The Reading Room

It’s the most celebratory time of the year. The good cheer flows from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve. This only means one thing: the departments of transportation from every state are getting ready to meet and greet you on the...

http://www.coffeebreak2day.com/images/espresso-pot-de-creme.jpg" alt="espresso pot de creme" title="espresso pot de creme" vspace="5" width="273" align="right" border="0" height="196" hspace="5" />Smooth, rich, creamy and literally bursting with coffee flavor -- yep, it's another dessert recipe. Pots de creme are the French version of custard. They're...

Today was the first time in a while that I hit the local thrift stores.  As much as I enjoy it my time has been tight lately so my guilty pleasure has gone unattended for too long.  The first stop...

The coffee unsnob I have a friend who prides himself on being an unsnob about coffee and more or less about everything in general.  There is only one small problem - he has a La Pavoni lever machine, lives in...

Last month I took some video showing the process of making coffee with the aeropress using the inverted method but I did not have the time to properly edit the video until today.  Here is a brief run through of...

One of the weird things with coffee is that you can get a pound of coffee and not really have any luck brewing it. I am not so sure if this is because you get a bum batch of coffee...

One thing we know for sure: coffees are not the same, they change with time and it’s hard to apply consistent rules to coffee making. A current discussion this week in the L.A. Weekly about the ristretto exemplifies this statement....

After I posted earlier about the University of Glasgow study published in Food and Function Magazine (you can read the study for free here, but you need to register for an account to read the full thing), Son Ton commented...

Here is a little video that I took several months ago of my La Marzoco Linea pulling a shot of espresso (I forgot what kind of coffee I used but the shot was really good). The particular La Marzocco Linea...

Last week's big coffee health news was that coffee may help prevent endometrial cancer in women. This week, the coffee buzz is about the dangers of highly caffeinated coffee for prengnant women. Researchers from the University of Glasgow got shots...

Sure, we all have nice espresso machines right?  Our debate is "should I get the PID"ed double boiler or go with the trendy old is the new "new" heat exchanger model? We are troubled by the inconsistency of a couple...

What's in my cup? Dust, that's what. Since the box from Olympia Coffee Roasting Company (established 2005) came in compliments of the fine folks at the USPS and their priority mail service I have been wearing out my espresso shot...

http://coffeebreak2day.com/http://coffeebreak2day.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/coffee-meringue-recipe.jpg" alt="coffee meringues" title="coffee meringues" align="right" border="0" height="175" hspace="5" vspace="5" width="250" />After I posted the recipe for the egg biscuits this morning, I just had to make up a batch, which went wonderfully with my coffee -- and left me...

Today for the first time I got to play with a Cremina.  I will start with the anticlimax up front though.  I was expecting plenty of time to play with it, but things came up that meant we were only...

http://www.coffeebreak2day.com/images/egg-biscuits.jpg" alt="egg biscuits with coffee wash" title="egg biscuits with coffee wash" align="left" border="0" height="252" hspace="5" vspace="5" width="280" /> When I was growing up, my grandmother's pantry always held two boxes of cookies. One was the Nabisco Hostess Assortment, which she...

there has been a lot of debates about the advantages and disadvantages of Heat exchanger espresso machine versus the double boilers espresso machines. There are merits to both systems with regard to temperature stability, steaming performance and user friendliness. Today,...

There are 4 types of espresso machine: manual lever, semi-automatic pump, automatic, and super-automatic. Each produces espresso differently and suits a different type of home barista. This guide covers how each type works, what it costs, the skill required, and which one is right for your setup.

Unless you learned everything you needed to know about coffee tasting in Kindergarten, Erin Meisler has written a guide to tasting that might interest you. If you think you have “good taste” now, take a look at her instruction, as...

It's Christmas time now, not just the pre-Thanksgiving thinking about Christmas time, but really here. So I have been doing what I hope a lot of people are able to think about and afford, give gifts to people. Specifically, I...

The Ristretto: The Lame Duck of Coffee This is the title of a recent article in the LA Weekly.  It is both an insightful and obtuse piece at the same time.  The author points out that there is no real...

  There have been alot of talk lately about presure profiling during the brewing process of espresso. In fact, the new bread of pump machines that have been coming out from La Marzocco, Slayer and Synesso and other are incorporating...