pain to clean, though, so I just stick with the tea ball. :-) I drink tea almost daily too. :-)
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Huh, I didn' t know the French Press could do that. I'll have to look into it, because loose leaf teas are WAY better than the stuff you get in the bags :P
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Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress. --Mahatma Gandhi
My Blog: http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/kablock
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For tea, I think a better option would be the tea press.
I just already own a French press and don't want to spend money on another item right now. ;-)
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It's by local lesbian hero Ellis. Here's a YouTube of her singing it somewhere weird.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4ZJx4qSqws&feature=related
And for the record, it's not her best song. She wrote it for a 24 hour song writing contest.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/ediblewoman
holy cow. She looks incredibly similar to a younger version of my mom, but with shorter hair. And by incredibly similar, I mean almost spitting image. A little spooky to think that someone might have CLONED MY MOM!
But... once I got over that, it was a pretty fun song. :-)
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Your mom's a hot lesbian? Sweet.
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hehe, no.
She is pretty hot though, I think. But maybe everybody thinks their own mother is gorgeous. ;-)
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That really is a lot about coffee...and I'm also a non-coffee drinker! I prefer cappuccino and hot chocolate, myself.
Ironically, you talk about fair trade and I discovered something in a newly purchased CD about fairtrade. I'll be writing about it eventually. On the insert where I was expecting to find song lyrics, there was a speech from the band about how we can all help out by supporting fair trade, and it listed a bunch of sites. Like I said, I'll write about it eventually.
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I look forward to reading it. :-)
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The bottom of my tea boxes say that they participate in ethical trading practices... or something of that nature. I don't have them with me, and I can't remember the exact wording.
~C
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Hmmm...
I'll be on my way to college in a year, so I need to train myself on caffeine so that I will not go absolutely crazy. One time I went crazy on Mountain Dew, and I had a headache for weeks. No more fizzy drinks for me (or at least no more dew).
What would you suggest for the coffee novice?
Oh, and trader Joe's is awesome!
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
- George Bernard Shaw
If you're going to be in the dorms, they don't really allow things like hot plates. And a French Press in a dorm might be a bit more of a hassle than you want.
For a dorm, I recommend something like this (not that exact brand, though. It got some pretty poor reviews). I like it because it's perfect for one or two people, it's easy to take with you, and there's no hot plate. When a coffee pot sits on a hot plate, it burns the oils in the coffee and makes it taste more bitter than it should.
Also, if you're going to be going to college (and even with those AP classes!), you should know that small coffee shops are perfect places for studying. They're quiet, they have comfy chairs and couches, tables, they're relaxing, and the local ones are usually priced pretty decently. They all usually have free wireless too if you want to bring a lap top. I never had a lap top, but it sure is nice to get away from everything and claim your own couch and table and spread everything out. I guess libraries are nice too, though...
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Yeah, there's this espresso bar that I found nearby that I now bike to all the time. It's thanks to that place that I finally managed to get through the first 100 pages of Jane Eyre for my summer reading.
Also, I absolutely hate it when people say "Expresso" without any irony. I've even heard this at a couple coffee bars. Needless to say, I never went there again.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
- George Bernard Shaw
The coffee shop at my school is quite nice too, but if you want peace and quiet don't go on a Tuesday or Wednesday. Our coffee shop also serves as a small stage for comedians and musicians.
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Local entertainment is one of the best added bonuses at coffee shops! :-) I have heard rumors that one of the coffee shops here is going to start hosting an outdoor opera (not in the winter though, I hope).
"What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact."
Don Williams, Jr.
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Speaking purely out of concern... I don't think you should get addicted to caffeine. Your headache was a result of caffeine withdrawal. I highly suggest you first try to find other ways to stay awake, before you start chugging down the caffeine. A coffee every day (though that's kinda pushing it too) isn't bad, but when you get to the point where you're downing multiple cups per day, it starts getting bad for your health.
I like drinking ice water late at night... the coldness shocks my senses awake, and drinking a lot makes me have to stay somewhat active. Some people opt to do some walking if they have to stay up late, and others study at home and make use of a cold shower or two. Find something that works for you.
~C
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Yeah, I got caught up in the coffee, but mvenus is right.
I should let you know I don't drink coffee to stay awake, or because I "need" to. I drink it because I love it; it is an indulgence. I don't drink it every day.
Aside from showers and cold water, you could also drink some orange juice for energy. Vitamin C is a natural energy booster.
Cayenne pepper and ginseng work pretty well too.
I also take vitamin B-12 and Iron supplements, which help me not feel tired and moody all the time, but that might not be a solution for everyone.
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Haha, the reason for the headache was more because I had almost never had much caffiene, then I drank about a liter of Code Red a day for a week. We ran out fast. I was not happy.
My sister is definitely at the point of caffiene addiction though; we get concerned for her while we watch her continually down cups and still can't stay awake.
Coffee tends to help me read, but I think I'll try the tea at this place. 'Tis much, much cheaper.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
- George Bernard Shaw
There were only several times I drank coffee (or in my case, cappuccino or hot chocolate) because I "needed" it was around finals or midterm time, or on a particularly stressful day. Other times, I just wanted it because I wanted it. Not because I'd start having the shakes without my heated up caffinated treat.
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