Yesterday morning, gadget and gizmo sites around the net were buzzing about this little machine — the Top coffee brewer from Scanomat. The machine is designed withoffice and commercial environments in mind, can be controlled by an iPhone or pad and puts all the actual machinery out of site, tucked neatly away in an optional cabinet. The only visible part of the coffee machine — which does espresso, brewed coffee, hot water and has an integrated frother — is the gooseneck dispenser pipe that rises gracefully above the cabinet top.

Gizmodo headlined it as a “Minimalist coffee maker” — but really, how minimalist can something be when you need a whole cabinet just to hide the bulk of its components? Now, I’m not talking the Scanomat down here. Honestly, my first reaction was “Oooh, pretty!” But the only thing minimalist about this whole setup is the design aesthetic it’s meant to suit.

It got me thinking about real minimalist coffee solutions — ways of making coffee that don’t require specialized gear, the kind of thing my daughter refers to as “ghetto gourmet”. I’m a long-time collector of low-tech coffee-making methods that produce quite decent coffee. Some of them are just the way that people like to make their coffee. Others demonstrate the lengths to which people will go to get their brew fix even under difficult circumstances.

A couple of weeks back, Cory Doctorow, who blogs over at BoingBoing, wrote about the plastic baggie cold brew method he uses on the road. Essentially, he adds ground coffee to water in a zip-close plastic storage bag and puts it in the mini-bar refrigerator  before he goes to bed at night. In the morning, he strains it through a fine mesh strainer fitted into his Aeropress tube and drinks it cold. Personally, I think the fine mesh strainer and Aeropress is a bit more gear than you actually need for cold brew but I give him kudos for getting drinkable coffee under difficult circumstances.

We had to deal with a bit of that ourselves last summer when a tropical storm left us without electricity for nearly a week. We turned the refrigerator into an icebox by packing the bottom shelf with purchased ice blocks and I did cold-brew coffee by the half-gallon — literally. Each night, stirred a cup of finely ground Spanish coffee into 2 quarts of cold water in a plastic pitcher, covered it and put it in the icebox overnight. In the morning, I strained the coffee through a double thickness of cheesecloth into a second 2-quart pitcher, covered it and put it back in the fridge. It was concentrated and rich, excellent cold and decent heated up in a saucepan on the stove. The only one who had problems with it was the roomie, who could never seem to remember that the pitcher with the blue cover was brewing, and the one with the green cover was brewed. He drank muddy grounds for two days before complaining about it. But then, this is a man who’ll reuse his K-cups — and I do mean reuse the used grounds — so  take from that what you will.

Over the years, I’ve seen people deal with the conundrum of brewing coffee without their usual gear in all sorts of creative ways, including the woman who, when she ran out of filters, opened tea bags and refilled them with coffee. What’s the furthest you’ve ever gone to get your coffee fix when you couldn’t make coffee your usual way? 

                               Click pic above to read article

The coffee news analysts have been predicting for months that your cup of coffee is going up in price. Daily, reports come out about the crop here and there, whether it’s better or worse than previous years. Are the two types of reports related? Is the upward trend in coffee prices related to smaller crops and therefore a boost in price? After all, one condition that’s NOT in dispute is the growth in demand, with China’s sudden coffee craving being the biggest source of this growth.

If supply is indeed down and demand is indeed up, then it’s a no-brainer that price will increase. Except there’s one small detail, a detail involving a difference in opinion between the buyers, the suppliers, the speculators and the producers. Each places the blame for the increase on the other. So what’s the truth?

The fact that the retail price of coffee has increased isn’t in dispute. The Bureau of Labor Statistics in fact found that in July, coffee was up 20.7 percent over July of a year ago. If you talk to a spokesperson for the International Coffee Organization, they’ll tell you that global production of bags was up 8.1 % over a year ago. They’ll also tell you that demand grew at a faster rate, so producers are just not keeping up. On the other hand, ask a supplier, and he probably will tell you that the demand and supply tension has been going back and forth, so there’s more to it than that. He might add that the speculators used that pattern as a reason to predict future prices will be higher.

The brew thickens, as buyer Howard Schultz, no slouch in the coffee business, stated he had no trouble buying beans in March, concluding there was no such shortage in supply. A Dunkin Donuts buyer, another top retailer, echoed Schultz. They both felt speculators caused the price increases, not supply vs demand. Indeed, even a commissioner on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) commented, “Speculators have influenced coffee prices in commodity markets in a way that isn’t consistent with the fundamentals of supply and demand.”

So who IS to blame? Is it the supplier, who’s not supplying all that’s produced; or the producer, who is not keeping up with demand; or the speculator, who’s betting that demand will be so much higher than supply that prices will increase radically? Yes, it can be documented that demand seemed to rise faster than supply, but then, two top buyers – Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts – experienced no shortage of supply this spring. Maybe the top suppliers were able to buy their beans, but smaller buyers were not?

Regardless, it’s not crystal clear just what is driving up the prices for future coffee on the market. If new production comes online with bumper crops, and demand levels off, the speculators may lose and the consumer win. Only time will tell. In the meantime, brew carefully to get the most brew from the beans.

A frost that reached some coffee- growing regions in top producerBrazil last week may cut output by almost 1 million bags next season, according to Archer Consulting.

Temperatures fell below 2 degrees Celsius (35.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in some growing areas in southern Minas Gerais state, Sao Paulo and northern Parana, with possible frost formation, Marco Antonio dos Santos, an agronomist at Somar Meteorologia, said by phone on Aug 5.

“Some market participants are currently calculating a loss slightly smaller than 1 million bags for next season,” Rodrigo Costa, a contributor to Sao Paulo-based Archer, said in a weekly report e-mailed today. There was still no consensus on how much production would be lost, he said.

Lower temperatures caused “some damage” to coffee crops, with higher intensity in the growing region of Pocos de Caldas in southern Minas Gerais, Santos-based broker Escritorio Carvalhaes wrote in a report dated Aug. 5. Minas Gerais is Brazil’s largest arabica coffee-producing state.

The lack of agreement on losses from next year’s crop may support prices along with depleted stockpiles and tight supplies, Costa said.

Detective Joseph Hileman and Lieutenant Terry Choate don’t typically order their coffee with cream, sugar, and two shots of snot.

So you can imagine how surprised the two Jaffrey, N.H., police officers were when they witnessed former Dunkin’ Donuts employee Christopher Hildreth allegedly add his personal blend of “nasal mucus” to their coffee order.

According to a Jaffrey Police Department affidavitacquired by The Smoking Gun, the 20-year-old server took the coffee cups into the back room after taking the order on June 19. The officers said that they found this “odd as they had never seen him go to the back of the store to make coffee in the past.”

Of course, you should never tamper with a cop’s cup of joe, so it didn’t take much expert detective work to catch Hildreth sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. A monitor located in the front of the Dunkin’ Donuts location shows everything that is happening in the back room, so the officers simply had to look up to see Hildreth seemingly dropping “nasal mucus into their coffees,” according to the report.

The officers later returned the coffees and sat down with store manager Joanne Amato to review the surveillance tapes, which revealed “it was even more obvious that [Hileman] had placed nasal mucus into their coffees.”

Hildreth was promptly fired.

He has since been charged with two misdemeanor counts of attempted assault. His arraignment is slotted for Sept. 15 in district court.

Evidence that coffee and tea may be good for your health has been mounting in recent years, as it’s become apparent that the tasty brews may help protect against type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease and other ills.

NEW YORK (MainStreet) — In an effort to cut costs in the face of a tough economy, consumers are trying everything from purchasing fewer name brand medicines to cutting back on their morning coffee, one new survey shows.

Two-thirds of Americans confessed they purchased more generic drugs this year to pinch pennies, according to a survey of more than 2,000 adults conducted by Harris Interactive, up from 62% who said they did so in an identical survey from June 2009. Likewise, 43% said they had opted to visit their hairstylist or barber less often during that time, compared to about a third who admitted doing that two years ago.

A big thanks to www.caffeineaddix.com for the Coffee it is delicious and much needed this morning! We are still in need of some cheese, Giants tickets, beer, baked goods, a watch, climbing shoes, a Mac Airbook (Steve I know you are reading this) and anything else anyone wants to send to Last Bottle!

Domaine Weinbach 2006

RIESLING SCHLOSSBERG CUVEE STE CATHERINE GRAND CRU

Drop your Kindle, drop your iPod, drop your roman candle and your package of Nathan’s dogs, cause Last Bottle is blowing stuff up, too, with this UNHEARD-OF price on a real rarity, the Weinbach Schlossberg St. Catherine.!

Perfectly aged, drinking stunningly RIGHT NOW, this is rich, spicy, and exotic with flavors that just, well, explode, in your mouth like a Picolo Pete.

IN 2010, Americans ordered 500 million iced coffee drinks in restaurants and cafes, up from 400 million in 2006, according to data from the market research firm NPD Group.

But marketers have done little to cater to those who want to make iced coffee at home, even though 73 percent of coffee consumed in the United States is prepared at home, according to data from the National Coffee Association, a trade group.

Now efforts to promote iced coffee consumption at home are beginning to percolate.

For Keurig, the single-cup coffee brewing system owned byGreen Mountain Coffee Roasters, a national advertising campaign is under way for its Brew Over Ice coffees.

“Summer. (Now available at home)” states a print ad for the Keurig iced coffees, which are sold under the Green Mountain Coffee brand. The coffees are available in two varieties, Nantucket Blend and French Vanilla, which retail for $16.50 for a box of 22 single servings.

The ads, by BrandBuzz, New York, part of the Young & Rubicam Brands division of the WPP Group, began appearing in May issues of magazines including Better Homes & Gardens, Real Simple and Woman’s Day and will appear in issues through August.

“We’re focused on the Keurig user base and satisfying all the various consumption needs they have,” said Ross Fenderson, a brand manager at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters who focuses on Keurig.

New offerings try to resolve subpar results some consumers may be getting at home, either from making iced coffee out of cold and stale leftover coffee or from pouring fresh hot coffee over ice and finding the beverage too watery.

The Keurig iced varieties contain more coffee in their single portions, called K-Cups, than in regular varieties, and users are directed to select a smaller, six- or eight-ounce portion setting on the Keurig machine. (The setting can be set as high as 12 ounces.)

The smaller setting allows the coffee to be concentrated enough to remain robust when brewed directly into a full glass of ice.

Keurig is also holding a sweepstakes for a cruise in a state where consumers do not drink as much iced coffee as those in the Northeast: Alaska.

And in what the brand is calling a “surprise and delight tactic” on Facebook, it also will give away 100 brewers and K-Cups to some of the more than 122,000 followers of the brand.

On July 12, Starbucks will introduce Iced Coffee Blend, whole-bean coffee available in its stores for $13 for a pound. The blend, which is the same that Starbucks has used for years to brew iced coffee in its stores, has never been sold as a whole bean blend.

The ice-blue package directs consumers to use as much coffee as they would for a full pot of coffee, but only half of the water, and to brew the coffee directly over ice or in a coffeemaker to be then poured into a pitcher of ice.

Last summer, as part of its Via line of instant coffee, Starbucks introduced an iced version, with instructions calling for the slender packets to be poured into a 16-ounce bottle of water. A six-serving container costs $6.

Seattle’s Best Coffee, a subsidiary of Starbucks, also has a whole-bean blend for ice coffee, Summer Brew, for $13 a pound, which is beginning to appear in its shops.

Instructions call for using a Toddy, a brand of cold-water coffeemakers that take 12 hours to brew, yielding a coffee concentrate that is reconstituted with one part concentrate to three parts water, milk or cream.

Seattle’s Best sells Toddy makers in its stores and will promote the new coffee in them, but it does not have immediate plans to advertise it, according to the brand.

Stumptown Coffee Roasters, meanwhile, recently began bottling cold-brewed coffee in squat 10.5-ounce amber bottles, which it calls Stubbies. The bottles are sold for $3.50 in the company’s coffee shops both in Portland, Ore., where the company is based, and in New York.

Matt Lounsbury, director of operations for Stumptown, said the company decided to bottle iced coffee because sales by the cup in stores had “been on the upswing for the better part of five years.”

Like the Stubbies, iced coffee served in Stumptown cafes is made from a cold-brewed concentrate because brewing over ice can make the coffee bitter, said Mr. Lounsbury, who added that the cold-brew method yielded a “strong yet sweet, almost tealike cup of coffee.”

Green Mountain Coffee spent $23 million advertising in 2010 and its subsidiary Keurig spent $14.1 million, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP.

Green Mountain Coffee owned about 35 percent of the shares in Keurig before it bought the company outright in 2006.

Single-cup coffee systems like Keurig, which was developed in 1998, and newer ones including the Nescafé Dolce Gusto, Senseo and Flavia, are now in 7 percent of households and have been growing at an average annual rate of 1 percentage point since 2005, according to the National Coffee Association.

In 2010, total revenue for Keurig brewers and accessories was $330.8 million, a gain of 67 percent over 2009, while revenue from the portion packs reached $834.4 million, 103 percent more than in 2009.

Selling coffeemakers “at cost, or sometimes at a loss,” is part of the company’s growth strategy to get the brewers in homes and offices and lock into a revenue stream for the coffee pods, according to its 2010 annual report.

In the last year, in addition to the iced coffee and iced tea lines, Keurig also introduced hot apple cider, which joined other noncoffee beverages like cocoa and a drink called Revv, which in addition to coffee contains ginseng and guarana, ingredients used in energy drinks.

“The goal at the end of the day is for Keurig to be renowned not just as a coffee system, but as a beverage system,” said Mr. Fenderson, the brand manager.

Asked, facetiously, if that meant Keurig would at some point offer baby formula pods, Mr. Fenderson said that the subject had actually already been broached.

“We’ve had consumers request that,” he said.

An unknown ingredient in coffee teams up with caffeine to stimulate blood levels of a critical protein called GCSF, short for granulocyte-colony stimulating factor, that appears to put off the development of Alzheimer’s disease. These were the conclusions of a team from the University of South Florida (USF), whose members conducted their research on mice and describe the work in a paper available in an early online issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (JAD)this week.

Co-lead author Dr. Chuanhai Cao, a neuroscientist at USF, told the press that:

“Caffeinated coffee provides a natural increase in blood GCSF levels.”

“The exact way that this occurs is not understood. There is a synergistic interaction between caffeine and some mystery component of coffee that provides this beneficial increase in blood GCSF levels,” said Cao.

Previous studies have suggested that high intakes of coffee and caffeine during mid-life and later may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease; indeed an earlier study by the same team at USF, showed that long-term caffeine consumption protected mice prone to Alzheimer’s disease against cognitive impairment and markedly reduced blood and brain levels of beta-amyloid protein, which is thought to cause the disease.

Because coffee contains many ingredients as well as caffeine, the researchers wondered if any of these also provide benefits against Alzheimer’s disease, and set out to compare the effect of caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee on cytokines in the bloodstream of mice with that of caffeine alone. 

Cytokines are proteins that carry signals between cells and are known to play a critical role in the progression and development of Alzheimer’s.

They found that both in mice genetically engineered to be prone to Alzheimer’s and in their non-genetically engineered littermates, enhanced intake of caffeinated coffee “greatly and specifically” increased blood levels of three cytokines: GCSF, IL-10, and IL-6.

But, neither caffeine on its own (which resulted in high blood levels of caffeine), nor decaffeinated coffee had this effect, suggesting that another as yet unidentified ingredient in the coffee “synergized” or teamed up with the caffeine to “selectively elevate” these three cytokines in the mice’s bloodstream.

The researchers focused on GCSF because after a long period of coffee consumption, Alzheimer’s-susceptible mice showed improved performance in working memory, and GCSF was the only cytokine to show higher levels in the bloodstream over the same period.

Also, in previous research, they had reported that long-term GCSF treatment of mice prone to develop Alzheimer’s improved their cognitive performance via three mechanisms that could be complementary to the way caffeine suppresses production of beta-amyloid protein.

The three mechanisms that GCSF employs are: “recruitment of microglia” where it brings stem cells from bone marrow to enter the brain and mop up the amyloid beta protein; “synaptogenesis” where it creates new connections between brain cells; and “neurogenesis”, where it increases the birth of new brain cells or neurons in the brain.

“All three mechanisms could complement caffeine’s ability to suppress beta amyloid production in the brain,” said Cao.

Bringing all these results together, the researchers concluded that “coffee may be the best source of caffeine to protect against AD [Alzheimer’s Disease] because of a component in coffee that synergizes with caffeine to enhance plasma GCSF levels, resulting in multiple therapeutic actions against AD”.

Cao commented that:

“Together these actions appear to give coffee an amazing potential to protect against Alzheimer’s — but only if you drink moderate amounts of caffeinated coffee.”

GCSF is greatly reduced in people with Alzheimer’s. Investigators are in the throes of evaluating a USF clinical trial that tested how effective GCSF treatment could be in preventing full-blown Alzheimer’s in patients with mild cognitive impairment, a condition that precedes it. 

The team hope to find the mystery coffee ingredient so that it can be used to enrich coffee and other drinks to provide long-term protection against Alzheimer’s.

TBecause they used “drip” coffee in the study, they can’t say if instant coffee would have the same effects.

Although this study was conducted in mice, the researchers said in a statement that they are currently doing clinical tests that suggest coffee and caffeine have similar protective effects in humans and hope to publish the findings soon.

The average American drinks between 1.5 and 2 cups of coffee a day, considerably less than the 4 or 5 daily cups that studies suggest may be necessary to protect against Alzheimer’s.

The researchers said they believe the best age to start moderate daily consumption of coffee to protect against Alzheimer’s is around 30 to 50, although studies suggest starting later than this also appears to give protection.

“We are not saying that daily moderate coffee consumption will completely protect people from getting Alzheimer’s disease,” said Cao, addinng that:

“However, we do believe that moderate coffee consumption can appreciably reduce your risk of this dreaded disease or delay its onset.”

Cao also said that coffee has other ingredients that may protect against Alzheimer’s:

“Coffee is high in anti-inflammatory compounds that also may provide protective benefits against Alzheimer’s disease.”

Apart from coffee, physical and mental activity also appear to reduce the risk ofdementia, said the researchers.

Funds from the NIH-designated Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and the State of Florida paid for the study.

The recent increase in green coffee has its roots in many factors. The situation is not likely to improve anytime soon as chains such as Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts are increasing the price of their retail coffee lines – in some instances by as much as 17 and 38 percent.

This is all happening while consumers are demanding higher quality coffee – and more of it – than ever before. For fast casual operators, who have made concerted efforts to improve their in-store coffee experiences, the increases couldn’t come at a worse time.

Here’s a look at a few of the issues surrounding the price of beans:

Futures & traders

Over the past year, the cost of raw (green) coffee has gone from about $1.30 per pound, where it was in June 2010, to approximately $3.10. One driver of the increase has been the futures market, which has seen an uptick in investments because of an increased interest in commodities.

While there were commodities investments five years ago, the volume of that interest was on a much lower scale, said Randy Layton with Boyd’s Coffee Co.

“As investors looked for ways to diversify their portfolio, they got more interested in commodities. They’re looking for better returns and diversification, and are bringing money into smaller markets,” Layton said.

The cost also is being impacted by what he calls “trader’s disposition” – when people buy and sell coffee based on their general feeling of the marketplace. It’s a buyer’s psychological approach to the market, he said.

The approach, and the impact of the futures market on prices, had Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz criticizing “hedge funds, index funds and other ways to manipulate the market.”

Late last year, Schultz said he believed the increases were a direct result of “extreme speculation” rather than normal market forces. However, Starbucks itself has locked in coffee prices for the year, which also involved the purchase of coffee futures.

The company also will raise the price of its bagged coffee – effective July 12 – by 17 percent in retail locations.

Supply & demand

Another aspect of the market impacting cost is supply and demand. Worldwide, a boost to the coffee market has created an imbalance as higher-end Arabica coffee is becoming less available than beans offering a lower-taste profile.

Consumers have much more sophisticated palates when it comes to their coffee preferences than in years’ past, as validated by the popularity of Starbucks and the complete overhaul of McDonald’s coffee line.

“The openings of McDonald’s McCafe, Dunkin Donuts and other quality restaurant chains have done a good job of improving quality over the past few years, and that’s putting more demand on better coffees,” Layton said. “Those guys have done a good job of improving their products. McDonald’s went up quite a bit in quality for only a very small cost increase. Starbucks is a good marketing company and they’ve built stores well and managed the business well. There’s really not a great way to get more out of their coffee profit-wise other than what they’re doing.”

The majority of coffee exported to the United States comes from about 22 countries. Layton said so far, the Boyd’s team has traveled to Costa Rica, Sumatra and East Africa, and they are heading to Brazil in two weeks.

Many of the farmers Layton has talked with said they have not capitalized on the price increases, mainly because their products went to market prior to the cost increases. However, that could change.

“This year, farmers expect to sell at the high price. So, every farmer thinks they have a pot of gold underneath their coffee tree and they’re just waiting for the right moment,” Layton said. “But they can’t sit on their coffee for too long.”

While roasters also have yet to pass on their price increases, Layton believes more price hikes are around the corner.

“At some point roasters are going to say we can’t absorb this anymore,” he said. “Many folks in the industry have had to change how they do business because they can hardly afford to be in the coffee business anymore. Large or small, their credit lines are being stretched and affecting how they do business. From the farmer’s perspective, they don’t have credit to begin with, so this has really hurt them. It’s changed where coffee has come from.”