Recent Activity

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  Coffee poems

  I found this on a coffee website, but discussing production news, very unusual, its very funny, and querky.

  I Am Coffee, Hear Me Roar! (the bean's perspective)

  by Neill Bultman 

  "I am the bean
  That brings caffeine
  To every fiend
  That's on the scene

  From Katmandu
  to downtown Reno...
  From coffee (black)
  To cappacino.

  I open eyes
  And grease the tongue.
  I soothe the old
  And move the young.

  I am coffee.
  Hear me roar!
  Drink me - now -
  So you can soar!

  So, keep on drinking
  Won't you please?
  Cause' I'm the cure
  To your disease.

  Sufficient grounds
  To swill my juice?
  Don't want to hear
  Your lame excuse.

  Don't have to listen
  To what this says
  Just ask my dad -
  He's Juan Valdez."

   

  Posted 17 Jul 08

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  Coffee, what would we do without it?

  Coffee, what would you do without it? Indeed... when I look one to one with my cup of coffee or better still, when I open the new jar of coffee and that new taste hits my senses I feel that sensation run down my spine. While I'm enjoying it there are a million other coffee related happenings occuring throughout the world. From sales, and production, to workers and plantation problems.

  I wonder if this discussion list will be big enough and robust enough to handle such a tiny subject as Coffee.... hmmm!

  Posted 16 Jul 08

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  Coffee Talk

  People who want to talk coffee.... or other stuff.

  I Need Coffee - http://www.ineedcoffee.com/section/brewing/

  Coffee Talk Express - http://www.coffeetalkexpress.com/

  Expresso Essential - http://espressoessential.com/blog/category/coffee-talk/

  Posted 17 Jul 08

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  Coffee with a conscientious kick

  Coffee with a conscientious kick
  By Hal Weitzman

  Published: August 15 2006 17:56 | Last updated: August 15 2006 17:56

  On a verdant Andean hillside 1,700m above sea level, Carlos Mario Roman points out four hectares where his late father, a coffee farmer, raised coca, a traditional stimulant and the raw material for cocaine. The crop is a common cause of deforestation on the slopes of the Andes.

  Mr Roman has pulled out the coca plants and planted native trees to give shade to coffee plants. In another area, where he says that his father would have burnt or cut down forest to plant coffee, he has sown coffee in the glade of a natural wood. He has also planted numerous fruit trees on his 20-hectare farm – not to harvest, he says, but to bring back the birds that had left because of deforestation.

  - A good coffee result.  

  Posted 16 Jul 08

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  The Legends of Coffee

  Coffee Lengends From - The National Geographic
  http://www.nationalgeographic.com/coffee/ax/frame.html

  AFRICAN ORIGINS - (Circa A.D. 800)
  Goats will eat anything. Just ask Kaldi the legendary Ethiopian (map) goatherd. Kaldi, the story goes, noticed his herd dancing from one coffee shrub to another, grazing on the cherry-red berries containing the beans. He copped a few himself and was soon frolicking with his flock.

  Witnessing Kaldi’s goatly gambol, a monk plucked berries for his brothers. That night they were uncannily alert to divine inspiration.

  History tells us other Africans of the same era fueled up on protein-rich coffee-and-animal-fat balls—primitive PowerBars—and unwound with wine made from coffee-berry pulp. Coffee later crossed the Red Sea to Arabia, where things really got cooking...

  ESCAPE FROM ARABIA - (Circa 1000 to 1600)
  Coffee as we know it kicked off in Arabia, where roasted beans were first brewed around A.D. 1000. By the 13th century Muslims were drinking coffee religiously. The “bean broth” drove dervishes into orbit, kept worshippers awake, and splashed over into secular life. And wherever Islam went, coffee went too: North Africa (map), the eastern Mediterranean, and India (map).

  Arabia made export beans infertile by parching or boiling, and it is said that no coffee seed sprouted outside Africa or Arabia until the 1600s—until Baba Budan. As tradition has it, this Indian pilgrim-cum-smuggler left Mecca with fertile seeds strapped to his belly.  Baba’s beans bore fruit and initiated an agricultural expansion that would soon reach Europe’s colonies...

  EUROPE CATCHES THE BUZZ - (1615 to 1700)
  “The Turks (map) have a drink of black color....I will bring some with me...to the Italians” (map). Thus a merchant of Venice introduced Europe to coffee in 1615. But the end product didn’t amount to a hill of beans to many traders—they wanted the means of production. The race was on.

  The Dutch (map) cleared the initial hurdle in 1616, spiriting a coffee plant into Europe (map) for the first time. Then in 1696 they founded the first European-owned coffee estate, on colonial Java, now part of Indonesia (map).

  Business boomed and the Dutch sprinted ahead to adjacent islands.  Confident beyond caution, Amsterdam began bestowing coffee trees on aristocrats around Europe...

  A SWASHBUCKLING SCHEME - (Circa 1714 to 1720)
  Louis XIV received his Dutch treat around 1714—a coffee tree for Paris’s (map) Royal Botanical Garden, the Jardin des Plantes. Several years later a young naval officer, Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu, was in Paris on leave from Martinique, a French colony in the Caribbean. Imagining Martinique as a French Java, he requested clippings from his king’s tree. Permission denied.

  Resolute, de Clieu led a moonlight raid of the Jardin des Plantes—over the wall, into the hothouse, out with a sprout.

  Mission accomplished, de Clieu sailed for Martinique.  He might have thought the hard part was over. He would have been wrong...

  CROSSING THE ATLANTIC - (Circa 1720 to 1770)
  On the return passage to Martinique, wrote de Clieu, a “basely jealous” passenger, “being unable to get this coffee plant away from me, tore off a branch.”

  Then came the pirates who nearly captured the ship; then came a storm which nearly sank it. Finally, skies grew clear. Too clear. Water grew scarce and was rationed. De Clieu gave half of his allotment to his stricken seedling.

  Under armed guard, the sprout grew strong in Martinique, yielding an extended family of approximately 18 million trees in 50 years or so.  Its progeny would supply Latin America, where a dangerous liaison would help bring coffee to the masses...

  COFFEE BLOOMS IN BRAZIL - (Circa 1727 to 1800)
  1727: Brazil’s government wants a cut of the coffee market; but first, they need an agent to smuggle seeds from a coffee country. Enter Lt. Col. Francisco de Melo Palheta, the James Bond of Beans.

  Colonel Palheta is dispatched to French Guiana, ostensibly to mediate a border dispute. Eschewing the fortresslike coffee farms, suave Palheta chooses a path of less resistance—the governor’s wife. The plan pays off. At a state farewell dinner she presents him a sly token of affection: a bouquet spiked with seedlings.

  From these scant shoots sprout the world’s greatest coffee empire.  By 1800 Brazil’s monster harvests would turn coffee from an elite indulgence to an everyday elixir, a drink for the people.

  From the National Geographic - http://www.nationalgeographic.com/coffee/ax/frame.html

  Posted 16 Jul 08

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  Absolutely everything you wanted to know about coffee

  Absolutely everything you wanted to know about coffee

  Ever wondered about the lingo of the barista? How do they talk about taste? And what makes a good brew? Where do the beans come from? Excellent site for coffee meuso wannabe's.

  http://koffeekorner.com/koffeetalk.html

  Posted 17 Jul 08

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  How many different ways are there to drink coffee

  I only know your typical coffee shop or cafe way to drink, "skinny flat white please", large or small.... hmmm, too much info.

  Capuccino, love it but it dont love me, for the best taste I think full milk, I like skimmed. Instant... yep I know, sacrilage, but its quick.... How many different ways are there.... just thinking about it there are so many to experience in so many exotic places, with additions, liquers, sweetners, double shots etc etc .... its an f...ing culture man!

  Posted 16 Jul 08

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  Getting it right

  Coffee Academy - 

  Barista Basics Coffee Academy - http://www.baristabasics.com.au/

  Barista Basics Coffee Academy is the only private Barista trainer in Australia audited by TAFE.

  Barista Basics is the only coffee academy that can provide you with a “TAFE Statement of Attainment in Hospitality Operative Skills" and a “Transcript of Results” for the TAFE-NSW module 9542B that relates to the National Competency THHBFB12B “Prepare and Serve Espresso Coffee”.

  Barista Basics Coffee Academy is a Registered Training Organisation (RTO). We are VETAB registered and our course is VETAB accredited.

   - Wow, training on how to get making coffee and a variety of.... right. What next?  

  Posted 16 Jul 08

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  Coffee flashbacks

  I saw a van yesterday evening on the way home, about 1.20am. It was just pottering along slowly but in a one lane highway. I was behind then started to focus on the van signage. Coffee van with a .com on it. I started to have flashbacks to coffee times, to great lonely moments, to moments with an ex, friendly ex.... and wanted to call her to go a mooch over something strong and slow. I remembered finding a spilled coffee jar and little foot prints... probably some rodent taking a break.

  Posted 16 Jul 08