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Coffee Addiction!

Ah coffee - the backbone of our society! It’s safe to say that life these days is fuelled by the beautiful black stuff! Whether you are a partying student, a fat cat working long hours in the city or a sleep deprived mum we all reach for a cup of coffee to help us get going in the morning or function better during the day.

As far as science knows, the wonderful drink doesn’t really have any negative effects on your health, so if you enjoy drinking a cup or three, you have nothing to worry about.

So what stage of coffee addiction are you at?

1. Experimentation - “I only drink it when…”

Perhaps to get you through your finals at university or a day at work after a particularly big night out, you innocently reach for a cup to see what all the fuss is about and BANG you suddenly realise how much easier life can be!

2. In Denial Addicts - “I only drink one cup in the morning”

If you’re like most people, your occasional treat or pick me up will soon turn into an every morning thing. At least one coffee will be required before you can face leaving the home. A cup of your favourite brew magically transforms you from a grumpy, lethargic lump into a sparkly, energetic version of yourself!These steady, consistent coffee drinkers have a single cup every morning before they leave home in order to help wake them up and get their day going. I would consider them dependent but in denial.

3. Borderline Dependent - “Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee”

After you’ve been in the second stage for a while, you’ll begin to notice you can’t miss your cup in the morning or not only do you get tired, you get a headache. Suddenly your slight dependence has turned into a something you can’t avoid or run away from. Without caffeine in your system you are finally able to notice just how exhausted you are. Days involving normal human interaction are so much more challenging. You have finally reached the point where you realise your dependence on coffee’s profound abilities.

4. Chemical Dependency - “What do you mean you don’t drink coffee?!”

Coffee is an essential part of life for people in stage four. They live and breathe for coffee. These people rarely sleep and get frequent caffeine headaches when they go without. Not drinking coffee is practically a crime to them. A question they commonly ask non-coffee drinkers is “How do you manage your life without it!?” Your mood is now determined by the number of coffees you’ve had. You haven’t truly reached the last step until you’ve had someone point out a difference in your personality when you haven’t had any caffeine!!

Wherever you are, there are far worse things to be addicted to in life so ENJOY people!!

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Why Fairtrade Coffee Beans?

Today it’s the World Fairtrade Day and we are celebrating by offering you 10% off to try our amazing Fairtrade coffee beans all day long, and also by letting you know a little about why we think fairtrade is important.

So why have we chosen to only sell Fairtrade coffee beans? 

Coffee is a valuable product and there are 25 million coffee farmers in the world.

Coffee is one of the most important income in many developing countries such as Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia and Mexico, the largest exporters of coffee.

When it comes to the market value of coffee, it’s always been very vulnerable to external forces and unstable over time.

For example, a Coffee Crisis came in 2001 and the coffee prices fell once again down to only a US$45 cents per pound. The prices and the agreement crashed and hundred of thousands of coffee farmers were forced out of business.

This crisis resulted mostly from an overproduction of coffee. Vietnamese farmers were producing huge amounts of lower quality Robusta coffee, so the market price of high quality coffee was dragged down by how much low quality  coffee that was produced.

It takes four years for a coffee plant to yield fruit, this is why it’s so extremely difficult for farmers to respond quickly to the changing market.

This is the reason why Fairtrade is so important.

I copied this from the Fairtrade website: 

Here and on their website you can download the full document about their standards for Fairtrade coffee.

There are some problems inherent in the fair trade system though. Small farmers that own their own land, and that do not belong to a cooperative cannot be certified as fair trade. This rules out a great many producers, some of which are producing an excellent product. Though the system isn’t perfect, it’s the best way we’ve found to be certain that our producers are being paid well for their countless hours of hard work.

I hope this made you a bit wiser and as I said in the beginning of this post is that we are doing a 10% off campaign on all of our coffee the whole day, so try some out! 

If you’d like to read more, here is the Fairtrade website.

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Difficult getting up in the morning?

In that case, this is the invention you’ve been waiting for. 

This is a coffee making alarm-clock called the Barisieur that brews your first cup of the day to be enjoyed in bed. It is so clever that it is hard to understand how this hasn't already been done before.

Excited? So are we, unfortunately the Berisieur is still in the making, but if you want to be one of the first to receive it, you can sign up to be informed when it is finished here.

If you want to read more, visit their website.

In the meantime you probably have to make your own coffee in the morning, I would recommend you to try my favourite blend from eightpointnine.com

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Over in the US anytime soon?Check out this video on the 27 drinks you can buy from an American cafe. 

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Enjoy this video on buttered coffee. Would you drink it?

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Check out this interesting and fun video on coffee from AsapSCIENCE. 

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Arist: Brews coffee like the best baristas anytime anywhere

This has got to be one of the best coffee gadgets we have ever seen. You can connect you mobile phone to this coffee machine to make coffee remotely!

Every type of coffee bean requires a specific way to extract the best flavours, depending on grind size, water temperature, pressure, water flow, ground weight and more. However, today’s machines brew every coffee bean in the same way; and that’s just not right! So, the Arist was created to give you the best flavours.

Traditionally, it’s the jobs of a barista to accurately brew any given bean into a perfect cup of coffee, but inconsistently s always a huge problem due to human error. Arist is made to brew coffee in a specific, precise, and consistent way.

All of these processes sound complicated, but Arist has simplified everything into a simple machine with an easy-to-use smartphone app, so you can download recipes and brew coffee like the best baristas at just the tap of a button.

When Arist was created, the vision was to craft a machine that was stylish, fun, interactive and amazingly simple to use. Most of all, the creators of this machine wanted to bring that perfect cup of coffee from across the world right into your home.

Arist is the first coffee maker that provides complete control over every single step in the brewing process, from adjusting the grind size to fine-tuning the pressure. This intricate precision allows Arist to recreate the fine craftsmanship you so enjoy from your favourite barista.

And thanks to its smartphone app, Arist knows you as well as your barista does. Like any good barista, it recalls your preferences and your particular drinking habits and can make tailored recommendations. Arist understands your desires. In fact, it can predict what coffee you want, and when! At just the simple tap of a button on your smartphone, Arist can prepare a perfect cup, selecting from over 100,000 recipes.

Fine-tuning your drinks has never been so easy. You can adjust the finer points of your daily cup with a simple swipe of your finger. A little more? A little less? You can tweak at will.

There are elements of the brew steps that you can adjust. Here’s why they are so important.

Freedom of Bean Selection: Bean choice determines 45% of how your coffee will taste, so it’s important you have a choice.

Adjustable Grind Size: Every bean requires a different grind size to best extract its unique flavours. Arist can automatically adjust grind size precisely for your coffee bean.

Adjustable Coffee Ground Weight: Everyone has a different tolerance or desire of how strong they like their coffee. Arist allows the control of coffee strength easily.

Adjustable Tamping Force: Different grind size requires different tamping force to make sure the grounds are packed in the optimal density, avoiding over extraction of bitterness due to uneven water flow.

  Adjustable Water Temperature: Different beans require different temperatures to extract the “creamer”, which affects the “body” of the coffee. 

Adjustable Water Pressure: So Arist can extract the ideal portion of each shot.

Adjustable Milk Temperature: Determines the sweetness of the coffee by adding milk with the correct temperature for different beans.

Adjustable Milk Foam: To match a perfect creamy texture to each recipe for any given bean.

Arist’s tall, slender form is guided by its functional parts. Carefully honed mechanisms combined with smart technologies in a coffee maker that is sleek, stylish and minimal. Each curve is carefully designed to make Arist a compact, practical addition to any home.

Arist has six Near Field Communication (NFC) stickers already programmed with five standard coffee recipes. With a scan of the sticker, Arist can brew five different coffee drinks without the use of a smartphone. Each sticker can be reassigned a new or modified recipe of your choice.

Arist also has a machine cleaning recipe. This can be initiated without a smartphone. As the machine is executing its Auto Cleaning process, waste water is dispensed and is normally collected in the drip tray anyway, so the creators thought it would be even more convenient if a specific cup could both initiate the process and collect the waste water.

Unfortunately this machine is still in the funding process. However, if this product gets the funding it needs, this will definitely be an amazing coffee gadget. 

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A source of renewable energy in Central America

Coffee is the second most-valuable commodity in the world in the year 2010 global consumption reached 8 billion kg. However, many of us may not consider the negative environmental impact around the morning cup of coffee that we rely on.

Waste water generated from coffee wet-mill processing, which uses large amounts of water to remove the fruit of the seed, is often discharged untreated into the environment. This process pollues ground water, basins and soils and affects rural communities’ drinking water, as well as local fauna and flora, and marine life in coastal areas. What’s more, it has also been discovered that coffee waste water generates a considerable amount of greenhouse gases, particularly methane.

But coffee waste water is rich in organic matter, which can be used to generate energy via anaerobic decomposition.

At present, the negative environmental impacts of waste water are not considered in the cost of coffee and neither are the economic benefits that extracting its energy potential could bring. Newly developed processes for generating energy from coffee waste water treat the fluid by-product to ensure that it re-enters the biosphere without causing damage. These processes essentially create a circular economy.

Latin America produces around 70% of the world’s coffee and is home to 31% of all freshwater resources. Despite the region’s water wealth-rivers, lakes and subterranean aquifers-there are no effective national management plans for water resources, which continuously suffer deterioration due to human activity. Seven million people still have limited or no access to electricity across the region.

In 2010, UTZ Certified, an international certification programme for sustainable agriculture, decided to implement the Energy from Coffee Wastewater project in Central America, aiming to generate energy, tackle climate change, and protect ecosystems.

The project has been implemented in a range of differently-sized farms in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatamala, using tailor-made coffee waste water treatment systems. Bio-digesters were installed to generate biogas by decomposition of the organic matter. In small and medium-sized coffee facilities, farmers were able to use the biogas created to power stoves for cooking. In avoiding the release of polluted water into surroundings, odours and pests are kept at bay and the local biodiversity is protected. What’s more, by substituting, firewood, farmers benefit from healthier indoor environments and help to reduce deforestation in their area. At large-scale facilities the biogas is used as fuel to power de-pulping machinery, water pumps and for drying coffee beans.

According to the WWF’s future energy scenario-which suggests that it is possible to reach 100% of renewable supply by 2050-bioenergy generation not only meets the remaining energy demand after using other renewable options but also reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 85%.

Lessons learned from the project have been reflected in the UTZ Certified’s code of conduct-a set of guidelines for obtaining a certification for sustainable agriculture, with the aim of promoting better practices in other coffee producing countries.

Transforming coffee waste water into energy is not yet an attractive business case for the farmer or for the industry since it is considered to be a high investment without a profitable return in the short term. For this reason, these projects are funded by third-parties such as the Dutch ministry of economic affairs.

Coffee production engages over 100 million people around the world and according to the latest Coffee Barometer the effects of climate change make its future totally unpredictable. While making coffee sustainable triggers immediate benefits for people, the surrounding environment and, in the longer term, the industry, its unpredictable future means it may not be the answer to the energy crisis. It is, however, an available solution to transform potential pollutants into opportunities. In order to succeed, these types of projects must be driven by the mutual interest of governments and all actors involved along the coffee supply chain. In this way, a circular economy in which waste is viewed as an asset, and natural resources are protected, may become the norm.