Coining a Greener Tea Bag

They may look like chocolate cookies, but they're actually tea coins.

They were invented by teamakers in a village in Assam in northeast India, and they're an eco-friendly alternative to the traditional teabag.

Assam is the world's largest tea-growing region and Rajesh Singpho is one of many teamakers.

And he is now making a name for himself by manufacturing the coins.

[Rajesh Singpho, Tea Coin Manufacturer]:
"We have been traditionally making it for many years now. In 2006 we started marketing this traditional tea and received a lot of positive response."

The coins are hand-pressed and are a mix of Oolong and green tea.

They've been popular in local Indian communities for some time, but now they're starting to take off internationally as well.

[Rjesh Singpho, Tea Coin Manufacturer]:
"We have already started marketing this tea here. And now even the U.S. is demanding this tea. Apart from that, we have begun marketing the tea in Hong Kong and China."

The tea-coin makers only use natural fertilizers and organic pest sprays.

People living in this region of Assam believe that drinking the tea helps to control diabetes, cancer and heart disease.

So if conventional medicine is not your proverbial cup of tea, at just over four dollars a kilogram, tea coins may just be the perfect brew.

Fair Trade in Bloivia

When I traveled in South America I was told to be scared if we didn't see police seems that the farmers

A clash between Bolivian food merchants and police turns into a massive food fight as authorities try to remove the vendors from the streets. City officials want the unauthorized sellers removed but vendors argue the government provides no other space.

Whats in the bag?....I know!

Tea bags are the grocery equivalent of a structured financial product

So what exactly is in that teabag you used this morning for a nice "cuppa" tea?

Well cut it open and you will find that it probably resembles mildly tea flavoured sawdust.

I only recently discovered this when buying a "premium" supermarket brand of loose tea. I thought they had real cheek calling it premium "leaf" tea rather than "value sawdust with a mild hint of tea".

But then I checked out the supermarket's tea bags under the same "premium" branding. Well hardly surprising it is the same "sawdust tea". I shudder to think what their "value" range is like. But hats off to them as when I complained about the quality of their "premium" tea they promptly refunded me the cost of the "tea" and put the range on special offer within a week. So they know how to react.

Tea bags were invented on the grounds that customers would find it easier to prepare tea with the tea enclosed in the bags rather than have to deal with messy leaves.

Not only does this generate wasteful bags but it is uncertain how much real tea there is in the teabags. Open a tea bag and see for yourself.

A teabag is the grocery equivalent of a structured financial product.

Only when you cut one open you will find that it is filled with sawdust and not real leaf tea.


.......... Warren EDWARDES ............ http://wineforspicewarrenedwardes.blogspot.com/

Beefeater Lightens Up With A New Summer Gin Release

I Like Gin and Sencha does this mean I'll like Beefeater 24?

J. Garbee

Summer Lolling Among The Wildflowers

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Beefeater, the London-based gin distiller, seems to be back in the infusing game after decades of standing guard with its original gin. That the nearly 150-year-old distillery was purchased in 2005 by spirits and wine giant Pernod Ricard USA might have something to do with it.

The newest release is a limited-edition summer gin that's dubbed, logically enough, theSummer Edition. Like last year's Beefeater 24 release, the Summer Edition is lighter on the gin flavor (juniper berries) than the original -- a trend that other distillers of full-flavored spirits seem to be doing of late. Adding subtle herbal notes from ingredients not typically found in the classic formula is also de rigueur in today's mega-distiller circles.

With Beefeater 24, the elusive new ingredient is green tea (both Chinese and Japanese Sencha). The Summer Edition touts elderflowers, black currants and hibiscus flowers as its unique drink factor, with just "a little kick of juniper to remind you that it is gin." Whether that's a good thing depends on whether you like gin precisely for its pine-y flavor. The Summer Edition tastes, not surprisingly, light and floral with a trace of that "this is definitely gin" flavor.

Do note that olives aren't exactly a merry match with elderflowers and hibiscus (we tried it just for fun so you don't have to). And so we suggest avoiding classic martinis with the Summer Edition. You could come up with a wildly creative cocktail with a fancy name, or go the easy route. Make a gin and tonic, add a twist of lemon and call it the lemon edition.

Beefeater's Summer Edition is available this summer only for about $27 at well-stocked liquor stores or by special order from specialty retailers.

By Jenn Garbee

C1 Espresso Christchurch NZ

Loved this coffee shop when I was out in NZ.

C1 Espresso

DISHWASHER LOST & FOUND...

During our kitchen and cafe renovations, some nimble and bold guys stole C1's dishwasher. According to witnesses this was no mean feat. It took four guys to lift the large piece of machinery into the back of a Honda Civic. They took off across town with sparks flying as the back of the car groaned under it's weight. The Boys in Blue were right on the case and managed to catch them shortly after and returned our dishwasher in one piece. Literally. The stainless steel was crushed for scrap and swapped for a tinny.

An unfitting end to one of the hardest working and longest serving members of the C1 team.

Indonesian Ulema allow civet coffee

OK so we had this coffee in the cafe a while ago and thought it was ok nothing that special in its taste that makes people pay so much for it.

Indonesian Ulema allow civet <b>coffee</b>: Indonesian Ulema allow civet coffee
by Mathias Hariyadi
After a long diatribe, the country's highest Islamic authority has banned the "Kopi Luwak" coffee from beans partially digested by civet cats. One of the most expensive drinks in the world.

Jakarta (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Indonesian Ulema Council - the highest Muslim religious authority in the country - has decided to allow the consumption of the most expensive coffee in the world, "Kopi Luwak", despite being made from beans eaten, partly digested and then defecated by a small mammal, or the civet cat owl.

The discussion on the consumption of this drink has abounded in the Muslim world for years considered by the more hardlin wing "haram" forbidden in the religious sense and therefore unfit for consumption. But after the plenary meeting, the Council decided not to publish a fatwa banning the "civet coffee” to Muslims.

"After a long discussion, we decided that drinking Luwak coffee is not a sin," said Ma'rouf Amien, chairman of the highest religious authority in the country. "It is not prohibited as long as the coffee beans are passed under water to remove traces of excrement" he said.

The "Luwak" is produced by the civet cats, small mammals similar to weasels, which eat the coffee beans. But they do not fully digest them and they are expelled, after being fermented, naturally. Once dried and roasted, they are used to prepare a traditional drink of coffee less bitter in taste with caramel and chocolate.

Worldwide, every year, just 200 pounds of Luwak coffee are produced, the price varies between 400 and 500 Euros per kilo. The civet, among others, was in the headlines a few years ago: a very common animal in Asia, it was one of the major carriers of the terrible SARS.

From Lifehacker :Brew the Best Possible Coffee Without Breaking the Bank

From Lifehacker :Brew the Best Possible Coffee Without Breaking the Bank: "

Source Lifehacker

Brew the Best Possible Coffee Without Breaking the Bank

Whether you're the kind of coffee drinker that slugs back the swill in the break-room coffee pot at work or savors exotic coffee on sleepy Sundays, there is always room for enhancing your java.

Photo by visualpanic.

Consider yourself forewarned however, once you begin brewing better coffee it becomes increasingly difficult to go back to enjoying crappy coffee. Raised in a family of non-coffee drinkers I simply accepted that the coffee I intermittently experienced in diners and donut shops across America was the entirety of the coffee experience—scalding hot, bitter in taste, and certainly not as pleasant a caffeine delivery system as Mountain Dew. All of that changed when I started drinking more coffee to survive life on the graveyard shift and decided that there had to be a way to make coffee taste good without adding so much sugar into it that I may as well have kept drinking soda.

You won't always be able to use all of the following tricks to brew a great cup of coffee—not all of us have access a local coffee roaster or the a well stocked local market—but applying even a few of them to your coffee routine will boost the quality of your coffee drinking experience.

Know Your Varieties

Nearly all the coffee in the world comes from two types of coffee plants: Arabica and Robusta. Arabica has roughly half the amount of caffeine and a more mellow taste. Robusta has more caffeine and higher acidic content which creates a significantly more bitter flavor. Many people experience mild stomach aches from the combination of higher caffeine and acidic content of Robusta beans, certainly many a potential future coffee-drinker has sworn off the stuff because of such an experience with cheap Robusta beans. It often isn't all that much more to buy Arabica over Robusta and with careful label reading you can often get Arabica coffee for the same price as Robusta based blends. Photo by SDCDeaCerte.

Buy Whole Beans

When you smell coffee—whether you're smelling whole beans or already ground coffee—you're essentially breathing in some of the flavor. The oils and chemical compounds that give coffee its distinct flavoring are in constant flight from the bean. The more you can do to preserve the integrity of the beans and the delightful flavor inside right up until the moment of brewing, the better the coffee will be. Keeping the beans intact for as long as possible helps immensely. If possible where you live, try to buy locally roasted beans to benefit from the freshness. Barring that, buying whole bean coffee is vastly superior to buying pre-ground coffee. Photo by FreeWine.

Grind Your Own

You've got whole bean coffee, now what? There are two principle types of coffee grinders on the market. A basic blade grinder costs less than $15 at any kitchen store or big box grocer and looks a lot like a tall and narrow food processor. There is a flat blade at the bottom of the chamber you put your coffee in that spins and grinds up the beans. The other kind of grinder is a burr grinder and prices for a quality model start at $200 and rise rapidly. Burr models use two interlocking metal burns to create extremely uniform coffee grounds—imagine if you will two cone shaped gears that fit together like nesting dolls. Coffee aficionados will balk at my suggestion that a blade grinder is adequate, but it's better to have irregularly but freshly ground coffee than it is to have no coffee at all because you blew $500 on a premium coffee grinder! Grind the coffee as closely to the time it will be used as possible, ideally right before you use it. Photo by Collin Anderson.

Storage

The refrigerator is the mortal enemy of your coffee. Taking coffee in and out of the fridge is a sure way to suck the flavor right out of it. Coffee that will be used frequently and immediately—whole bean or ground— is ideally stored in an air tight, opaque,and glass or otherwise inert container. Coffee that will not be consumed immediately but needs to be preserved for near-future use can be safely stored in the freezer assuming it is stored in a dry and air tight container. Storing an unsealed container of grounds or beans in the cold temperatures of either the fridge or freezer is a sure way to accelerate the its journey from delicious flavor to stale bitterness. Photo by Michelodeon.

Press It

Most people would assume if they had less than $50 to spend on coffee brewing equipment that there would be no way they could get a premium cup of coffee out of the supplies they could afford. Fortunately one of the best methods of brewing coffee is the cheapest. You can pick up a Bodum Chambord French Press, the original and classic design, for $25 or less just about everywhere. Using a French press is one of the simplest methods of brewing a fantastic cup of coffee. A French press is a glass cylinder that has a lid with a piston style rod attached to a circular screen. Grind your coffee, put a few heaping scoops in the bottom, pour nearly boiling water over the grounds, wait about four minutes, press the plunger down to push the grounds down and enjoy some delicious coffee. One of the primary benefits of making coffee in a French press over a standard drip pot is that more of the coffee oils end up in your cup instead of in the machine's filter. More oils means better taste! As a bonus, a carefully cleaned French press can also double as an excellent pot for loose leaf tea. If you already have a drip pot and want to keep on using it, use a tip we've previously highlighted as a way to get better coffee out of drip coffee makers: run a pot of water through it before putting the actual coffee through to pre-heat the unit and help get it closer to optimum brewing temperature.Photo byMaggiejumps.

Use Pure(r) Water

While it might not be practical to install a reverse osmosis filter under your sink, the more pure the water you use for your coffee the better it will taste. A gallon of locally distilled water costs less than a dollar in most places and many supermarkets have cheap refills available—my local market has a machine that will refill a gallon jug for 35 cents. Even if you—for environmental or financial reasons—don't want to spend money on filtered or bottled water for your coffee you can still tweak your water. Fill up a pitcher of water the night before and set it out on the counter. While it's not the same as being filtered through the stony depths of a mountain aquifer it will allow some chemicals in the water like chlorine to dissipate. Anything that makes your cup of joe taste less like the pool at the YMCA is welcome. Photo by gilles chiroleu.

The variety of coffees and methods of preparation ensure that the above list just barely scratches the surface of tips and tricks to be shared on the subject. If you have a great tip for making a better cup of coffee, share it in the comments below and help your fellow readers make 2009 the year their coffee stops being bitter enough to kill an old cowboy.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

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A journey to the source of your coffee.

A journey to the source of your coffee.: "

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From Toronto to the Tour

From Toronto to the Tour: "Barry remarked in a New York Times article, "As it is with a good baguette, a nice bottle of wine or an espresso, our culture is slowly learning to love and ...
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