OK the hot weather is here and I am enjoying a few Iced Armicanos these days. They are simple to make and have a great taste of espresso, that I am sure you'll love. I have them with and without milk depending on my mood and the time of day. I always like a little bit of sugar in them.
Ingredients:
Shot of your favorite espresso
8-10 ounce glass full of ice cubes
Ice water
Sugar to taste
Milk or half and half to taste
Pull your shot, and pour it slowly over the ice while swirling. The full glass of ice should chill the espresso quickly. Fill the glass with cold water and stir in sugar (optional). Add a splash of milk or half and half as desired. Sit back and relax.....
You may want to play with the amount of espresso, sometimes I find a double shot into a 12 ounce glass of ice and then follow the general directions above is a bit more appealing, and a bit more of a punch too.
Terroir Coffee's George Howell Receives Better Coffee World Award
Good news for a local to these here parts..... The Specialty Coffee Association of Europe has just awarded the Better Coffee World Award to George Howell, founder and CEO of The George Howell Coffee Company. “US-based specialty coffee pioneer George Howell, was named the winner of the Better Coffee World Award, the association's highest honor.”
George proudly adds this to his other treasured prize, the Specialty Coffee Association of America Lifetime Achievement Award for his role in raising US specialty coffee quality standards as founder and CEO of the ground-breaking Coffee Connection. In 1999, after working as a consultant for the United Nations for two years, he conceived and co-founded the Cup of Excellence (with Susie Spindler, current executive director), the most prestigious and first-in-the-world coffee competition-internet auction. This program to identify and reward quality farmers is now working successfully in eight coffee producing countries. After leaving the Cup of Excellence in 2002 George founded the George Howell Coffee Company and its brand Terroir Coffee to further promote great farmers’ coffees directly to consumers.
If you haven't checked out his site, George has some great coffees, including a nice espressos.
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I was over at Coffee Whiz buying some K-Cups and noticed that they have a special on right now for free shipping on all orders $50 or more. Check them out for a broad selection of K-cups. I got the Tullys French Roast; I liked them a lot when we reviewed them. We keep going back to time and time again, to supplement my espresso consumption. They also have the new Caribou line of K-cups. Interested in some blow your mind coffee? Try out the Coffee People's Jet Fuel K-cups.
DeLonghi has announced their new Esclusivo Magnifica ESAM3300 model, which should be replacing their EAM3200 model. The design is a smoother more sensuous design that rounds the features and sits comfortably on the counter of any modern kitchen. The controls are via knobs and dials, and doesn’t include the LCD readouts of the more expensive models.
The Magnifica ESAM3300 super automatic machine includes a professional-quality conical burr grinder, which produces consistent, fresh and aromatic espresso or coffee. A nice change is that the grinder operates at a lower pitch, which allows for a quieter machine. Like most Super Automatics, the grind settings also allow the user to adjust the fineness for all types of beans. The 60 ounce water reservoir and the 7 ounce whole bean container should keep you brewing for a while before refilling. The Direct-to-Brew System, features a stainless steel piped double boiler, which guarantees that each grind is immediately processed into coffee or espresso.
Features:
Makes coffee, espresso, latte and cappuccino
Lower pitch grinder
Double boiler means no wait between espresso and steam
Patented Cappuccino System Frother
Stainless steel piped double boiler
Cup warmer
Coffee strength and quantity controls
Height adjustable coffee spouts to accommodate any size mug
According to their website, Coffee People’s roots can be traced to the Saturday Market in Eugene Oregon. Small amounts of specialty grade coffee were roasted and offered it for sale at the Saturday Market. The first Coffee People Coffeehouse was opened in 1983 on NW 23 Street in Portland. In 1999 they became part of Diedrich coffee who is also concerned with flavorful, high quality coffee.
At Amazon, Coffee People's Wake up Call Bold is available for not very much money... only $17 per 2 pack. The dark roasted bold flavored lively coffee may just be a great pick for the espresso lover. An in the end, that is not a lot of money for $50 k-cups.
When you have a lot of choices in K-Cups, it's hard to keep the selection stored so that it's easy to see and get to. Well look no further than the K-Cup spinning carousel that holds a fun filled selection of up to 27 K-cups. The dispenser is chrome plated and spins around to show off the selection of coffees for you everyday or for your guests.
Wanted to point out that our sister site SingleServeCoffee.com has made the trip to the New York Nespresso Boutique Espresso Bar to be a part of the US National launch event for the Nespresso Lattissima, an automatic beverage center that uses not only the Nespresso capsules, but the DeLonghi milk frothing capability, making lattes and cappuccinos at the push of a button. This is very similar to the DeLonghi EAM 3500 super automatic that I reviewed recently, in that it does all the work at the press of a button and allows you to refrigerate your fresh milk in the removable milk container.
There are tons of print shops on the internet today, but this one has the ability to print on 3 ounce espresso cups. I thought it was pretty cool if you wanted to trick out your set or offer them as custom cups for a party. Prices are around $1 for a gross, up to $3 each for a dozen.
With the average person having about 10,000 taste buds, and as we age, that number goes down. Well in typical tasting, you can only taste sweet, sour, bitter and salty, but then your nose comes into play and brings to life all of those wonderful aromas and flavors that are swirling around in your cup of coffee or espresso. As we age, the number of taste buds we have goes down and so does our ability to smell and pick apart that delicate balance of flavors that comes bundled in each high quality, well roasted coffee bean. Super tasters have the ability to pick apart flavors and aromas better than the rest of us, but it comes at a cost. Some reportedly can’t eat foods that are more bitter than others, like eggplant and broccoli.
Even if you aren’t a Super Taster, there are a few things that you can do to make a cupping or tasting experience better when you taste and compare coffee. For a full article on cupping, tasting and being a better taster all around head over to Roast Magazine.
Nespresso is running a charity auction of some pretty cool items to benefit the Rainforest Alliance. The auction runs through May 23rd. To date, Nespresso has raised over $25,000 for the Rainforest Alliance through the auction. Check out trips to Costa Rica, Autographed Nespresso machines, and even a trip for two to Switzerland!
Hausbrandt started just like most roasters as a smaller operation seeking out a better cup of coffee. In this case it was Captain Hausbrandt who decided to establish the "Coffee Roasters of Trieste" in 1892. His idea was to roast coffee that was of high quality and ready to use. They used high technology (for the time) to create consistently high quality coffee and distributed this coffee through highly efficient direct distribution systems to make sure their coffee was fresh, and superb in taste.
The Ethiopian Sidamo is only one of a collection of single origin coffees that are roasted into espresso and packed in a protective inert atmosphere to bring the tastes of the world to your doorstep.
I'll continue to run through the Hausbrandt espresso series in the coming weeks to find the ones I like and write them up.
Hausbrandt Ethiopian Sidamo ESE Espresso Pods At Amazon
So yesterday we brought you the review of the Limited Edition Oâ Capsules are available now at the Nespresso website. The limited edition capsule is the Oâ, which means "to marry" in Swahili, is a union of two coffees from the regions around Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya blended together to create a great tasting cup of espresso. Bright and flavorful. Also available are limited edition espresso cups and saucers inspired by the Oâ blend, and designed by Guillaume Dufrancatel.
"Inspired by the double origin of this Limited Edition, the artist Guillaume Dufrancatel has designed two different cups, to illustrate the heritage from a fertile soil combined with natural elements from the sky to guarantee quality and abundance of the coffee crop. On the first cup, the artist has illustrated a theme associated with the sky: an orange cloud evokes the high altitude at which the coffee plants grow. On the second cup, he has depicted a volcano in dark shades, symbolizing the volcanic soils of Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya into which Oâ plunges its roots." Wow, and you thought it was just an espresso cup!
The latest Limited Edition Nespresso Capsule is out and available for purchase at the Nespresso Boutique in NYC, or online at the Nespresso site. I recently reviewed the Nespresso C100T Essenza and I really liked it, in fact I am in the process of buying one myself (I have to send the review model back). The limited edition capsule is the Oâ, which means "to marry" in Swahili, and is symbolic of the union between earth and sky to create a great growing region. This capsules is the union of two coffees from the regions around Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya.
Thought I would let you know that there is a BIG sale on for Tea Pods over at Espresso Tiamo. Huge Case Discounts on Frutti di Bosco, Lemon tea, Camomilla, Green tea, Mint tea and Ceylon tea.
Bags of 50 for $4.95 that's 10 cents each!
Whole case of 200 tea pods for $9.95! 5 cents a piece!
If you are even remotely interested in Tea Pods, what's $5-$10 plus shipping for all that tea?
Starbucks has reportedly reached an agreement with the Ethiopian government over the trademarking of the nation's beans. Ethiopia would theoretically be able to own the trademark for "Sidamo" and "Harrar" which are two of its best known beans. In the end, Starbucks and the Ethiopian government have agreed in principle to a licensing agreement that would theoretically boost the incomes of farmers.... my hunch is that it won't. Sorry, I just don't see the money trickling down to the farmer instead of getting "lost" in the system. Smartly, Starbucks has called for a transparent system that would allow outsiders to see the money going back the the farmers. Apparently, in Ethiopia, the average per capita purchasing power is about $1,000 per year.
In related news, Starbucks announced net income of $150.8 Million in the first quarter of the year, up 18% over year ago. (I was curious, so I went and looked; the population of Ethiopia is around 78 million people. So, no, Starbucks can't support the entire nation as a result of their profits..... Even if you consider only the 15 million people who depend on coffee, that's still not a lot of money if ALL Starbucks profits went to those 15 million.)
One of our readers brought Lucaffe Exquisit ESE pods to our attention a few weeks back, and I was able to get some from Espresso Tiamo. Over the last week or so, I have been tearing into the supply and I have to say that they are pretty darn good. The blend is 90% Arabica and 10% Robusta, which if you have been a long time SingleServeEspresso.com reader, you’ll know that this starts out to be a pretty good blend for me. I like the brightness and acidity that the Arabica coffees bring to the blend, but still want a like body and fullness to the finish that a little bit of robusta brings. I look for a well rounded flavor profile that not only gives you a delicious up front dark roasted espresso flavor, but a syrupy full bodies finish without flavor peaks followed by absences of flavor or thin presentations of flavor that leave you wondering where the blend went wrong.
You might be interested in how Starbucks can turn the ordinary experience into something extraordinary…. The Starbucks Experience (McGraw Hill, $21.95) by Joseph Michelli may just be able to tell you how. The author takes a look at how Starbucks designed the experience and how they replicated that experience across thousands of stores, and across dozens of cultures. If you have ever been to a Starbucks and seen their manuals, big black binders, then you’ll get an idea of how they do it at a store level. The book may just be worth checking out.
Spring is in the air, and so is the aroma of espresso around the kitchens at SingleServeEspresso.com. Take a look back at April and see what you might have missed.
Iced Americano Recipe
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