The Reading Room

In honor of Valentine’s day – heartbreak and how to overcome one! I woke up this morning and stumbled to the coffee maker.  I had been looking forward to this coffee since before I went to bed last night.  With...

After getting the Baratza Vario-W I have started thinking about my last grinder, the Cunil Tranquillo. The Cunil Tranquillo was my first grinder capable of pairing well with an espresso machine. Since purchasing the Tranquillo, I have used (not owned)...

Not all coffee bags tell you the same things. A roast date, a one-way valve, a resealable closure, origin information, and grind options are the 5 features that separate quality coffee bags from commodity packaging. Here is what each one means and why it matters.

Coffee politicos, can you believe that Rick Santorum won the primaries yesterday in Minnesotta, Missouri and Colorado? Considering that he and his staffers have probably been drinking road coffee from 7-Elevens and gas stations, maybe this is a time to...

I saw this over at Home-Barista, talking about a recently article that was posted in the New York Times.com  entitled "With Coffee, the Price of Individualism Can Be High."  The writer of the article is making the observation like many...

This cooking with coffee stuff is contagious. Got ideas for recipes you'd like to see me try? Add them in a comment. I just had to note that this cooking with coffee stuff is contagious, especially the espresso syrup thing....

At risk of sounding like a broken record… Roaste.com has come through yet again with great customer service.  I ordered a few bags of coffee about two weeks ago and enjoyed them.  Then the other day I was surprised to...

/files/u2252/bunn_trifecta.jpg" align="right" height="412" width="268" />A lot of rumors have been swirling around in spite of NDA's about a new home brewing system coming soon from Bunn. It is almost here and for only $500 the same type of cup their...

Not really insightful about coffee, but more in the vein of Steve's Boxes of Goodies post a while back. /files/u13866/brown_coffee.jpg" align="absbottom" width="308" height="410" />   So picked up the American Weigh 2kg scale and got this espresso from Brown Coffee...

Coffee Cravings… You know you are spoiled in life when you are in my boat and you consider it a great injustice that here it is almost 5 pm and you have not had a second cup of coffee yet...

It seems customer service these days is not what it used to be. Recently, a Canadian coffee consumer and writer, Christopher Foulds, was making his way through a Mickey-D’s drive-thru. His order was simple enough: “large coffee, two creams, one...

After a month of waiting, last night I finally received my grinder. Of course, I didn't get to use it until today because I wasn't home until 10:30 PM (after leaving at 5:45 AM), but it was a jwonderful feeling....

http://www.bartechco.com/filerepository/flojet.jpg" height="500" width="500" /> Recently I have been blogging about plumbing in my Nuova Simonelli Musica (http://www.roaste.com/CoffeeBlogs/sontondaman/Plumbing-Nuova-Simonelli-Musica-well-sort ) But eventually I decided that using a Flojet setup is the best. I was able to buy a flojet unit for a very...

Comparisons on two great frothing pitchers in two very different price ranges I have two very nice milk frothing pitchers.  My favorite size is the 12 oz size because I can froth for anything from a macchiato in it up...

This is kind of a two fold observation and question about using light roasts for espresso. As I wrote in a previous post I picked up a bag of Costa Rica Hernan Solis roaster by Flying Goat Coffee, it's a...

Why yes, that is a pork chop on a coffee blog. To be more precise, it's a country style two-blade spare-rib glazed with ancho-infused coffee syrup. It was dinner tonight, and it was good enough to go into my regular...

Yikes - flirting with disaster. After a swim lesson for my daughter we came home to make hot chocolate.  The pool’s heater was not fully functional, so a hot chocolate bribe was in order.  use my coffee maker’s steam wand...

For fun, now that the Nevada Republican presidential caucus is over, let's say that the candidates have a few days to prepare for the next caucus in Maine. So if they called us up at ROASTe and asked us to...

Cooking with coffee goes beyond desserts. Coffee works as a dry rub on beef, a braising liquid for short ribs, a marinade base for pork, an ingredient in sauces and reductions, and a flavor agent in baked goods. These 5 applications show how roast level and brew method affect the result.

Once again, I had to share a video that made me laugh. These guys from an Italian machine shop had to deal with an electrical outage when coffee break time rolled around. Sometimes ingenuity pays off really well. Sometimes... see...