Coffee By Celeste

how to store coffee

2011-07-26T15:53:00.001-07:00

Storage is integral to maintaining your coffee's freshness and flavor. It is important to keep it away from excessive air, moisture, heat, and light -- in that order -- in order to preserve its fresh-roast flavor as long as possible. Coffee beans are decorative and beautiful to look at but you will compromise the taste of your coffee if you store your beans in ornamental, glass canisters on your kitchen countertop. Doing so will cause them to become stale and your coffee will quickly lose its fresh flavor.

STORE YOUR DAILY COFFEE...

It is important not to refrigerate or freeze your daily supply of coffee because contact with moisture will cause it to deteriorate. Instead, store coffee in air-tight glass or ceramic containers and keep it in a convenient, but dark and cool, location. Remember that a cabinet near the oven is often too warm, as is a cabinet on an outside wall of your kitchen if it receives heat from a strong afternoon or summer sun.
The commercial coffee containers that you purchased your coffee in are generally not appropriate for long-term storage. Appropriate coffee storage canisters with an airtight seal are a worthwhile investment.

starbucks and sunday

2011-07-24T12:24:00.001-07:00

Delicious Drinks Under 200 Calories

Looking for the lighter side? Right this way.

When you’re as passionate about beverages as we are, you naturally want to share them with the whole world. And that includes the great many of us who are looking for lighter options. For you, we have these delightful hot and cold drinks, all under 200 calories.

Cold Drinks (Tall)	Calories	Fat (g)
Caramel Frappuccino® Light Blended Coffee	130	1
Coffee Frappuccino® Blended Coffee	180	2.5
Shaken Tazo® Iced Passion® Tea (unsweetened)	0	0
Shaken Tazo® Iced Black Tea Lemonade	100	0
Nonfat Iced Vanilla Latte	120	0
Nonfat Iced Caramel Machiato	140	1
Iced Coffee (with classic syrup)	60	0
Iced Skinny Latte	60	0

Hot Drinks (Tall)	Calories	Fat (g)
Brewed Coffee	5	0
Brewed Tazo® Tea	0	0
Nonfat Tazo® Green Tea Latte	150	0
Nonfat Cappuccino	60	0
Nonfat Caffè Latte	100	0
Nonfat Caramel Machiato	140	1
Soy Tazo® Chai Tea Latte	170	2
Nonfat Caffè Mocha – hold the whip	170	2
Skinny Vanilla Latte	90	0
Steamed Apple Juice	170	0
Nonfat Vanilla Crème – hold the whip	150	0
Caffè Americano	10	0

All suggestions based on a Tall serving (12 fl oz / 355 ml).
U.S. and Canadian soymilk vary slightly.

Coffee flavors

2011-07-20T17:52:00.000-07:00

Boca Java Chocolate Hazelnut Heaven Coffee

Boca Java is renowned for it’s sumptuous, exotic coffees. With no less that sixty-eight caffeinated flavors, and many of the same wonderful varieties you love in decaffeinated versions there is no reason to not try at least one of Boca Java’s fabulous gourmet coffees. One of the continuing customer favorites that Boca Java offers is Chocolate Hazelnut Heaven Coffee.

Caramel Kiss Island Coffee

Delight your senses with a coffee that has that warm, delicious, ooey, gooey, oh-so-dreamy, creamy taste of rich luscious caramel. Caramel Kiss Island coffee is an utterly fantastic way to have all that wonderfully drippy, gooey flavor without all the calories ladies! Boca Java’s Caramel Island Kiss coffee is one of many favorite ways long-time customers have found for relaxing out under a shady spot having an after the cookout cup of delicious coffee. It is perfect even as a nice way to wind up the day with that warm, smooth aroma of creamy caramel.

Surfing Safari Coffee

Love the flavors of vanilla, caramel, and luscious Kahlua? Then Boca Java has just the perfect coffee for you! Surfing Safari Boca Java coffee is another consistent customer favorite that has become a staple of coffee lovers every where. Vanilla lends it’s fragrant, delicious flavor to the smooth creaminess of soft caramel and both compliment and are balanced by the rich lusciousness of the flavor of Kahlua coffee liqueur.

The perfect cup of coffee- tips and tricks

2011-07-18T18:04:00.000-07:00

The Perfect Cup of Coffee – The Tips and Tricks to Help You Make It

Make a Perfect Cup of Coffee, photo by javaturtle

The art of coffee making is actually very simple as long as you stick to a couple of fundamental rules. It is imperative that you stick to those rules though, because it can go catastrophically wrong if you don’t. If you do follow these steps, your coffee will turn out great every time. One fundamental rule is that you should always use the best ingredients.

Some of the materials you need:
• Water
• Whole coffee beans
• A coffee grinder
• A coffee filter
• A coffee machine
• Airtight container (storage)
• Baking soda (cleaning)
• Vinegar (cleaning)
The two most important materials are water and coffee beans. Water makes up approximately 98-99% of coffee, so if your water tastes bad, your coffee will taste bad too. It is important to buy whole coffee beans, because the fresher you grind the coffee, the better. What brand you want to buy is completely up to you. A copper filter is preferred over a paper filter because it lets through the coffee oils that the paper filter traps.
If you insist on using a paper filter, the brown paper filter is definitely the way to go. The coffee’s oil is essential to the taste of the coffee. The recommended way to clean your coffee pot is to use baking soda with a little water and vinegar. First, put ¼ of a cup of baking soda with a few drops of water and scrub the whole pot. Then add vinegar to the pot and let the pot bubble. After that, rinse the whole pot off with warm water. Some people prefer to do it twice to make sure they didn’t miss any spots in the first time. The resulting coffee pot should make better tasting coffee than a pot washed with dish washing soap.
When you are ready to brew your coffee, make sure your water is hot, but not boiling. The water temperature should be around 180-190 degrees Fahrenheit. You should always make sure that you are using enough coffee for each cup, or else your coffee will be too bland.
The perfect ratio of tablespoons of coffee to a cup in my opinion is two tablespoons to one cup of coffee. After brewing a good cup of coffee, you can add any additional things you like. It’s all about trial and error; you just have to keep trying to get everything just right. Once you get everything right, the coffee will taste just great. The coffee will be definitely worth the time and effort you paid, and I am sure you will use that recipe for many many years.

All about coffee beans

2011-07-17T11:35:00.000-07:00

A coffee bean is the seed of the coffee plant (the pit inside the red or purple fruit often referred to as a cherry). Even though they are seeds, they are referred to as 'beans' because of their resemblance. The fruits, coffee cherries or coffee berries, most commonly contain two stones with their flat sides together. In a crop of coffee, a small percentage of cherries contain a single bean, instead of the usual two. This is called a peaberry. Coffee beans consist mostly of endosperm that contains 0.8 – 2.5 % caffeine, which is one of the main reasons the plants are cultivated. As coffee is one of the world's most widely consumed beverages, coffee beans are a major cash crop, and an important export product for some countries. It is considered a regularly consumed beverage in the United States – as popular as soft drinks and even water – and because of the volume consumed, it is there that coffee is highest in demand.

Coffee fun facts

2011-07-09T10:14:00.000-07:00

Coffee is the second largest traded commodity surpassed only by Oil, the world's world's largest traded commodity.

The first wholesale coffee roasting company in America started business in 1790. That same year, the first advertisement for coffee in a newspaper was published. What is believed to be the first coffee roasting plant in America started operations at 4 Great Dock Street in New York City, now Pearl Street.

The first coffee filter was invented in 1908 by Melitta Bentz, a housewife from Dresden, Germany. She created the filter using blotting paper. The Melitta Bentz and her husband Hugo Bentz started the Melitta Bentz company that same year in 1908. The Melitta brand is synonymous with coffee filters to this day.

Contrary to what most people think, espresso coffee actually contains about 1/3 the caffeine level of a normally brewed cup of coffee. This is partially due to the fact that espresso is typically made using top premium arabica beans. Arabica beans have a lower caffeine content than robusta beans found in many coffee blends used for standard brewing.

All about coffee

2011-07-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

History of Coffee All great things in this world come from a mistake, it seems. And coffee is no exception. But the history of coffee is one that is full of twists and turns, some political, some down to happenstance, but all of them have contributed to your double espresso being what it is today.
The popular theory is that coffee was really ‘discovered’ by a sheep herder from Caffa Ethiopia. The herder was known as Kaldi, and he happened to notice that his sheep would get hyperactive after eating red “cherries” from the plant we now know to be coffee. Intrigued as to what the plant was doing to his flock, Kaldi tried a couple himself, and was soon in a caffeine frenzy. Initially, the local monks scolded Kaldi for his new found drug, but they soon found that if they took some coffee themselves, the monks could stay up later for their prayers- or so the story goes.
Originally the coffee plant grew naturally in Ethopia, where the coffee bean would be wrapped in animal fat by the locals and used as sustenance on long hunting and raiding expeditions over a thousand years ago. It was the Arabians that took the plant away, farmed it heavily, and began the first coffee monopoly. In 1453, the Turks were the first people to actually make a drink out of coffee beans, and the world’s first coffee shop, Kiva Han, opened there 22 years later. At the same time, Turkish law made it legal to divorce a man if he fails to provide his wife with enough coffee to last her the day.
In 1511, the governor of Mecca, Khair Beg, tried to ban coffee because he saw that its influence might encourage the emergence of an opposition to his government. Beg wasn’t a smart man, because the Sultan of Arabia considered coffee to be sacred, and duly had the Governor killed. In Arabia at the time, coffee plants were guarded like we guard nuclear plants today. The idea was to keep coffee in Arabia, but it was a theory that worked better in concept than practice. Just as with any other delicacy, when you tell people they can’t have it, they find a way to have it anyway, and so a man by the name of Baba Budan smuggled the precious beans to the region of Mysore, India, and began farming coffee. To this day, the offshoots of those original plants are still farmed in Mysore.

Not everyone was a fan- at least initially. Pope Vincent III was told that coffee was the Devil’s drink, so he decided to give it a tiny taste before putting through the decree that would ban the drink. That taste was enough to turn the religious leader around on the topic, leaving him to state that the drink was “so delicious it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it.” Vinnie the Third duly ‘baptized’ coffee, making it an acceptable drink for the Christian flock.
So how did coffee get out to America? Some say that Captain John Smith brought it with him when he founded the colony of Virginia at Jamestown. Not long after that time, in 1645, the first coffeehouse opened in Italy, followed by one in England some seven years later. From that point, coffee was unstoppable. Within six years, coffee had replaced beer as New York’s City’s favorite breakfast drink. Within another ten, Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse in England makes such good money, and does so well at attracting wealthy merchants and maritime insurance agents, that it becomes Lloyd’s of London, the best-known and one of the most profitable insurance companies in history.
When the Dutch smuggled a coffee plant smuggled out of Arabia, they took it to Ceylon and Java, and soon had a near monopoly of their own. In 1723, the French used the same trick of sneaking a coffee seedling across the sea and turning it into an industry, when naval officer Gabriel Mathieu do Clieu stole a plant and shipped it to Martinique. 50 years later, there were over 19 million coffee trees on the island, and over time, 90% of the world’s commercial coffee crop would come from this one single plant.
Meanwhile, the Brazilians had got into the act. In 1727, a Lieutenant Colonel Francisco de Melo Palheta came to arbitrate a border dispute between the French and the Dutch colonies in Guyana. By all reports, he did his job well, but while he was at it, he shacked up with the wife of the Governor of French Guyana. When Palheta departed, the lady saw him off with a bouquet containing hidden coffee cuttings and fertile seeds.
In 1773, Americans threw coffee and tea overboard to protest English taxes on the nation, bringing about The Boston Tea Party and spurring a revolution. In Europe at the same time, Prussia’s Frederick the Great tried to block imports of green coffee to stop Prussia’s economy going south. He needn’t have bothered, for the public outcry that ensued soon proved impossible to bare and he revoked the ban.
Fast forward 120 years and the local roasting shop and coffee mill is a commonplace sight in most western cities – that is, until Hills Bros. begin packing roast coffee in vacuum tins, destroying the roasting shop industry for all but a few large companies in the process. A year later, in 1901, instant coffee was created by Japanese-American chemist Satori Kato in Chicago, and two years after that, a German coffee importer, Ludwig Roselius, decides to see if a batch of ruined coffee beans can be turned into something useful by his researchers. They notice the caffeine has been removed by the water that ruined the beans, and the decaffeinated product is soon marketed as Sanka.
And if you think coffee was big by that point, just imagine what happened when the American government banned alcohol in 1920. Coffee sales skyrocketed. Twenty years later, the United States regularly imports a whopping 70% of the world coffee crop for itself. American soldiers are issued instant Maxwell House coffee in their ration kits as they fight World War II, while widespread hoarding on the home front leads to coffee becoming a rationed commodity across the country. The other side of the War was working coffee magic too, as Italian Achilles Gaggia invented the espresso machine. He duly named the Cappuccino for its resemblance to the color of the robes of the monks of the Capuchin order.
In 1971, Starbucks opened its first store in Seattle’s Pike Place public market. By 1995, Starbucks had become a pop culture reference, with a store on every block, and, in some cases, every corner. From 1995 to 2000, coffee consumption skyrockets once more, rising a whopping 700%. The price paid to growers drops, in the same time, by over 50%, due largely to competition from Asian growers and predatory buying practices.
Tomorrow? Who knows?