cappuccino coffee pods

A Suitably Innocuous Blog: category: coffee
Troy Brumley

• this could be a problem
  

  Bloomberg reports a potential coffee shortage next year:

  World coffee consumption may outstrip production by as much as 8 million bags in 2009-10 because of the smaller crop in Brazil, the top grower, said Nestor Osorio, International Coffee Organization Executive Director."It's a tight situation that will support prices," Osorio said in an interview today in Ho Chi Minh City.Prices of the mild-tasting arabica coffee used by Starbucks Corp. jumped 6.1 percent yesterday, the biggest gain in almost three years as Brazil's Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes said output may drop as much as 22 percent next year to as low as 36 million bags. Prices of the bitter-tasting robusta used in espresso and instant coffee by Nestle SA climbed 4.3 percent.

  Green beans have an almost eternal shelf life. Time to stock up!

  Technorati Tags: coffee, commodity, shortage

• a-frakkin-noying
  

  Sometime between Friday afternoon and this morning, my coffee cup disappeared from my cube.

  ARGH.

  OK, I admit I've been known to set things down and forget them, but there are a finite number of places I would have done this and the cup is in none of them.

  ARGH.

  The cup is replaceable, it's a big quote mug with one of Thoreau's quotes, but still. It was all seasoned and everything. I hate breaking in a new mug.

  Update: Whew.  Bob found it in a place that I don't normally go, I must have set it down and forgot about it late Friday afternoon. Thanks Bob!

• and for the ultimate coffee snob do it yourselfer ...
  

  I shared my find of the Handpresso with some coworkers and friends, one of whom is very picky about his coffee. I grew up on Taster's Choice and Folgers Crystals, so I can drink anything but I also prefer better coffees. Tom ruled out the Handpresso based on the quality of pre-packed coffee pods he's tried.

  Well, this is the age of Google, and I just knew there had to be ways to make your own E.S.E. compatible coffee pods ... and there are: Here's three stories I found with a quick search:

  • Low tech
  • Amazon has something for this
  • From a coffee gadget blog
• the ultimate coffee toy?
  

  For the coffee fetishist who thought they had everything, the Handpresso--make espresso on the go.

  Yes, I want one :)

  Tags: coffee, espresso

• a weird coffee bean
  

  It's been hot and I haven't had the time nor inclination to roast my own beans this past summer, but I hope to fire up the roaster later this month if the temperatures come back down. In the meantime, I've been picking up roasted beans at various places while drinking Tom's home roasted brews at the office.

  A couple of weeks ago we went to Fresh Market in Kenwood to do the shopping and I spotted some weird looking beans labeled "elephant beans". From some web research, I find Coffee Review :: The World's Leading Coffee Buying Guide:

  Anomalies: Maragogipe (Elephant Beans)
  
  Maragogipe (also called elephant bean) is a variety of arabica that produces an extremely large, rather porous bean. It is a mutant that spontaneously appeared in Brazil, almost as though the giant of Latin-America thought regular beans were too puny and produced something in its own image. It was first discovered growing near the town of Maragogipe, in the northeastern state of Bahia. Subsequently it has been carried elsewhere in Latin America and generally adopts the flavor characteristics of the soil to which it has been transplanted.

  Mutant beans. Cool :)

  I didn't try this straight, I mixed it with some decaffeinated beans to create a reduced caffeine mix. The doctor said cut back on caffeine to cut down on sleeping problems, so I have. I'm not convinced it helps, I've been known to drink a couple of cups of coffee and then go to bed with no problems, but I' decided I'd give the doctor's advice a try.

  As for the elephant beans, I found the flavor to be fine. The coffee is mild and not at all acidic.

  One problem I did have is that my burr grinder won't handle these beans. They are almost double the size of regular beans and the feed hopper jams up. I switched to the spice mill style grinder until this batch of coffee is done. If you want to try these beans, you'll need to make sure your grinder can handle the beans.

  Tags: coffee

• hiroshima starbucks
  

  hiroshima starbucks on Flickr - Photo Sharing!:

  Hiroshima Starbucks

  Thanks to kmf164 for the picture and pointing this out. Hope I linked to it correctly.

  I tranced on the implications of this, and then I figured there's almost certainly a sushi bar in Alamogordo, so globalization symmetry is preserved.

  Tags: coffee, humor, globalization

• Lemon ice cream and coffee
  

  I missed this in the last upgrade to NetNewsWire, but they now have automatic generation of "special" feeds, such as tags or searches. This got me to go clean up my tag feeds and add some flickr searches for things I like, including coffee. I found this one of two of my favorite flavors--lemon ice cream and coffee--today.

  You can find the flickr page here: Lemon ice cream and coffee on Flickr - Photo Sharing!.

  And I've linked the picture here:

  
  
  Seriously drool-worthy :)

  Tags: rss, flickr, coffee, netnewswire

• Coffee Roaster Comments Update
  

  Tom updated his blog after months :) Here's an update on some comments