Joe Info

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(top row l to r) Believe it or not, today is National Crush a Can Day. Tomorrow is National Ask a Stupid Question Day. (row two) And Sunday is National Coffee Day, one of my all-time favorites! (row three) Coffee gets me going! They used to call it the think drink. It really is that…and more. (row four l to r) The ripe coffee fruit waiting to be picked. And the fruit of the roasted coffee bean waiting to be drunk. (row five) The anatomy of the coffee fruit. (row six l to r) Some things to shop for like this really cute “Good to the Last Drop” cup, $16.60 HERE. And God’s nectar of the coffee fruit. (This one ounce bottle goes for $38 on Amazon) It’s derived from the thin, juicy coating on the outside of the bean and is packed with antioxidants. More than any other source on earth. “Coffee fruit has the power to boost the immune system, protect against free radicals and act as an anti-inflammatory.” Read more HERE. And HERE’s an interesting interview with superfood hunter, Darin Olien. (row seven) Love these coffee lover cups. Probably on Amazon, too. (bottom) Ahhhh, coffee. A simple pleasure with super benefits. Cheers!!

 

Checking my “What National Day Falls on Today’s Calendar”, while drinking my morning cup of coffee, (I’m on my first, fourth cup), I noticed that this Sunday is National Coffee Day (today is National Crush A Can Day, Saturday is National Ask A Stupid Question Day for those who just had to know).  It’s a fun day, where across the country many retailers are giving away free coffee (or discounted coffee) to those of us who crave the morning, or afternoon, sweetness of a cup of Joe.  I scoured the internet to find some fun and random trivia – so when you are sitting across the table from your significant other, you can say, “honey, did you know…” a lot this weekend (if you were to ask Jackie or my girls, that is something that I say all the time!)  Enjoy, and thanks to Buzz Feed, Good Housekeeping and Express.co in the UK.  Enjoy, and go easy on the sugar.

 

  1. Coffee was originally chewed – Sipping may be your preferred method of java consumption, but coffee has not always been a liquid treat. According to a number of historians, the first African tribes to consume coffee did so by grinding the berries together, adding in some animal fat, and rolling these caffeinated treats into tiny edible energy balls.
  2. Legend has it a 9th-century Ethiopian goat herder discovered coffee by accident when he noticed how crazy the beans were making his goats.
  3. New Yorkers drink almost 7 times more coffee than other cities in the US. – which as we all know is why they are crazier than goats.
  4. Drinking decaf fuels the soda industry – After coffee beans are decaffeinated, several coffee manufacturers sell the caffeine to soda and pharmaceutical companies. (click here to learn how decaffeinated coffee is made – thanks Scientific American!)
  5. Instant coffee has been around for nearly 250 years – Instant coffee has been around for a while, making its first appearance in England in 1771. But it would take another 139 years for the first mass-produced instant coffee to be introduced (and patented) in the U.S. in 1910. (see further down for more instant coffee info)
  6. The average American spends more than $1000 on coffee each year – You’d think that spending an average of $1,092 on coffee each year would be enough to make America the world’s most caffeinated nation. You would be wrong.
  7. Finland is the world’s coffee capital – Though Finland does not produce any beans of its own, its citizens drink a lot of the brown stuff—the most of any country in the world.
  8. Beethoven was a barista’s worst nightmare – Beethoven enjoyed a cup of coffee, and was extremely particular about its preparation; he insisted that each cup he consumed be made with exactly 60 beans. Da da da dumb!
  9. Coffee beans sent Brazilian athletes to the Olympics – In 1932, Brazil couldn’t afford to send its athletes to the Olympics in Los Angeles. So they loaded their ship with coffee and sold it along the way. Imagine how Starbucks could help the US teams.
  10. There have been several attempts to ban the beverage entirely – As recently as the 18th century, governments were trying to eradicate coffee. Among the many reasons for outlawing the beverage were its tendency to stimulate “radical thinking.” In 1746 Sweden took things to an extreme when it banned both coffee and coffee paraphernalia (i.e. cups and saucers).
  11. Drinking coffee could extend your cat’s life – Maybe it’s a coincidence, but the Guinness World Record holder for “Oldest Cat Ever”—a 38-year-old kitty named Creme Puff—drank coffee every morning of her furry little life (plus enjoying bacon, eggs, and broccoli). Before you dismiss that outright, consider this: The cat that Creme Puff beat out for the record (a 34-year-old cat, appropriately named Grandpa Rex Allen) had the same owner, and was fed the exact same diet.
  12. 7th-century women thought it was turning their men into “useless corpses.” In 1674, the Women’s Petition Against Coffee claimed the beverage was turning British men into “useless corpses” and proposed a ban on it for anyone under the age of 60. I’ve been called lazy, but …
  13. Chock full O’Nuts coffee contains no nuts – It’s named for a chain of nut stores the founder converted into coffee shops.
  14. The world’s most expensive coffee comes from animal poop – Kopi Luwak, the world’s most expensive coffee, earns its pricey distinction thanks to a surprising step in its production: digestion. In Indonesia, a wild animal known as the Asian palm civet (a small critter similar to the weasel) cannot resist the bright red coffee cherries that abound, even though they can’t digest the actual coffee beans. The beans pass through the civets’ systems without being fully digested. At which point, some brave coffee farmer collects the beans from the civets’ droppings, (hopefully) thoroughly washes them, and sells them for up to $600 per pound. (I have some if you’d like to try it)
  15. The first webcam watched a coffee pot – Though it was hardly what one might described as “action-packed,” it allowed researchers at Cambridge to monitor the coffee pot volume situation in the Trojan Room without ever leaving their desks. After the webcam portion of the coffee pot experiment was pulled, the pot itself—a non-working Krups proaroma pot that would normally retail for about $50—was put up for auction on ebay, where it sold for just under $5000. (I have one in the garage you can have for $20 bucks).
  16. There’s a Starbucks at CIA headquarters – Some officers at the Central Intelligence Agency call it “Stealthy Starbucks,” but employees at the Langley, Virginia location definitely aren’t your typical Starbucks employees. For one, they must undergo extensive background checks and they cannot leave their post without a CIA escort. On the positive side: They don’t have to write down or shout out their customers’ names!
  17. Coffee could one day fuel your car – Researchers have had great success in converting coffee into biodiesel. Best of all, used grounds work just as well.  Better yet, just sit back in your electric car, brew a cup or two inside and let the car drive you.
  18. Coffee is a psychoactive. And at high doses it can make you see things… It can also kill you… And, the lethal dose of caffeine is roughly 100 cups of coffee. – what an odd way to go.
  19. A French doctor in the 1600s suggested Cafe Au Laits for patients, inspiring people to begin adding milk to coffee – very wise man.
  20. The French philosopher Voltaire is said to have drunk 50 cups of coffee a day – Because he ruled and had others to do his dishes.
  21. Espresso is regulated by the Italian government because it is considered an essential part of their daily life. – this makes perfect sense to me – good to have the government behind such an important ritual.
  22. Hawaii is the only state that commercially grows coffee. – and if you’ve had it – yum!
  23. In the ancient Arab culture, there was only one way a woman could legally divorce: If her husband didn’t provide enough coffee. – again, makes perfect sense to me.
  24. Coffee beans are actually the pit of a berry, which makes them a fruit. 
  25. Brewed espresso has 2.5% fat, while filtered coffee contains 0.6% fat. –and I thought fruits are good for you.
  26. Johan Sebastian Bach wrote an opera about a woman who was addicted to coffee. – when she sang, you could hear her five blocks away.
  27. Unlike the hip 20-something Baristas in the US, in Italy the average Barista age is 48, and it is a very respected profession.
  28. Want to know the history of the word “coffee”? Well here it is: Arabic: qahhwat al-bun (or “wine of the bean”), shortened to qahwa, borrowed by Turkish: kahve, borrowed by Dutch: koffie, then English: coffee
  29. In the 1600s there was a controversy over whether or not Catholics could drink coffee, luckily Pope Clement VIII said it was okay. (nice call – likely saved the world too!)
  30. No matter what people tell you, caffeine cannot help you sober up. – but for some reason, it’s in every movie made in the 50’s.
  31. There is a spa in Japan that lets you bathe in coffee, tea, or wine.EEEWWW – I wouldn’t drink it though…
  32. Before coffee caught on in the US in the 1700s, beer was breakfast drink of choice – Which is only slightly less awesome.
  33. Irish coffee was actually invented to warm up cold American plane passengers leaving from Ireland – now it’s served at restaurants to get you to leave a bigger tip.
  34. Teddy Roosevelt is and was the greatest American coffee drinker,consuming a gallon a day. – But you probably shouldn’t attempt to do that.
  35. Instant coffee accounts for 13 per cent of all coffee drunk worldwide,more than $30billion on instant coffee last year.
  36. A form of instant coffee had been developed in England in 1771 but it had the problem of going rancid after a relatively short time.
  37. The first mass-produced instant coffee, called Red E Coffee, (get it??) was produced in 1909 by Belgian-American George Constant Louis Washington.
  38. During the First World War, US soldiers called their coffee “a cup of George”, but US military adopted the phrase cup of Joe for GI Joe.
  39. Nescafe, the first truly successful instant coffee, was launched by Nestlé in 1938.  Today, Most instant coffee is made from Robusta beans grown in Vietnam.
  40. In 2012, Canadian Masen Kankula claimed a world record by eating a tablespoon of Maxwell House granules in 8.61 seconds.  There is no information on how much powered creamer he ate that day.

 

 

MMMMMMMMMMMM

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There’s no shortage of coffee love in the world and I’m a big supporter of that love. (bottom left) I just had to share this unusual, fun, hand-made mug. Get yours HERE. (bottom right) I love my guest mugs. I use them in customer meetings and when friends stop by. If you’re really, really nice to me I’ll give you one to take home.

I stopped by one of our local coffee shops this morning to visit with a business partner, and enjoyed a fresh cup of delicious coffee.  Wow.  The aroma, taste, color, temperature and texture was amazing.  Being the senior “PIA Job” solver at the company, I of course was wondering “how do they do it”?  Was it the beans, the water, the brewing temperature, the cup, the artisans, the setting, or the time of day … just what were the ingredients that made it taste so good.  Of course, when I got back to the office, I had a cup of my KHT Mr. Coffee “drip-drip” special coffee … and it was just not the same (by a long shot!). Now, don’t ask my staff how I make mine at the office, they have been judging me for years! So instead, I went digging online and found a detailed, “scientific” article from Smithsonian called – The Chemistry and Physics Behind the Perfect Cup of Coffee – How science helps your barista brew your espresso perfectly every time, (personally, I would have tried for a shorter title!) and just had to share the highlights with you.  Thanks to Smithsonian.com and writer Christopher Hendon for the bulk of the article!  Enjoy.

  • Coffee is unique among artisanal beverages in that the brewer plays a significant role in its quality or lack thereof at the point of consumption. In contrast, as drinkers of different preferred beverages we buy, for example, milk (whole, 1%, 2%), juice (pulp, no-pulp), draft beer (spiced, hoppy, light, heavy) and wine (red, white, sweet, silky) as finished products, the only consumer-controlled variable is temperature at which we drink them. So, why is it that coffee produced by a barista at a cafe always tastes different than the same beans brewed at home?
  • According to scientists, the variables of temperature, water chemistry, particle size distribution, ratio of water to coffee, filter/soak time and, perhaps most importantly, the quality of the green coffee all play crucial roles in producing a tasty cup. It’s how we control these variables that allows for that cup to be reproducible.

Brew Method:

  • We humans seem to like drinks that contain coffee constituents (organic acids, Maillard products, esters and heterocycles, to name a few) at 1.2 to 1.5 percent by mass (as in filtered coffee), and favor drinks containing 8 to 10 percent by mass (as in espresso). Concentrations outside of these ranges are challenging to execute. There are a limited number of technologies that achieve 8 to 10 percent concentrations, the espresso machine being the most familiar. Many Middle Eastern countries brew their coffee even denser/stronger, and serve less of it in tiny cups (think turbo-charged caffeine).
  • There are many ways, though, to achieve a drink containing 1.2 to 1.5 percent coffee. Purists prefer using a “pour-over”, a Turkish, Arabic, Aeropress, French press, siphon or a batch brew (that is, regular drip) apparatus – each producing coffee that tastes good around these concentrations. These brew methods also boast an advantage over their espresso counterpart: They are cheap.

When coffee meets water:

  • There are two families of brewing device within the low-concentration methods – those that fully immerse the coffee in the brew water and those that flow the water through the coffee bed. From a physical perspective, the major difference is that the temperature of the coffee particulates is higher in the full immersion system. The slowest part of coffee extraction is not the rate at which compounds dissolve from the particulate surface. Rather, it’s the speed at which coffee flavor moves through the solid particle to the water-coffee interface.  Surprising, this speed is increased with a rise in temperature. (just like heat treating!)
  • A higher particulate temperature means that more of the tasty compounds trapped within the coffee particulates will be extracted. But higher temperature also lets more of the unwanted compounds dissolve in the water, too. The Specialty Coffee Association presents a flavor wheel to help us talk about these flavors – from green/vegetative or papery/musty through to brown sugar or dried fruit.
  • Pour-overs and other flow-through systems are more complex. Unlike full immersion methods where time is controlled, flow-through brew times depend on the grind size since the grounds control the flow rate. (Just like grain size for my metallurgist friends!)
  • Also, the water-to-coffee ratio matters, too, in the brew time. Simply grinding the coffee more finely to increase the extraction invariably changes the brew time, as the water seeps more slowly through finer grounds. One can increase the water-to-coffee ratio by using less coffee, but as the mass of coffee is reduced, the brew time also decreases. Optimization of filter coffee brewing is hence multidimensional and more tricky than full immersion methods.

Other variables to try to control:

  • Even if you can optimize your brew method and apparatus to precisely mimic your favorite barista, there is still a near-certain chance that your home or work brew will taste different from the cafe’s. There are three subtleties that have tremendous impact on the coffee quality: water chemistry, particle size distribution produced by the grinder and coffee freshness.
  • First, water chemistry: Given that coffee is an acidic beverage, the acidity of your brew water can have a big effect. Brew water containing low levels of both calcium ions and bicarbonate (HCO₃⁻) – that is, soft water – will result in a highly acidic cup, sometimes described as sour. Brew water containing high levels of HCO₃⁻ – typically, hard water – will produce a chalky cup, as the bicarbonate has neutralized most of the flavorsome acids in the coffee. Ideally we want to brew coffee with water containing chemistry somewhere in the middle. But there’s a good chance you don’t know the bicarbonate concentration in your own tap water, and a small change makes a big difference. To taste the impact, try brewing coffee with Evian – one of the highest bicarbonate concentration bottled waters, at 360 mg/L.
  • Second, particle size: The particle size distribution your grinder produces is critical, too. Every coffee enthusiast will rightly tell you that blade grinders are disfavored because they produce a seemingly random particle size distribution; there can be both powder and essentially whole coffee beans coexisting. The alternative, a burr grinder, features two pieces of metal with teeth that cut the coffee into progressively smaller pieces. They allow ground particulates through an aperture only once they are small enough.  Of course, there is contention over how to optimize grind settings when using a burr grinder.  One school of thought supports grinding the coffee as fine as possible to maximize the surface area, which lets you extract the most delicious flavors in higher concentrations. The rival school advocates grinding as coarse as possible to minimize the production of fine particles that impart negative flavors. Perhaps the most useful advice here is to determine what you like best based on your taste preference.
  • Finally, the freshness of the coffee itself is crucial. Roasted coffee contains a significant amount of CO₂ and other volatiles trapped within the solid coffee matrix: Over time these gaseous organic molecules will escape the bean. Fewer volatiles means a less flavorful cup of coffee. Most cafes will not serve coffee more than four weeks out from the roast date, emphasizing the importance of using freshly roasted beans. One can mitigate the rate of staling by cooling the coffee, as described by the Arrhenius equation. While you shouldn’t chill your coffee in an open vessel (unless you want fish finger brews), storing coffee in an airtight container in the freezer will significantly prolong freshness.  You can always invest in a vacuum container to keep your coffee fresh!
  • So, don’t feel bad that your carefully brewed cup of coffee at home never stacks up to what you buy at the café. There are a lot of variables – scientific and otherwise – that must be wrangled to produce a single superlative cup. Take comfort that most of these variables are not optimized by some mathematical algorithm, but rather by somebody’s tongue. What’s most important is that your coffee tastes good to you… brew after brew.

Some of the favorite Places in Cleveland for a Great Cup of Coffee:

  1. Rising Star Coffee Roasters – 1455 W. 29th Street or 2187 Murray Hill Rd (Edgehill)
  2. Erie Island Coffee – 2057 E. 4th Street or 19300 Detroit Rd (Rocky River)
  3. Phoenix Coffee – 3000 Bridge Avenue, (W. 30th)
  4. Loop Coffee – 2180 W 11th Street or 1700 E 9th Street
  5. Pour Cleveland – 530 Euclid (E. 6th Street)
  6. Dewey’s Coffee – 13201 Shaker Square
  7. Gypsy Beans & Baking Co. – 6425 Detroit Avenue
  8. Algebra Tea House – 2136 Murray Hill Road