Baristador on your iPhone
Just a quick update this weekend and this time it is primarily for iPhone users.
Baristador Coffee now has an iPhone ready icon lurking beneath its surface so that while you are on the site on your iPhone you can select Add To Home Screen and a Baristador icon and bookmark will be added to your collection of apps.
All you need to do when you next need to order coffee is tap the icon and our site will load.
For all other mobile phone users, you will be able to view our site in a much more mobile-friendly manner.
At long last, Baristador Coffee can be with you wherever you go!
Pod Coffee: The Baristador New Year’s Resolution for 2012
There is nothing like a burst of coffee making for friends that makes you pine for an automated process.
However, I am yet to find an automatic coffee machine that can actually GRIND coffee fine enough for proper, rich espresso, and then deliver the right dose for a potent cup of delight.
So awash in coffee grounds this holiday season, I was quite taken by the fact that my brother-in-law and his wife had researched and bought a pod coffee maker.
Why did this surprise me?
There are a few reasons and they say to me that the time is right to explore pod coffee now.
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Do you REALLY need that coffee now?
Caught myself wandering to the coffee machine out of habit just then.
My inner voice was saying, ‘might as well have another coffee while I’m here’.
I would like to say that is all WRONG.
So I stopped and will go back a little later if I have a more pure motivation.
Here is why I believe this is important for coffee drinkers.
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Good coffee and pure motivation is all friends need
Spent a few hours at a friend’s house yesterday and as he took the bag of Baristador Coffee I brought with me he made a comment that stuck in my mind.
He said, ‘I am nervous making coffee. I expect there’ll be a blog post tomorrow about the ghastly coffee a friend made you.’
So today’s post is as much to defuse those fears as it is to remind as coffee ‘snobs’ or ‘aficionados’ that friendship is actually more satisfying than a perfect coffee drunk alone.
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A cup above the rest: the perfect vessel for espresso
I have had a gut feeling for a long time that some of my cups provide a better showcase for espresso than others.
Now I am going public with my bias.
One of the two cups in this photo, right, far outperforms the other in the job of cradling and presenting the richest, tastiest espresso coffee.
Do you know which it will be?
What is gut feel?
Let’s see if your senses are aligned with mine. And at the same time we can answer the age old question: does size really matter?
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Schools don’t really need cafes
Heard someone ask a question on Facebook yesterday about whether they should put cafes into schools.
I am AGAINST the idea because there are five things young, developing bodies should be given extended grace against being exposed to, and caffeine is one of them, namely:
- violence
- abuse
- alcohol
- mobile phone radiation
- caffeine
I am sure there are more, such as McDonalds, Hungry Jacks, KFC, etc, but these five things appear to me as delivering nothing but harm to young minds and bodies.
Violence and abuse go without saying. Alcohol has been shown to be bad for us, especially developing minds, even though some culutures permit and encourage it (some cultures encourage female circumcision so just because something is culturally acceptable is not an argument of itself). And one of Australia’s leading brain surgeons has warned that people up to the age of their early twenties would do well to avoid using mobile phones altogether because of the acute vulnerability of our brains to phone radiation at that critical and formative stage of our lives.
But caffeine! Don’t get me started.
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Coffee breaks and productivity
Coffee Meeting (picture by Yandle via Flickr)
Is it best to have coffee breaks at your desk or away from your desk? And do they help or harm productivity?
There must be something in the beans this week because I slotted this topic into my article schedule midweek and lo and behold The Sunday Mail (Qld) does a similar article on my publishing day (thanks to Adrian K Hall for alerting me).
As usual, The Sunday Mail like any tabloid, is as subtle as a sledgehammer. The headline reads Serial coffee offenders a productivity problem for Queensland businesses. As you will see, it goes straight for the alarm bells even though their own article renders such an a approach as disingenuous (thank you, Rupert and co).
Let’s start at the beginning: where and when should coffee breaks take place?
During a coffee break midweek I stopped myself from dutifully returning to my desk with my cup and forced myself to linger. Continue reading
Three reasons why your cup of coffee tastes bitter
Bitterness can begin with brewing
Have you ever had a cup of coffee that tasted bitter?
Chances are that as long as you are buying quality coffee, the bitterness was ‘created’ by your coffee-making technique.
A lot of research has gone in to what is responsible for reports of bitterness among some coffee drinkers.
According to Thomas Hofmann, a professor of food chemistry and molecular sensory science at the Technical University of Munich, while many people blame caffeine for coffee’s bitterness it really only accounts for 15 percent of the experience.
How many cups do you get from a bag of Baristador coffee?
The espresso evangelist, the auditor & the experiment
There are two common questions I get asked when people start considering making good coffee at home or in the office.
The first is: How many cups of coffee do I get from a bag?
The second is: How much does it cost to use gourmet quality coffee at home or at work?
To answer this question conclusively, I employed an auditor to oversee me counting out espresso shot-sized scoops of coffee from one bag of Baristador Benchmark Blend B70 (video is below).
How many cups?
The first question is hard to answer precisely because we all have different preferences, different scoops and different coffee equipment.
For a long time I was wasting coffee by double-dosing my espresso machine (for extra oomph!) when all along I could have enjoyed the same ‘oomph’ with a single dose, given I was only producing a single shot. Continue reading
Why is the second cup of coffee better?
Have you ever noticed that the first espresso from your home coffee machine does not taste as good as the second one?
Baristas have known for a long time that you don’t drink the first cups from the machine each day.
If you watch an experienced barista prepare for a day of coffee making you will see them ‘waste’ numerous espresso shots.
Why do they do this? Continue reading
