The Reading Room

Tastes and taste buds I posted the other day about how I was sick and could not drink coffee and then how I was a little better and the coffee tasted so good, so I was curious how coffee would...

The other day, Steve posted about cleaning his coffee grinder with rice. The by-product of the process is, of course, a half-cup or so of ground rice mixed with the detritus of ground coffee. What do you do with it?...

Somewhat tied into my previous post on social media is a current pet project of mine. You see, I'm a graduate student currently, having tried and failed to obtain a job after earning my undergraduate degree in New Media Design(recession?)....

/files/u2252/coffee_con.jpg" align="right" height="242" width="320" /> What are you doing Saturday, February 25th this year? I am going to CoffeeCon 2012.  CoffeeCon will offer attendees many special guests, surprises and live entertainment planned for the First Consumer Coffee Event – Ever. The...

About seven days ago, the weather was really nice outside so I decided to take the roasting outside; the coffee in the roaster was my favorite (I know, I have a lot of favorites coffees) the wet processed Costa Rican...

Back from the other side Wow, 24 hours without coffee and feeling horrible is behind me and suddenly feeling bad has never felt so fantastic.  I guess this shows that all things are relative.  I would normally be unhappy about...

There are a lot of things that go into making espresso, but the general idea is to brew a small amount of coffee under pressure for about twenty five seconds. The pressure at which that coffee is brewed matters a...

This is not what I had in mind. I have had a busy week or two and thought I would finally get a chance to make a few shots of espresso instead of a single shot as I sprint out...

One of the questions friends and family ask me a lot is how to clean a grinder, usually because it's something I might have mentioned doing, that hadn't occurred to them. The truth is, though, most grinders aren't very good...

I really love my Google coffee alert. I know I've mentioned before that it tends to drop random coffee-related stories into my mailbox every morning at 6:30. This morning, one of those random finds led me to Youtube for a...

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llqr86z26f1qgoe09.jpg" title="Handsome Tyler" align="middle" height="299" width="500" alt="Handsome Tyler" /> In 2011, three staffers from Intelligentsia - Tyler Wells, Chris Owen, and 2010 World Barista Champion Michael Philips - left the company to start their own coffee business. The move drew...

It's occurred to me over time that there are a lot of folks in the specialty coffee industry doing social media really well. I'm almost proud to be a part of this sort of community of people who have embraced...

Today is Thursday, which means it’s the first day for Starbucks of introducing their “Blonde” roast with free tasting starting today through Saturday.I have a Starbucks just on the way to my campus so I went out earlier than usual...

Put me firmly in the category of "Freshness Enthusiast" when it comes to coffee. I grind just before brewing, I don't use travel mugs anymore, I keep a few days' worth of fresh beans on hand to use, so I...

I had been meaning to give this single origin espresso a go for quite a while now, I had been looking through coffee review and noticed the review for it. It had gotten a score of 92, which I thought...

http://www.coffeebreak2day.com/images/coffee-prescription.jpg" align="right" width="300" vspace="5" hspace="5" height="300" border="10" title="coffee beans in spoon in front of prescription bottle" alt="coffee beans in spoon in front of prescription bottle" />As someone with a family history of type 2 diabetes, I've loved hearing that coffee...

Parting is sweet sorrow. I am shipping off my trusty old (well, not so old) Elektra Semiautomatica.  The machine served me well for two and a half years.  It is an amazing espresso machine.  It is one that most people...

I wrote in my introduction here that I had become quite the coffee fiend after living in Portland, OR for a while and last night I couldn't help but think about it a little bit. I had been out to...

True confession time -- despite living in a modern world and making my living using a computer, I am a low-tech kind of person. I like roasting my coffee the way my grandmother did, in an open  frying pan on...

So I had a Starbucks card burning a hole in my pocket that was given to me and after seeing that Starbucks released a new roast today, Blonde. I couldn't help myself I decided to get a cup of coffee...