Archive for the ‘ Espresso Article ’ Category

Coffee Review: Door County Christmas Flavored Coffee

Author: joe

Nov 12

Coffee Rating:
4.0 out of 5 coffee cups

Door County Christmas Flavored Coffee
Wholebean or Ground, Regular and Decaf
Price: $1.99 to $59.95: 1.5 oz. Full Pot Pillow Packs (ground only), 8 oz. and 5 lb.

As we enter the holiday season we were interested in showcasing coffee companies who specialize in flavored seasonal and holiday coffee products. Door County Coffee was generous in sending us eight free packages of coffee to review from their line of ground flavored and regular coffees: Pumpkin Spice, Autumn Spice, Caramel Apple, Highlander Grogg, Candy Cane, White Christmas, Door County Christmas and a bag of their Premier Select regular coffee. If you love flavored coffees Door County Coffee has a wonderful selection of seasonal and holiday coffees to choose from. Door County Coffee has regular wholebean or ground coffees, as well as seasonal and holiday coffees. This holiday season they have 7 fall flavored coffees and 5 Christmas flavored coffees available for purchase. Door County Coffee has over 100 plus freshly roasted coffees and teas, as well as specialty foods you can order online. Door County Coffee uses only high quality Arabica beans for their coffees and roasts their coffee in small batches to produce the best-tasting coffee possible.

Door County Coffee has a coffee club, set up your coffee order to be sent to you automatically to your door every four or eight weeks. The coffee club makes a great Christmas gift as well.

Who doesn’t like free coffee with their order? When you order coffee from Door County Coffee you will receive the Roastmaster’s choice complimentary 1.5 oz pillow pack of coffee, a free pot of coffee just for ordering from Door County Coffee.

Door County Coffee has 1.5 oz. Full Pot Pillow Packs perfect one pot of coffee packs ideal to give for Christmas gifts, stuff into stockings, Christmas packages being shipped, or used as teacher gifts or hostess gifts. Door County Coffee has free shipping on orders of $75.00 or more.

When opening the package of ground coffee the Door County Christmas flavored ground coffee smells of cinnamon and spice, immediately making me think of the holiday season. The Door County Christmas coffee was brewed with a French Press and it was tasted with and without half and half. I let the flavored coffee cool a bit, flavored coffees to me are their best when the coffee is not scalding hot.

The Door County Christmas coffee when brewed smells of cinnamon and spice. When tasting the coffee there is a distinct taste of the cinnamon with hints of other holiday spices, making this coffee a real treat for the senses. I really love the flavor of cinnamon in coffee and Door County Christmas coffee adds just the right amount of cinnamon surrounded by holiday spices to make this a great cup of flavored coffee.

I often find with flavored coffees you can only taste the flavoring, which can at times be overwhelming, and not the coffee itself. Flavored coffees may smell good in the package and when brewing but often the flavoring is abrasive or lacking when drinking the coffee. Not so with Door County Christmas coffee, the coffee flavor comes through smoothly and combines well with the warm cinnamon and spice flavors.

Door County Christmas coffee has a exciting burst of spice that immediately puts you in the holiday mood, when sipped it will bring a smile to your face. Door County Christmas coffee is a great choice for the Christmas holiday season to savor while wrapping gifts or served with your favorite Christmas desserts.

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Coffee Article: The Chemistry of Your One a Day Espresso

Author: joe

Apr 20


 

For many, who are addicted to coffee and particularly espresso, there is something dark, indulgent and seductive about coffee and caffeine.

Recent articles in the press have announced that a seemingly modest gourmet coffee habit of one cappuccino each and every day of your commute, could cost more than £700 a year (or $1,116.36 U.S. dollars) and pile on, wait for it, a colossal 60,000 calories!!

However, the calories are in the milk! Often full fat is used, so a skinny option is always an advisable optional extra in your latte or cappuccino …

The coffee part of your indulgence is, if recent research is anything to go by, good for you!

Many research studies over the past 10 or so years have indicated that consumption of 3 to 5 cups of coffee a day can:

1. Reduce the incidence of certain cancers such as prostrate and oral cancer
2. Reduce cholesterol levels
3. Reduce the likelihood of dying from cardiovascular disease
4. Prevent plaque and therefore tooth decay
5. Protect against gout
6. Reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure
7. Positively aid digestion, especially as moderate coffee consumption is not diuretic and will assist with constipation
8. Reduce the incidence of cirrhosis of the liver
9. May reduce the onset of type 2 diabetes
10. May aid pain management and actively boosts the properties of many pain killers – hence why many over the counter preparations now contain caffeine
11. Increase cognitive performance and particularly short term recall ability
12. Reduce the risk of Parkinson’s disease
13. Reduce the risk of dementia
14. Result in a lower incidence of gallstones and gallbladders diseases
15. Reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s

WOW!

Seems we should be bathing in espresso … which, when you hear that alternative medicine now recommends coffee enemas, is perhaps not such a stupid suggestion as it sounds!!

Similarly, a big trend in Continental Europe, which we here at Aromo Coffee believe is set to take the UK market by storm, is stomach friendly, or mild coffees.

These are coffees where the green, unroasted bean is washed with saturated steam under humid pressure, for an hour or so.

The original system was patented in 1933 and produces a coffee which is more easily digestible for those with sensitive stomachs … because the steaming removes irritants which may cause, or exacerbate stomach ache, heart burn and acid indigestion.

Various reports – such as Albanese 1964 and Rahn 1979 – have concluded that there is a genuine change in the chemistry of steamed coffee with reductions in:

Tannin (24%)
Chlorogenic Acid (3%)
Mercaptomethane (11%)

So coffee should be a moderate part of a healthy diet and as Kenneth Williams would have said in those wonderful British 1970’s cream cake adverts … a cappuccino is ‘naughty but nice’ especially after a good workout … Go on treat yourself!

About the author: This article was written by Guru (Andy Grelak) who writes for aromocoffee.co.uk, the UK’s leading online retailer of 44mm E.S.E espresso coffee pods.

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Coffee Article: Coffee I Love – Espresso I Adore – But Keep it Real!

Author: joe

Mar 30


For many half serious coffee and espresso drinkers the wine and coffee analogy thing has become a tiresome and boring debate!

Done to death without success at the beginning of the noughties, the debate has dragged on and to be frank is now passé…

Common consent is that wine and coffee cannot be compared to one another…

Whilst coffee is certainly an interesting and stimulating debating topic and for many a livelihood (!), I for one would argue that it simply has neither the taste breadth, nor nuance depth, to be particularly exciting from an origin sensorial / olfactory only perspective.

Ok – the old guard and those groupies at the world latte art championships will disagree…! But unless we are sampling a straight Minas, Ivory Coast or Susie Wong vs a Kenyan A or similar then there is really no flavour contest to write home about…

Hence, the rise in the last few years of coffee pairings…Are these simply spurious jingoism, or sublimely creative taste sensation?

Hmmmm….Well, for me the debate is curtailed when I read of the following ridiculous suggestions…. My Top 5 never on a month of Sundays ‘pairings’ as follows:

1) Indonesian or Guatemalan with a brownie
2) Brazilian with a short bread
3) Costa Rican with eggs
4) Kenyan with Crepes
5) Kenyan with berries
6) Indonesian, Brazilian, Ethiopian, Guatemalan with dark chocolate –

I rest my case!

Never, ever, on this basis will coffee pairings achieve the stature of wine flights with a Gourmet Michelin tasting menu… And for those in the coffee trade who wish for something more… well perhaps you should change trades!

Coffee I love. Espresso I adore… but trying to window dress something as sublimely simple and perfect as roasted and liquored coffee beans I am not a fan of… because, in the process you lose the original essence and beauty that is a personal espresso moment, or the voyage of self discovery when tasting a new origin for the first time….. Keep it real!

About the author: This article was written by Guru who writes for aromocoffee.co.uk, the UK’s leading online retailer of 44mm E.S.E espresso coffee pods.

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Coffee Article: Espresso With or Without Sugar?

Author: joe

Mar 9

More perplexing than whether you should call your perfetto moment an espresso or expresso, an age old question for those anal enough to care is whether you should, or should not, sugar your espresso?

More than simply a question of ‘sugar to taste’, there has to be an etiquette to this seemingly most innocuous of habits!

I for one don’t sugar my espresso…I don’t want the hard and bitter edge of an agricultural Italian espresso to be rounded and softened for a high street palate and neither do I want the fresh and floral hints of a fine Captain Cook and SHG Central to be compromised…

Of course, in Italian cafe bar tradition, sugar in your espresso is as typical as polenta, prosciutto, truffle, Parmigiano-Reggiano and ragù …….mmmm….. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it is right does it?

Let’s take a look around the espresso world and see the state of play between those who do and those who don’t sugar!

Café Cubano, otherwise called Cuban espresso, or a Cuban shot or pull, is espresso in which the espresso shot is sweetened with brown or demerara sugar as it is being brewed.

This is often achieved by a sprinkling of sugar on top of the compressed puck before brewing, alternatively, the sugar can be pre-mixed into a paste with espresso and then the remaining espresso poured over. This has the effect of creating a light brown foam layer, or espumita style crema.

Sounds great, so simple and it allows the rich and treacley demerara to infuse with the aromatic fresh espresso as it is poured!

In Spain Torrefacto remains extremely popular.
Originally devised during times of high taxation on what was considered a luxury product, Torrefaction is the addition of up to 15 %, but typically 5 > 8% demerara, brown sugar, or molasses to the part roasted beans. This creates a beautiful, deep and luxurious sheen to even the most average run of the mill second grade coffee bean!

The beans look wonderful and I have to say the coffee tastes great too…even 100% Robusta …with a light and sweet note and a wonderfully thick and luxuriant crema.

Even relative newcomers to the coffee world Vietnam now have their own sweetened coffee, Ca phe da, is an espresso style roast filter coffee, poured over sweetened condensed milk…hmmmm… possibly a step too far for me!

But still, it seems that those aficionados, who sugar their espresso, may be being both respectful to real espresso culture, as well as on trend!

About the author: Andy Grelak is a leading coffee industry consultant, based in the UK and co-owner of
www.aromocoffee.co.uk retailer of ESE Coffee Pods.

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Coffee Article: H2O Espresso

Author: joe

Feb 29

Water and espresso….A contentious subject didn’t you know?!

Well, the devil is always in the detail isn’t it?

For example – Are you the kind of espresso drinker who enjoys their perfetto moment neat, with no other accompaniment, or do you prefer a shot glass of cool water, to wash down your crema heaven?

In continental Europe, a glass of cool water with your espresso is the service norm and from my perspective adds a certain importance to the art and ceremony which is perfetto espresso…..others in the ‘why make perfection better’ school of thought may disagree…

It is clear that in green form beans typically have 9 > 13% residual moisture- this being largely dependent upon origin… and that when the beans are roasted, all of this moisture is removed…hence delivering the ‘fabled’ crack…

But the interesting question is, in technical roasting terms, are beans which are quenched with water or air dried in a cooling tray, superior or preferred?

Again opinion is split… quenching smacks of industrial roasting, but is also the simplest, cleanest, safest and most effective way to end the roasting process and deliver a consistently great product.

Air drying on the other hand symbolizes the craft of the artisan roaster….. but also delivers a less consistent product, which is subject to broken beans and of course contamination from foreign bodies as the system is not closed…

The simple reality is, that I would challenge many so called espresso experts to discern any difference in cup, between an air dried espresso, with zero residual moisture and a quenched espresso, with 3 > 4 % moisture. Here in Europe the legal maximum is 5% residual moisture content.

Ok the crema may have marginally less longevity from a quenched espresso, but as we all know (and now for the technical bit!) Espresso crema is a biphasic system, composed of gas globules held within liquid films called lamellae… these globules are typically in a honeycomb structure…

Limited residual moisture content will therefore not detrimentally affect the persistence or quality of the crema, rather any error in judgement when grinding, brewing/ extraction / temperature is much more likely the root cause of an under performance.

As I say the devil is always in the detail…but then that’s why the art of espresso is a subject which raises such passions and opinions….

About the author: This article was written by Guru at aromocoffee.co.uk, the UK’s leading online retailer of ESE coffee pods.

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