The Reading Room

Should coffee shops go to the dogs? According to several articles online, coffee lovers are divided over whether dogs should be allowed in coffee shops. Or should we say, US coffee lovers are divided, because pets of restaurant patrons in...

All of us have a unique story surrounding that first cup of coffee. Perhaps it was a profound experience that opened our eyes to gourmet beans for the first time. It could simply be a moment of need, when work...

This morning, thanks to the magic of Youtube, I shared my coffee with a family that produces coffee on a certified organic farm in Peru. There's not a lot in this video that I didn't already know about coffee production,...

How fine do you need to grind for auto drip? Do you need th grind very fine - just coarser than espresso fine? Do you need to grind on the coarse side to keep the water flowing through the filter?...

http://foter.com/img/photo/3/coffee-and-wine_l.jpg" width="427" height="298" class="foter-photo" style="display: block" /> Photo Credit: Rob Qld /Foter Sometime last week I read a fun little satirical blog post written by a self-confessed wine snob and addressed to the growing population of self-confessed coffee snobs. The...

This is a bit of rant so bear with me... I hate to continue the mermaid bashing, but I was at a Target the other night that had a certain coffee company located inside of it and heard a conversation...

Sometimes being too cheap isn’t so bad? I have a shameful confession.  There is a product that I have been dying to try ever since it was introduced.  That product is Starbuck’s instant coffee Via.  They claimed when it came...

Two years ago, the Lakewood, Washington community was shaken by the shooting deaths of five of its law enforcement officers. On the anniversary, an espresso counter was opened in the high school where the children of some of the officers...

http://www.synesso.com/images/portfolio/Steeltown_lg.jpg" align="absbottom" width="540" height="480" />   I have spoken before about the unlikely places that coffee shops are popping up, and how I like to see that these shops can flourish is relatively unknown spots. Take this coffee shop, Steeltown...

One of the most underestimated tool in our home barista arsenal must be a knockbox; however, you do not really know how valuable a knockbox is until you don't have it. It is essentially a very simple design, a bin...

/files/u5804/Eva_Solos.jpg" height="500" width="439" /> In the past, I've talked about how much I enjoy "coffee for one" brewed using my Eva Solo 0.6 L, and I've also described my experience trying to squeeze "coffee for two" out of its modest-sized...

What makes a blend work better for a specific machine?  I have often wondered this and I do not have an answer, but there is no question that some blends taste better to me on one machine than another.  I...

Just in time for the gift-giving season, there’s a new coffee brewer that every coffee lover would love to find under his tree. This one does it all while hiding its working parts under a cabinet, making it the most...

Photo Credit: valkyrieh116 /Foter I'm nearly as fascinated by the politics and ecnomonics surrounding coffee as I am by the nuanced flavors and the many ways it can be prepared. The history of coffee is an endless fascination, but we...

One of the lovely things about coffee is that once you think you have tried most method of preperation or think you have at least made all of the variations with the combination of equipment you have. Anyway as going...

  http://foter.com/img/photo/3/ground-espresso-with-raw-sugar_l.jpg" style="display: block; width: 100%" class="foter-photo" /> Turbinado Sugar in Cafe Cubano mhaithaca /Foter About 10 years ago, I lived downstairs from Judy, a Puerto Rican woman with 5 kids the same ages as my kids. Since they all...

Alas –as if I needed yet one more reason to order my coffee from Coffee Kind.  If I did I found one.  There are not many good coffee shops within an hour of my house.  There are a few that...

http://www.coffeebreak2day.com/images/scanomat-top-coffee.jpg" hspace="5" height="299" border="8" align="right" width="325" vspace="5" title="scanomat top coffee machine" alt="scanomat top coffee machine" />Yesterday morning, gadget and gizmo sites around the net were buzzing about this little machine -- the Top coffee brewer from Scanomat. The machine is...

For the regulars here this will be old news - another Melitta CBR-10 Aroma Roast blog from me. As mentioned before, these were hit or miss back in the day - the day being 1982 of course.  Apparently this one...

Here are some of my favorite coffee quotes collected from far and wide.  What are yours? A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems. ~Paul Erdos All the coffee in Columbia won’t make me a morning person.  ...

Thanks to my Melitta CBR-10 fluid bed 1000 watt personal coffee roaster, fresh coffee is available to me at a moment's notice in 40 gram increments.  That's right, this thing is designed to hold 50 - 55g green coffee maximum...