Coffee

Among the primary coffee-producing country in the world, Brazil has been the leading country in terms of quality and variations of coffee. They have been in this industry for many years and they even have regulatory board in terms of producing quality coffee beans. Brazil has the perfect climate for growing java and because of this they have been producing quality beans above other countries. A lot of coffee enthusiasts prefer java from Brazil; on the other hand, Brazilian coffee drink is also a popular one. There are various coffee blends that use it as the main ingredient because of its strong full flavor.

Brazil accounts its dry and humid climate for producing quality coffee. Because of its varying rainy seasons, the coffee shrubs produce flower regularly, thus, producing coffee cherries in a lot of times. The dry climate allows perfect dry-processing of them. The dry method of processing them is the hardest and most complicated processing method and Brazil has spent reasonable amount of time and money in perfecting this process. The end result is worthwhile; the beans produced have a well embodied flavor and unique from other ones produced in other countries. Among the coffee shops, “Cafes do Brasil” is offered in different packaging as a lot of consumers want it above other types of java.

Since Brazil is famous for producing world class coffee, they also have their own coffee recipe to be proud of. The main ingredients are hot chocolate, coffee beans, heavy cream and brandy or rum. Just heat in all the ingredients except the heavy cream then, incorporate the heavy cream afterwards. This recipe produces a very unique tasting coffee blend. Furthermore, another popular coffee drink is the cafenzinho. It literally means little coffee and it is usually served among guests and tourists. In making it, just boil down three cups of cold water with a teaspoon of sugar. It is important to boil it under low heat in order to produce cafenzinho’s unique taste. Then, midway the boiling process, just add a tablespoon of ground coffee. It is advisable to utilize the one used in making espresso as it has a very strong flavor. Then after boiling, remove the coffee mixture from heat and filter its residues. A lot of people enjoy it as a black java but you can also add some cream in order to neutralize its strong flavor.

“Cafes do Brasil” can be purchased in a lot of coffee product stores as well as in the Internet coffee shops. Because it is a popular kind of java, finding it in the market is very easy. There are also available various blends of “Cafes do Brasil” and you can enjoy its different taste among other blends. They are usually packed in either whole or grounded beans so you have choices to choose from depending on how you will use it. Adding Brazilian coffee among your choices will add variation in your coffee drinking experience, so it’s good to try one!

To learn more about the different types of coffee to prepare your morning cup try visiting also manual coffee grinder review, where you will find this and a lot more tips including facts and tips to buy coffee grinder that will fit your personal needs.

Author: Pierre Smith
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Coffee is a complex and delicious drink, but how much do you know about your cup of Joe?

First of all, Java itself is actually a fruit, and it grows as a seed within a cherry. Coffee trees produce coffee berries or coffee cherries, and they turn bright red when they are ripe. Each cherry will contain two coffee beans, which will be removed from the cherry when the coffee beans are harvested. Within the harvesting process, the coffee beans will be fermented, similar to making a fine wine. However, the end resulting taste is much different than wine. In harvesting, the coffee beans will be separated from the fruit, and fermentation is used to break down the fruit skin that covers the coffee beans. If this outer layer is not removed, it will directly affect the taste of the coffee beans for the worse.

Coffee beans have different characteristics all over the world based on where they are grown. This is another reason that coffee is similar to wine because climate and geography directly affect the taste of the final coffee product. Some other factors that affect coffee beans are soil type, amount of rainfall, altitude, and method of processing.

Along those same lines, the word “coffee” was once used for wine. However, the word later began to be used to describe black coffee brewed from Java berries. This was something that was used in ancient religious ceremonies to keep the monks awake during their all-night prayer meetings, so they gave it the same name as their wine.

Java contains caffeine, which is the reason that it is actually prohibited by Olympic athletes. If an athlete tests positive for a certain amount of caffeine, they have the potential to be banned from the Olympics. This amount is equivalent to 5 cups of Joe, meaning that Olympic athletes certainly need to moderate their daily coffee drinking to stay in the game.

In ancient Turkey, Turkish grooms were required to promise to their new wives that they would provide them with Java. If they did not live up to this vow, that was grounds for divorce!

What many coffee lovers don’t know is that espresso actually has less caffeine than a regular cup of Joe. Fresh brewed espresso has one third less caffeine than coffee because the Java grounds are extracted for a shorter period of time. An ideal shot of espresso is brewed within 25 seconds, but coffee takes longer to brew. This is why Java contains more caffeine than espresso because the coffee grounds are in contact with the water for longer in the brewing process.

Last of all, Japan is now the third largest coffee consuming country worldwide. Japan used to be a tea drinking culture, but coffee popularity is spreading globally. The Japanese drink coffee regularly and even use it to treat the body by bathing in coffee grounds that are fermented with pineapple pulp.

Coffee is truly a celebrated drink with a number of beneficial uses!

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Author: Mark Ramos
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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The history of coffee dates back more than a thousand years and is as rich as the brew itself. It is believed that coffee plants originated on the shores of the Red Sea, in the Horn of Africa. Initially, coffee beans were eaten as a food, not drunk as a hot beverage. Tribes located in East African would grind the coffee cherries (the fruit containing the pulp and seed – what we now call the coffee bean) and mix the ground pulp with animal fat making a paste. This paste was eaten by tribal warriors to gain energy for battle. Ethiopians, around the year 1000 A.D., created a coffee wine by fermenting the bean in water. Coffee was also native to the Arabian Peninsula where, in the eleventh century, it was first taken as a hot drink.

Like wine during the first century, coffee developed a mystical, religious reputation. Many believed that the stimulating properties of coffee gave a religious ecstasy to those who consumed it. This drink became shrouded in secrecy and associated with the educated people of the times usually priests and physicians. Out of this environment two stories developed to explain the origin of this gift to man.

The most common history of coffee told relates a goat herder, named Kaldi, became frisky after eating the red cherries of a wild plant. After eating the fruit he was excited to feel the effects of caffeine, of course not knowing what that was. Later, it is told, he was spotted by some monks passing by dancing with his herd. After some experimentation, the monks created a drink by boiling the coffee bean. This beverage was consumed just before all-night ceremonies to keep the monks awake.

The second story that is popular involves a Muslim dervish who was sentenced to death by his enemies. He was forced to wander in the desert to die of starvation. During this time he heard a voice telling him to eat the fruit of what was a nearby wild coffee shrub. In his delirium he tried to soften the beans in water. When this failed he simply drank the soak water out of thirst. He was immediately invigorated and believed this to be a sign from God, returning to his homeland to share his discovery.

It was during the fifteenth century that coffee was first cultivated and the Arabian province of Yemen was the most prominent source of coffee. As demand grew past the boundaries of the Near East, the exportation of coffee went through the Yemeni port of Mocha, destined for Alexandria and Constantinople. This trade was lucrative and cloaked in secrecy. It was so closely guarded that no live plants were allowed to leave the country. The restrictions proved to be no match for those Muslim pilgrims who smuggled coffee plants back home after their trips to Mecca. Soon cultivation grew in India.

As trade routes flourished, coffee began to pass through the port of Venice where shipping fleets along the Spice Route brought Arabian merchants with tea, cinnamon, and other luxuries, including coffee. Liquid consumption became the most popular method with street vendors offering the hot beverages next to their cold ones, like lemonade. As Europeans traveled and experienced coffee in Arabia they also began to return home with this new and exotic drink.

The Dutch started the first plantation-styled coffee cultivation, during the seventeenth century, in their colonies in Indonesia primarily on the islands of Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, and Bali. The French, taking a cutting from a coffee tree to Martinique, introducing the plant to the Caribbean and Latin America. Brazil became the worlds largest producer of coffee after a rare plant disease killed the coffee plants in Southeast Asia in the mid-nineteenth century.

It is interesting that today coffee is the second most traded commodity behind oil, and many of the nicknames we have for this drink, e.g. Java and Mocha come from locations that have played a prominent role in the history of our favorite beverage.

Lance Curtis is editor and contributor to TheCoffeeDrinker.com where coffee lovers gather with a cup of their favorite brew.

The Coffee Drinker uncovers those hard-to-find gourmet tidbits that coffee lovers, like you, enjoy.

Click the link to discover a world dedicated to you, The Coffee Drinker!
http://thecoffeedrinker.com/the-rich-history-of-coffee/

Author: J. Lance Curtis
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Where did coffee originate? Coffee lovers around the world today may be numbering in the millions, but only a small number could be fully aware on the beginnings of this well-loved beverage. The history of coffee is definitely as rich as its flavor, spanning numerous centuries and dating as far back as 6th century A.D.

The oldest coffee legend

In the 6th century AD, farmers from Yemen were already growing coffee cherries. According to legend, a goat herder in Ethiopia was bewildered to discover that his goats were showing inexplicable energy after consuming a particular kind of cherries. After this goat herder tried the berries for himself and found that he too felt a surge of energy, Muslims discovered a way to extract the brew from the cherries, transforming the beans into a heady beverage. Thus, coffee became a secret beverage of the Muslims for a while, revitalizing them even during lengthy periods of worship. When 900 AD came round, coffee was already commonplace in the entire region of Arabia. From this period until 1500 AD, coffee farming practices were still a well-kept secret, although coffee beans were already exported to other places.

Coffee invasion in Europe

Before long however, Europeans found a way to bring coffee seedlings into their own lands. By 1615, merchants from Venice were able to bootleg a coffee plant out of the Yemen borders and into Europe. This time, coffee was used for its therapeutic purposes, being sold both as a drink and as a health remedy. When the Dutch got hold of the Ethiopian territory, they were able to bring coffee plants into Holland.

When it was discovered that Holland’s climate was not conducive to coffee farming, the Dutch brought the plants to other regions. When the first coffee shop opened its doors to the public in Oxford, England by the year 1650, women were forbidden to enter the shops. It was only three years later, when a teahouse was opened, that women found a place to converge.

The love story behind coffee Arabica

A Brazilian coast guard officer found two things he loved when he visited Cayenne in French Guyana in 1727: one, the coffee and two, the Governor’s wife. It was this affection that led him to acquire a few seeds which he took back to Brazil, initiating the Arabica coffee variety production in the country. Brazil eventually became the world’s largest coffee producer in 1800.

Afterwards, coffee traveled from country to country, spreading its popularity as a principal beverage of choice. The British introduced coffee to Jamaica in 1730. In 1774, Americans expressed a predilection for coffee during the Boston Tea Party, as a sign that they are replacing tea with coffee, due to the exorbitant taxes levied on tea trading. Costa Rica acquired coffee from Cuba, and this eventually spread to Mexico. The Island of Martinique cultivated coffee in the 1700s and Hawaii in 1825.

Present day coffee and coffee houses

Coffee houses are popular in Arabia; however they are as popular in Europe as well. From the 1600′s to the mid 1900s, coffee shops had already proliferated in Paris, reaching to approximately 3,000 in number. Presently, coffee is second to oil in terms of the most traded commodity worldwide.

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Author: Yogi Shinde
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A 2008 glance at Kona coffee retail prices shows options from $7 to 45 per pound. Contrary to the headline this actually sounds like a rather wide range where every market segment should be able to get their respective luxury-gourmet-coffee experience.

Yet if one subtracts all the products coat-tailing on the Kona name (e.g. ‘Kona Blend, ‘Kona Style’, ‘Kona Roast’) the range is getting much narrower. Nothing below $ 19.99 per pound, which appears somewhat genuine is to be found. If any other specifics like ‘Organic’ or ‘Extra Fancy’ are being added the prices are going quickly towards the $30 mark and above. Yet in supermarkets one can get for five bucks a wide variety of ordinary coffees and sale signs galore in the respective aisles. So who is getting rich here? And where is the discount stuff?

Let’s take a closer look of what Kona coffee actually is. The fabled Kona coffee belt stretches for 20 miles with only 2 miles width through the districts of North and South Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii, USA. Ideal coffee growing conditions produce a very unique, highly aromatic, mellow, yet limited annual crop of the fabled ‘kona typica’ beans. Mostly small family farms line the two roads winding along the fertile slopes of the active volcanoes Hualalai and Mauna Kea. The verdant green scenery with the blue hues of the Pacific below is occasionally interrupted by the signs of coffee processors trying to entice the local farmers to sell them their freshly picked coffee cherries: ‘$1.60 CASH!’ or ‘WEEKLY: $1.55′ or ‘BUYING CHERRY-Always Highest Prices!’. (1 lb roasted coffee needs a 7.4 lbs of coffee cherry). Also, once the harvest comes to an end, ‘BUYING PARCHMENT’ banners will flap in the gentle ocean breeze. What’s called ‘parchment’ is the now pulped and dried coffee, still in a thin membrane covering the green bean, which will fetch a price in the range of $7.50 – $8.50 per pound.

And that’s the key to understanding the 100% Kona coffee’s economics: Every local Kona coffee farmer has the chance to sell their crop! No additional work as pulping, drying, storing, milling, sorting, roasting, packaging, labeling, marketing goes into it. Many choose to do so, as labor costs in Hawaii are at a premium and housing for low wage workers is nearly impossible to find on the island. The actual Kona Coffee Belt land is too steep and rocky to navigate with machinery and hard human labor is needed to plant, grow and harvest.

Most farm parcels are only of 3 – 5 acres average size and are capable of producing 20 – 40,000 pound of coffee cherry. Once picking costs are subtracted (50 cent per pound) the annual monies earned can be considered only an additional income. So farmers have their unpaid families and friends pitching in during picking season and then the numbers look somewhat better. Yet so far no one got rich farming Kona coffee – it still is a labor of passion similar to an old fashioned vintners’ backbreaking daily chores. And passion it is when a few of these traditional family farmers in the age of the internet are able to bring their product direct to the customers: No middlemen, no processors, no pooling of various farms, no store chains or roasters between the consumer and them. Even that for the farmers to process, package, ship, advertise, et al raises will their profits only marginal, it guarantees them independence. It’s added value for both parties, as customers know exactly where the beans come from and the farmer is able to care and quality-control the coffee from seed to cup.

The main factors driving the price of genuine Kona coffee are therefore: Kona as a limited growing region for a superb tasting product requiring intense hand labor, coupled with a steadfast national and international consumer demand that guarantees virtually no surpluses or discounted volumes of Kona coffee to be moved.

But with many folks never having experienced what a real handcrafted Kona coffee tastes like, the profit margin between the ‘commodity’ coffees and the rare 100% Kona coffee is too tempting for many roasters. The growing market of single origin, single estate coffees – as a Kona coffee should be labeled – is flooded with impostor coffee brands. So please do your research and don’t always believe what’s written on the bag when buying Kona coffee. Especially when the deal sounds too good to be true or it tastes like generic coffee, it is most likely that those beans haven’t seen Hawaii at all.

See many pictures and read more of how a small farm produces delicious, affordable 100% Kona coffee: http://www.bluehorsekona.com/ (low end pricing)

Life seen through the eyes of a little Hawaiian girl growing up on a genuine small coffee farm in Kona: http://www.athenaofhawaii.com/ (moderate pricing; celebrity clientele; presented in handcrafted wooden gift boxes and unique tapa cloth pouches)

Author: Joaquin Delanuit
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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