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Perfect Coffees.Com Newsletter Issue #12

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Jan. 1, 2005

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In This Issue
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=> Coffee Facts
=> Feature Article
=> Recipe Of The Month
=> Coffee Trivia
=> New To Our Web Site
=> Our Sister Web Site
=> Contact Us
=> Subscribe/Unsubscribe information

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Coffee Facts
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A mixture of coffee grounds and sugar fed to a potted plant and watered regularly, will revive houseplants that have turned yellow in winter.

When shopping for decaffeinated coffee, look for the term "naturally" decaffeinated," which means the caffeine was removed with ethyl acetate, a natural substance found in fruits.

If you are going to buy a flip-drip pot, look for stainless steel instead of aluminum to avoid metallic interactions with coffee acids. Also, get one that has a heatproof handle so you won't burn yourself.

The best way to store whole or ground coffee is at room temperature, in a zip-lock bag with as much air removed as possible. Then insert the bag into a dark, airtight container. This keeps the coffee away from both air and light as much as possible.

Sprinkle used coffee grounds around the base of your garden plants and it will stop snails and slugs from munching them.

A coarser grind reduces bitterness. However, the proper grind size should always be used to ensure proper extraction.

Cupping is the technique used by cuppers to evaluate the flavor profile of a coffee. Cupping is also used to evaluate a coffee for defects or to create coffee blends.

Coffee beans are graded in various ways. Here are some examples:

Kenya coffees are graded as A, B and C. AA is the best coffee.

In Costa Rica, coffees are graded as Strictly Hard Bean, Good Hard Bean, Hard Bean, Medium Hard Bean, High Grown Atlantic, Medium Grown Atlantic, and Low Grown Atlantic.

Coffee beans from Colombia are labeled as "Supremo" "Excelso", "Extra" and the lowest grade, "Pasilla".

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Feature Article
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The Mystery of Decaffeinated Coffee

Caffeine has become America's most popular drug by far. 90% of Americans consume caffeine in one form or another every single day. Most of it comes from drinking coffee.

But if you're a coffee lover who prefers to avoid caffeine, you can still enjoy a cup of coffee that delivers rich flavor with decaffeinated coffee.

It's how the caffeine is extracted from coffee beans that is a mystery for most of us.

These are some of the methods currently used for decaffeinating.

Direct Contact Method

In the direct contact method the beans come directly in contact with decaffeinating agents, such as methylene chloride, after being softened by water or steam. Caffeine is removed by directly soaking the materials in the methylene chloride.

Indirect Contact Method

With the indirect contact method a water and coffee solution is used to draw off the caffeine. The solution containing the caffeine is then treated with a decaffeinating agent, such as ethyl acetate, and mixed back into the beans for reabsorption of the flavorings.

Sometimes this method is referred to as naturally decaffeinated because ethyl acetate is a chemical found naturally in many fruits.

Water Processing

This process is similar to the indirect method, except no chemicals are used. The coffee beans are soaked in hot water then the solution is passed through a carbon filter to remove the caffeine.

Swiss Water Process

In the Swiss Water Process method, the caffeine is still extracted with carbon filters but the beans soak in hot water that is saturated with coffee flavor. The result is caffeine removal without removing the coffee flavors.

It's referred to as Swiss Water Process because a Swiss company originally developed and patented the procedure.

Carbon Dioxide Processing

With this method the beans are soaked with water-softened materials in highly compressed carbon dioxide. The small caffeine molecules are extracted from the beans allowing the larger flavor molecules to remain untouched. This method retains the best overall flavor of all of the methods used.

Not all of the caffeine is completely removed with any of these current methods. To qualify as decaffeinated coffee in the United States, coffee must have at least 97 percent of its caffeine removed.

Coffee beans are decaffeinated before they are roasted because that's when it has the least effect on the beans flavor.

The reason decaffeinated coffee costs more is because of the additional labor, equipment and material needed to remove the caffeine.

So what do they do with all of that caffeine? The extracted caffeine is manufactured and used mostly in medicines and soft drinks.

As an example, the caffeine content in soft drinks mainly comes from the caffeine extracted from these decaffeination processes. The kola nut accounts for less than 5 percent of the caffeine in cola drinks.

For the past 30 years scientists have done extensive research on coffee and the effects of caffeine. New research has even shown that caffeine has many positive effects.

Some of these effects include more energy, the ability to concentrate better and has even been used as an appetite suppressant.

But not all scientists agree with these findings and coffee and the effects of caffeine will continue to be thoroughly researched.

There will always be a market for decaffeinated coffee because some people just love their coffee without the caffeine buzz.

The rest of the 100 million regular coffee drinkers either love their coffee for the wonderful flavor or enjoy the effects of a caffeine boost. For most of us, I'm sure it's a little of both.

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Recipe Of
The Month
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Fudge-Pecan Chewy Cookies

Ingredients:

1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
2 cups (12 ounces) semisweet chocolate morsels
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
60 pecan halves

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350°.
Combine first 3 ingredients in a heavy saucepan.
Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until chocolate and butter melt.
Remove from heat.
Stir in flour, chopped pecans, and vanilla.
Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake at 350° for 7 minutes. (Be careful not to over bake.)
Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool.
Yield: 5 dozen.

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Coffee Trivia
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The Bunn Company invented the paper coffee filter in 1947.

Americans consume 4,848 cups of coffee per second, 24 hours a day.

At one point during the making of "Citizen Kane" Orson Wells had to be taken to hospital (it was said) due to excessive coffee consumption.

The first soluble "instant" coffee was invented by Japanese-American chemist Satori Kato of Chicago in 1901.

Frederick the Great of Prussia consumed 7 to 8 cups in the morning and a pot of coffee in the afternoon made with champagne and a spoonful of mustard.

In the late 1800's two gentleman, named Lyons and Gluckstein were contracted to sell tea to the visitors of the Newcastle Exhibition. They only charged two-pence for a pot thus, the saying 'Tea for Two' came into being - meaning tea for two-pence.

Maxwell House is named after the hotel in Nashville Tennessee, where the original blend was served in 1886.

It takes 42 coffee beans to make an espresso.

Iced Tea began at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St Loius in 1904.

Decaffeinated coffee sales are at their highest in January due to people's New Year resolutions.

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New To Our Web Site
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Blogs are quickly becoming one of the hottest things on the Internet. So Perfect Coffees.com is blogging all of our coffee and tea articles for everyone on the Internet to read and enjoy.

What's neat about a blog is you can post comments about the articles or anything else that is coffee or tea related.

If you would like to check it out to see what our blog looks like go here. Perfect Coffees Blog

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Our Sister Web Site
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Thanks to all of you who did your online Christmas shopping at our sister web site at: 1stopshoppingonline.com

This was the first Christmas online for 1 Stop Shopping Online.com and it was an amazing success.

Our newest additions to the online shopping mall include home loans and weight loss.

We hope you continue to do your shopping online with our sister site. We offer you a nice variety of stores to browse and shop at fantastic prices.

We know you have a lot of choices on the Internet and we thank you for visiting our web sites and for your business.

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Contact Us
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If you have comments or questions about our web sites or coffee newsletter we would love to hear from you. Your opinion is more than just important. To us it is everything.

Our contact email is Comments@perfectcoffees.com

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