Coffee

Do coffee drinkers perceive a difference between single origin coffee versus blended coffee? A scientific study was conducted by the University of Padova in collaboration with the Tasters Study Centre in order to provide a definitive answer to this question. In order to determine whether coffee drinkers can perceive a difference between single origin and blend, 350 taste tests were made at Padova according to standards established by the International Institute of Coffee Tasters coffee shop supplies. Among the contending coffees were a blend of Arabica coffees with seven ingredients of four different origins (namely Haiti XXXXX, Colombia Armenia Supremo, Ethiopia Sidamo, and Santo Domingo Barahona Toral AA). The group of tasters was half male and half female, age range between eighteen and sixty-four. The tasters were able to distinguish the blended coffee from the single origin coffee, preferring the blended coffee, in a way which is statistically significant. The study notes that coffee drinking has evolved as an art, with drinkers becoming more sophisticated in their tastes and at the same time fussier. This has caused a boom in coffee menus at restaurants, new niches in the coffee shop and bar sector, and selections of coffee type based upon sensory pleasure. Coffee roasters have also noticed the increased attentiveness and curiosity of coffee drinkers. Our society is increasingly producing people who are knowledgeable about taste and who are seeking new sensory experience. Brand loyalty doesn’t mean as much to these consumers as does qualitative excellence. The fact that tasters preferred the blend shows that roasters are very good at selecting coffees from distinct locations and bringing out the best characteristics of each in creating an unbeatable blend.

There are already many restaurants and bars which specialize in single origin coffee and supplies. Often the choice espressos change on a monthly basis, alternating between Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, etc. It is thought that consumer curiosity about single origin coffees is sparked by the ideas these places are connected with, rather than to genuine nuances in tastes. In the first place, the term “single origin” connotes a homogeneity of product which is not there. When consumers read the word “Brazil” on a bag of coffee they believe that all the coffee bearing that name is basically identical, which is not at all true. An example of a successful single origin marketing vision is Evancaffe, which introduced its menu of gourmet coffees into topnotch restaurants. In the beginning the clients were wary; but interest in single origin coffee has grown with the years. This was helped along by the enthusiasm of the proprietors and the maitres who ran the restaurants to promote single origin coffees.

Interest level varies with nation – in Italy it is noticeable that while there is a large interest in single origin coffees among the coffee drinking public, nonetheless restaurants and commercial coffee suppliers don’t seem to respond. At the present time single origin coffees are very much a small niche in the total volume of coffee marketed worldwide, but one that is bound to grow.

Commercial coffee suppliers should take note of the increasing interest in single origin coffee and supplies among knowledgeable consumers. Coffee shop supplies in the future will be geared more and more to single origin coffees.

Author: Alice Lane
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Canada duty

Importing starts with green coffee that is completely processed and ready for export from the origin country. Typically, shipped in 20 foot containers of 275 to 320 bags (70kb or 60kg) or less. It could also be loaded bulk, therefore enabling more beans to be shipped, lowering the shipping costs on a per pound/kilo basis.

From the USA, specialty coffees are most often purchased by importers or individual roasters via an FOB Contract. FOB (Free On Board) means that the price paid by the buyer includes all of the costs in the exporting country, including processing, inland transport, warehousing, dock fees, export fees and loading the container onto the ship. Ownership passes from the seller to the buyer once the container passes over the rail of the ship. The ships captain prepares the Bill of Lading that you will present to your bank to prove the coffee is now on the ship.

The exporter will need a bank that can handle international interbank transactions. Preferably one that is experienced in export document requirements. If not well established at this type of transaction, the exporter will not want to extend credit to any buyer, but will require payment terms: CAD (Cash Against Documents).

A CAD transaction enables the exporter to have payment deposited into his bank account after presenting to the bank the required documents proving that the coffee purchased by the importer (buyer) meets the specifications in the coffee purchase contract/agreement. The exporter’s bank will determine exactly what documents are required.

These documents may include:

- Ocean Bill of Lading (from the freight liner after the coffee is loaded on the ship)
- Weight Notes to identify the exact content and weight of that content
- Certificate of Origin (issued by the government Customs authority in India)
- Certificate of Fumigation (if required by importing country)
- ICO Certificate of Origin (Approved by the ICO: International Coffee Organization)
- Invoice sent to buyer identify the details of the purchase and $Value.
- Packing List from seller as evidence of the product shipped.
- Other agricultural certificates as dictated in your country

Typically, the exporter will use an Export Broker in the origin country who is expert in these matters and can arrange all of the issues involved in preparing the coffee and the documents for export. If a broker is the seller/exporter, then he will handle all of the required export documentation. The buyer/importer arranges for payment, ocean freight and transport insurance. It’s also the importer’s responsibility for acquiring all import documentation and arrangement in his country.

Of course, finding buyers is the key when importing for resell. For information to identify coffee importers, office coffee service providers and specialty gourmet coffee roasters in the United States, you can purchase a membership list from the Specialty Coffee Association of America or from InfoUSA.com. You can use networking sites like, TradeKey as well.

Note: there are always risks associated with importing. Although the importer may have received samples representing the coffee purchased, in most cases the actual coffee received will match the quality grade, type and source, every coffee lot is different, even from the same region and farm.

There are a few ways to lower this risk. One is to be sure you have a “green coffee contract” modeled after the Green Coffee Association Contract Terms & Conditions. Second, be sure to get an export sample taken directly from the contain prior to its being loaded onto the ship, since once the container is on the ship ownership transfers to the importer (FOB contract terms). Finally, when you purchase is large enough, personally knowing who your buying from and even visiting the country to physically select and monitor the export process is an option.

Author, Steve Josephs is CEO of Intellidon Marketing Solutions, whose family office coffee service business, the Great American Coffee Company, http://www.GourmetOfficeCoffee.com, is a premier Specialty coffee roaster and office coffee service provider in the Denver, Colorado metropolitan business community.

Copyright 2009 The Great American Coffee Company and Intellidon Marketing Solutions, Inc.

All rights reserved. Reprints are permissible when this Copyright statement and website link are included.

Author: Steve Josephs
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
How Electric Pressure Cookers Work

The origin of the word “coffee” entered English in 1598 via Italian caffè. This word was created via Turkish kahve, which in turn came into being via Arabic qahwa, a truncation of qahhwat al-bun or wine of the bean. Traditional Islam prohibits the use of alcohol as a beverage, and coffee provided a suitable alternative to wine.

There are several legendary accounts of the origin of the drink itself. One account involves the Yemenite Sufi mystic Shaikh ash-Shadhili. When traveling in Ethiopia, the legend goes, he observed goats of unusual vitality, and, upon trying the berries that the goats had been eating, experienced the same vitality. A similar myth attributes the discovery of coffee to an Ethiopian goatherder named Kaldi and the Legend of Dancing Goats.

One possible origin of both coffee the beverage and the name is the Kingdom of Kaffa in Ethiopia, where the coffee plant originated (its name there is bunn or bunna).

Coffee has become the second most valuable commodity in the world after oil. Coffee originated in the highlands of Ethiopia during the 15th century, and 125 million people today depend on coffee for their livelihood. The World Bank estimates that nearly 500 million people are involved in the coffee business, if you include the people who make the cardboard coffee cups. Coffee has become big business, and with the recent explosion in coffeehouses around the world, it shows no sign of slowing down.

Coffee is a widely consumed beverage prepared from the roasted seeds – commonly referred to as beans – of the coffee plant. Though sometimes served cold, it is typically served hot. A typical 7 fluid ounce (ca. 207 mL) cup of coffee contains 80-140 milligrams of caffeine, depending on the bean and method of roasting and preparation.Some people drink coffee “black” (plain), others sweeten their coffee or add milk, coffee cream or non-dairy coffee creamer. The majority of all caffeine consumed worldwide comes from coffee, as much as 85% in some countries.Coffee, along with tea and water, is one of the most popular beverages world-wide, its volume amounting to about a third of that of tap water in North America and Europe.In 2003, coffee was the world’s sixth largest agricultural export in value, behind wheat, maize, soybeans, palm oil and sugar.

We know coffee, to get the freshest coffee delivered right to your home or office, please view our different coffee varieties. Our goal is to ship or locally deliver all orders the same day we roast our beans, so they are guaranteed to be fresh when you get them.

Eric

[http://www.idahoroasting.com]

Author: Eric B Gard
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Digital Camera Information

It’s surprising just how little people think about the coffee bean when they go about drinking their morning cup. Dave and I have found that a lot of people in our classes even think that that it is some kind of generic food substance – like a peanut (after all, it looks like one!) and it looks and tastes the same irrespective of where it is grown.

Then there’s a group of people who know zero about coffee, but they do know about their wine or their chocolate. They can relate to you when you talk about the nuances in coffee and nod knowingly when you tell them that coffee is different from country to country. Most are flabbergasted though when you tell them that coffee can taste different not only from country to country, but plantation to plantation in an individual country.

Believe it or not, tens of thousands of people are employed around the world just to sort coffee, and grade it according to its size, shape and number of defects. Buyers of green coffee beans are a picky lot – they crave consistency and understand that quality and price necessarily go hand in hand.

Because of such diversity in quality and ultimately shape, coffee beans can influence an espresso in so many ways: strength, mouthfeel, aroma, amount of crema produced, crema colour and thickness and aftertaste.

Why does Coffee Taste Different According to Where it is Grown?
Coffee that comes from just one country is called single origin coffee. Simply put, coffee can be classified as Brazilian, Colombian, Costa Rican, Guatemalan etc. But as suggested previously, the classification is much more complicated than that. Brazilian coffee can be further broken down into size and quality. For example, a coffee roaster may order Brazilian Santos 2/3, strictly soft, medium to good bean, 14/16. Most of this is self explanatory apart from “Santos” which simply refers to the port from which the beans were shipped (and therefore signals the general geographic region that the beans were grown in) and “14/16″ which refers to the “screen size.” Green beans are sieved to separate out different sizes. Everything falling through the 14/16 sieve is too small to be classified as 14/16 and everything that sits above the sieve must be large enough to attain that status (and therefore accompanying higher price).

Single Origin Coffees – What Defines Them?
The soil in which the coffee trees grow can obviously impact on the flavour of the coffee beans that these trees produce. Different pH levels, mineral content and even what crops coffee grows next to on a plantation will affect taste, aroma etc. For example, coffee that is grown in India sometimes takes on a spicy undertone as it grows under the forest canopies next to pepper trees. Coffee from the highlands in Mexico can take on a slight chocolaty aftertaste as it grows near cacao trees that are used to produce chocolate.

Climate will also impact on coffee and is one of the main reasons that single origin coffees taste different to each other. Countries with distinct wet and dry seasons will often have a shorter maturation period than countries with slightly less temperate climates.

There are two main species of coffee tree that grow commercially around the world: Arabica and Robusta. Arabica coffee refers to coffee that grows on a tree. It is generally more difficult to grow than its poor cousin Robusta, but Arabicas are generally better tasting than Robustas and hence command a higher price in the market place. Robusta coffee grows on a wild shrub or a vine and although they are easier to grow than Arabicas and their yield is higher, they often yield a bean that produces bitter espresso that dries out the drinker’s palate (not always true though, for example Robusta coffee coming from certain plantations in India is very nice – and expensive).

Altitude plays a large part in taste as well. Generally, the higher the altitude, the better the Arabica coffee that is produced.

It surprises people but the method of processing and the individual farmer will have a huge impact on a coffee’s taste, aroma and depth of quality. A plantation that cuts corners when it ferments its coffee cherries or dries the green beans artificially/too quickly or stores them in their hessian bags incorrectly will produce inferior-tasting coffee compared to the farm next door that does these things correctly.

What to Buy
Generally you will purchase a blend when you purchase your coffee, but if you are at the stage or experimenting with the often-costlier single origins, the better-known ones include Ethiopian Limu (the home of coffee), Kenya AA, Costa Rican SHB and Colombian. Single origins to watch include Myanmar, Laos, Nepal, El Salvador, India and Papua New Guinea.

Our next article will focus on coffee blends (ie the mixing if single origins and why coffee roasters do this). Fire up another Ethiopian espresso and stay tuned!

© Barista Brothers 2009. All rights reserved. Unauthorised copying of this article or any part thereof will result in copyright infringement that will be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law.

Matt and Dave Gee are coffee book authors (bean there, drunk that….) coffee DVD producers and coffee trainers who have owned a coffee roasting facility and several espresso bars in Australia. They are also feature writers for several industry magazines. Buy their unique coffee training techniques at http://www.ultimatebaristasecrets.com/ and be sure to visit their blog for more on all things coffee at http://www.baristabrothers.com/

They created the worlds first coffee art class and their training materials are used by TAFE colleges and franchise groups in Australia and around the world. When not searching for the worlds best single origin coffees, they can be found training the baristas of tomorrow from their training centres dotted up and down the east coast of Australia. Follow the boys on twitter at ultimatebarista and baristabrother1.

Author: Matthew Gee
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
US State tax list

I first remember hearing the word “origin” when I was about 3 years old. My father, the son of a Presbyterian minister, was debating the Origin of Species with my mother over dinner. Like any good Presbyterian he was an evolutionist- not that I knew what origin, evolutionist or Presbyterian meant way back then. The next time the word “origin” became important to me was when I was at University. It was not part of my official studies, but rather a fundamentally important concept relating to my part-time job as a wine waiter at one of Wellingtons new 5 star hotels. We were taught that not only was grape variety important in determining the character of a particular wine, but also the origin- the specific area or appellation where the grapes where grown. A sauvignon blanc grape grown, picked and vinted in Marlborough, New Zealand, would display very different aroma, taste and body compared to the same grape varietal grown in Margaret River, Western Australia. It is for this reason that wine labeling clearly displays the origin, grape type as well as the year that the wine is made. It is to tell the customer exactly what to expect in the bottle. We were taught to pick the difference between a Chardonnay and a Riesling, a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Pinot Noir. To start with it was a little difficult to pick the “cut grass, gooseberry, ripe lime” in a Sav-Blanc, or the “Deep ripe plum, soft peppergrass” of a Cab-Sav, but it soon became part and parcel of our lives as wine stewards.

Fast forward to the modern error. These days “Origin” is not only a very important part of my job working with coffee, it is also a word that sometimes wakes me at night, like a the noise of a rusty file scraping over a old, painted blackboard. Origin, in coffee, is not as simple or as transparently honest as many coffee proffesionals would like it to be.

The ICO, or International Coffee Organisation, is somewhat responsible for controlling origin labels on coffee in the fact that any coffee shipped from a growing country must be accompanied by a Certificate of Origin. However… the shipper of the coffee often will fill out the ICO form- adding the origin in as he/she sees fit. The system is based on honesty. If the coffee is Arabica grown in Java, the origin certificate should correctly read “Java Arabica” along with the appropriate grade, weight etc. It should not read “Sumatra Mandehling”, “Bali Arabica” or “Sulawesi Toraja Arabica”. That I am writing this means that it is sadly sometimes fact, not fiction, that mislabeling sometimes intentionally occurs.

Why is this wrong? For starters put aside the fact that it is fraud, misrepresentation and lying, it is more importantly doing huge disservice to the true coffee coming from that origin. Coffee, like wine, has a particular character that is found in the beans growing in a particular geographical area. In fact the flavor of coffee, more so than wine, is almost entirely molded by where it is grown. Take 100 identical seedlings of Typica Arabica and send 25 plants to Aceh, 25 to Central Java, 25 to Flores and 25 to Indonesian Papua. 6 years later the cherries from these trees, ripe and processed, will display vastly different tastes (or cupping characteristics).

To most coffee professionals it is simply a preposterous presumption that anyone would try and mislabel coffee on purpose. Yet, it happens. Sometimes the deceit fools even hardened regulars. Not too many years ago there were two big cases of coffee fraud- one involving fake Hawaiian Kona coffee, the other Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. In both cases the origins were mislabeled because both Jamaica and Hawaii coffees demand a premium on the world market. In both cases the perpetrators were eventually caught out.

Think of it this way- if you were to buy a brand new BMW, you would expect the engine not to have already done 100,000km, and the body not to have been panel beaten to make the car look brand new. If someone tried to pass off such a used vehicle as new- that would be serious fraud.

The more common problem, and one which is beginning to cause real problems for coffee as a quality product, is not the blatant examples of cheating but rather what is call the ‘creeping boundary of origin’ (or CBO). Many years ago coffee origins were perhaps more clearly defined by geographics than they are today. For instance, in Indonesia Mandehling Coffee was picked and marketed from a fairly small area in North Sumatra- thus meaning the characteristics of that coffee were as clear to the drinker as day is to night. These days the geographical or ‘catchment’ area “Mandehling” comes from is 15-20 bigger than what it was 25 years ago. This means that almost by default the characters that the coffee was once famous for- the ripe paprika, fresh cut grass, passion fruit and earthiness are very seldom found to the same degree as coffee from that area today. Its like saying that Italians are the same as Germans. They are not. Lines are drawn on the map- Italians are Italians, Germans are…well…Germans. The French- they have perhaps identified this problem and dealt with it strictly. Not in regards to coffee, but to the labeling of one of their national treasures: Champagne. Only grapes grown and vinted in a particular way, with in a strictly identified area, may be called “Champagne”. Anything else can only be called “Methode Champagne” or similar. Seems pedantic? Coffee should look at this as being part of a solution to a problem which longterm threatens to affect customer perception of coffee in general.

Recently on a trip to coffee savvy New Zealand, a coffee professional was surprised to find just how the problem of labeling origin incorrectly can conspire to creating changes in perception of the customer. He was meeting with an eminent marketing guru who had brought along some material a well known company had put out to support its product. The professional was was not surprised to see “Java” and “Sumatra” on the list of coffee that this company sold. What was surprising was the fact that “Java” was a described as a blend of Guatamalan and Sumatran and “Congo” a blend of Colombian and Sumatran. As in the above European example- Java is likewise not Guatemala or Sumatran!

On the positive side many coffee professionals realise that the future of specialty coffee is going small, not labeling big/expansive origins. Small is easier to define, more difficult for unscrupulous brokers to mislabel. The SCAA’s Cup of Excellence Awards recognise quality origins may be as small as a tiny Finca producing 1000kg of coffee a year. This think small, produce superior beans idea hopefully will result in a better cup of coffee.

In the end thats what it is all about. Despite the complexities of choice faced at a coffee shop, ultimately the customer wants a great cup of Java. However if he wants “Java”it should be the coffee grown on that Indonesian Island, not a mixture of beans from Africa and South America. And if its pure Kopi Luwak that customer is looking for? Well then that is another story altogether.

Alun Evans is a coffee roaster based in West Java, Indonesia. His company Merdeka Coffee, is pioneering relationship coffee with farming communities throughout the country.

Author: Alun Evans
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Electrical Pressure Cooker Online