JUMP To TOP           COFFEE:         

COFFEE - One of the many pleasures in our lives. From standard electric coffee pot mug to a demi-tasse cup of curl your socks Turkish coffee to a stay awake for days cup of potent high-octane Espresso. Selecting your coffee, choosing how to brew it and to choose a flavoring or not is high among the most important things you will ever do well in your lifetime. Cowboy coffee is SO WONDERFUL, you will be tempted to go out and make a campfire in your back yard every morning. Drip Brewers, Percolator Brewers, French Presses, Turkish Cezve’s, Espresso Concentrators, Milk Infusers, Individual Cup Brewers - the choices are MANY…..

JUMP To TOP           WHY IS THERE CAFFEINE?

Caffeine is in a coffee bean to serve but one purpose - Kill the pesky insects that want to eat the beans. Caffeine is indeed a POISON, much like apple seeds which contain a small amount of Cyanide. It is recommended to ingest no more than 400 milligrams of caffeine per day for an adult. The health risks are many with Irregular heartbeat and seizures leading the pack. This limit can be reached with about 4 cups of Robusto Bean Coffee per day. When you add in other things you consume, Caffinated drinks like Coca Cola, Red Bull, etc. plus OTC medicines like No Doze (200 mg per pill), it is very easy to exceed that daily amount. While each person indeed does have different tolerance levels.

JUMP To TOP           CAFFEINE POISONING:

Caffeine is a stimulant found in various foods, drinks, and other products. It’s commonly used to keep you awake and alert. Caffeine is technically a drug. Some of the most popular beverages in the United States, such as coffee, tea, and soda, contain significant amounts of caffeine.  According to the Mayo Clinic, the recommended amount of caffeine is up to 400 milligrams per day for healthy adults. Caffeine overdose may occur if you ingest more than this amount. Adolescents should limit themselves to no more than 100 mg of caffeine per day. Pregnant women should limit their daily intake to less than 200 mg of caffeine per day, since the effects of caffeine on the baby are not fully known. However, what constitutes a safe amount of caffeine differs for everyone based on age, weight, and overall health. The average half-life of caffeine in the blood ranges from 1.5 to 9.5 hours. This means it can take anywhere from 1.5 to 9.5 hours for the level of caffeine in your blood to drop to half of its original amount. This wide range in average half-life makes it difficult to know the exact amount of caffeine that can lead to overdose. A caffeine overdose occurs when you take in too much caffeine through drinks, foods, or medications. However, some people can ingest well above the daily recommended amount each day without issue. This isn’t recommended because high caffeine doses can cause major health issues, including irregular heartbeat and seizures. Consuming high caffeine doses on a regular basis can also possibly lead to hormonal imbalances. If you rarely consume caffeine, your body may be especially sensitive to it, so avoid ingesting too much at one time. Even if you regularly consume large amounts of caffeine, you should stop when you feel any unpleasant symptoms. Several types of symptoms occur with this condition. Some symptoms may not immediately alert you that you’ve had too much caffeine because they may not seem serious. For example, you may experience:

Dizziness

Diarrhea

Increased Thirst

Insomnia

Headache

Fever

Irritability

Other symptoms are more severe and call for immediate medical treatment. These more serious symptoms of caffeine overdose include:

Trouble Breathing

Vomiting

Hallucinations

Confusion

Chest pain

Irregular or Fast Heartbeat

Uncontrollable Muscle Movements

Convulsions

Babies can also suffer from a caffeine overdose. This can happen when breast milk contains excessive amounts of caffeine. Some mild symptoms include nausea and muscles that continually tense and then relax. More serious signs of caffeine overdose can accompany these symptoms, including vomiting, rapid breathing, and shock.

If you or a child under your care is experiencing these symptoms, seek a doctor’s help immediately for diagnosis and treatment.

JUMP To TOP           THERE ARE ONLY TWO DIFFERENT SPECIES OF COFFEE:

#1: ROBUSTO: Grows LOTS of berries per low altitude tree which renders a brew that is very powerful (in caffeine) but relatively low in flavor. 2.2% to 2.7% caffeine.

#2: ARABICA: Grows only about 2 pounds of berries per year per high altitude tree and tends towards capturing the "essence" of the physical location they are grown in. Much like it is said that you can "taste the dirt" in a Cuban Cigar, even though Cuban seeds are grown all over the world, NONE tastes even remotely similar to those tobacco plants grown in Cuban soil. Since there are fewer insects living in high altitudes, Arabica coffee beans from way up there are naturally much lower in caffeine. 1.2% to 1.5% caffeine.

JUMP To TOP           COFFEE FLAVORS BY COUNTRY WHERE GROWN:

A: Hawaii & Central America - Bright, snappy flavors.

B: East Africa & Yemen - Brooding, deep flavors.

C:  Sumatra & Indonesia - Funky, highly varying flavors (try them, you "might" like them, BUT they DO change every year).

JUMP To TOP           COFFEE ROASTS:

All Coffees are NOT equal! The flavors of each are ONLY as good as the coffee distributors

Master Roaster is at his / her job. Find a roast that you like and a manufacturer that makes that particular roast consistently.

#1: LIGHT CITY ROAST - More body, less roast flavor.

#2: FULL CITY ROAST - The perfect balance between bean flavor and roast body.

#3: VIENNA or FRENCH ROAST - Trades bean flavor for roast body.

#4: ITALIAN or ESPRESSO ROAST - No flavor from the bean remains, only the roast body.

Fresh, roasted beans will continuously give off carbon dioxide until eventually becoming "stale". This is why you will not EVER find "canned" whole bean coffees. The sealed bags that the roasters put their beans in should 100% be air-tight and have a 1-way valve installed (you can feel it as a lump, some place on the front of the bag. Usually, it's disguised as a "company seal" of some kind). Storing coffee beans in your own air-tight sealed container (A twist-tie bag is N O T a tightly sealed container) WILL actually pressurize, eventually causing an explosion, unless that container is opened at least every two to three days.

GRINDING YOUR OWN BEANS - DAILY: Open that sealed container!!!! DO NOT go on vacation and leave the sealed container in your cupboard though! You'll come home to a giant exploded mess.

JUMP To TOP           INDUSTRY STANDARD COFFEE GRINDS:

ESPRESSO grinds are extremely fine grinds. Used in all pressurized espresso machines.

DRIP grinds are a medium grind. Used in nearly all automatic drip coffee makers.

PRESS grinds are very coarse grinds. Used in French presses & cowboy (boiled) coffee pots.         

The experts "GOLDEN" ratio of ground beans to water is: 2 level tablespoons of coffee to 6 Oz of cold water OR: 1 cup of grounds per quart of water

A BASIC BAD COFFEE BREWING TRUTH: Dripping a large amount of hot water through a low volume of coffee grounds will increasingly force the extraction of more bitter flavoring from each granule of those coffee grounds. In other words, scrimping on the grounds makes for a bitter cup of coffee. NEVER, EVER re-use your grounds.

JUMP To TOP           DECAFFINATED COFFEE:

Decaffeinated coffee is SIMPLY W R O N G! The process used to decaffeinate coffee is EXPENSIVE, so the manufacturers use VERY LOW quality beans for their decaffeinated versions in order to keep the decaffinated selling price nearer to their caffinated selling price. The USDA has decided that “decaffinated” coffee shall have no more than 0.1% caffeine. Most coffee importers choose to mechanically process a portion of their coffee beans in order to remove a great deal of the caffeine. These processes are expensive and time-consuming. The end-product is labelled decaffinated coffee. ALL importers in their efforts to keep prices low will use ONLY their cheapest & lowest grade beans in their chosen decaffination process.

There are basically three ways to extract the caffeine from the beans:

1) SOLVENT PROCESS: Regardless of the type of solvent we use (mostly methylene chloride or ethyl acetate), the process is the same. The solvent process is divided in two methods: the direct and the indirect one. In the direct method the green beans are soaked in hot water increasing the surface area of the beans to let the solvent penetrate easily to extract the caffeine. The solvent (especially the methylene chloride) easily bonds with the molecules of hydrogen of the caffeine obtaining a high-quality extraction; after many hours (up to ten) of rinsing, the beans are steamed another time to remove any residuals.

In the indirect method the beans are rinsed by the water removing the caffeine; what we obtain is then separated from the beans (the beans are never get in contact with the solvent) and put in another tank and treated with the solvent. The mixture is then warmed again to evaporate the solvent and the caffeine. And finally, the beans are re-added to the mixture to reabsorb the flavours.

2) SWISS WATER PROCESS (SWP): This process was invented in 1930s in Switzerland and then introduced in 1988 in a facility in Vancouver. This is the only method that has been both certified organic and kosher. First, there’s no solvent required: the green beans are soaked in hot water to dissolve the caffeine. The water is then filtered with a charcoal filter with large pores that only hold caffeine molecules allowing all the oil and flavour compounds to pass through. Then the beans are discarded and another batch of beans are ready to be decaffeinated by the water that was previously filtered by the charcoal filter. At this point, the water is saturated of its flavour compounds so it can only extract the caffeine molecules. So, the result is a second batch of decaffeinated coffee full of flavours. This is the process mostly preferred even if it leads to wastage.

3) CARBON DIOXIDE PROCESS: This method was discovered by the scientist Kurt Zosel at the Max Planck Institute in 1967, using CO2 instead of any solvents. In 1988 a German company called CR3 patented a process called Natural Liquid Carbon Dioxide Decaffination Process. In this method the green beans are soaked in the extraction vessel, a stainless-steel container. In this container the CO2 is forced at high pressures (around 1000 pounds per square inch) that give it both gas and liquid status allowing to extract caffeine. Liquid CO2 extracts the caffeine leaving the flavours behind. Then the caffeine is put in another container called the absorption chamber where the pressure is released (now the CO2 is in gas status) leaving the caffeine behind. This process doesn’t waste as much as the Swiss method does.

Regardless the process, all the beans are then subjected to a drying process. The moisture is removed until it reaches the ideal content and the beans are then ready to be roasted.

DRINK A LITTLE LESS CAFFINATED COFFEE INSTEAD OF BUYING A CRAPPY BEANS DECAF!

Purchasing high-mountain grown Arabica coffee beans is also a "fix", because their naturally reduced caffeine levels are VERY close to the levels found in water process decaffinated coffees. You end up getting MUCH higher grades of beans to put in your body.

JUMP To TOP           COWBOY COFFEE:

Campfire boiled coffee is FANTASTIC. Use an old-style porcelain coated coffee pot (NOT with a built-in percolator basket) with a flip lid and a spout with a filter screen built into the spout to help get rid of grounds chunks & eggshells. Use ½ cup of press ground (coarse) coffee (plus or minus to taste) for each quart of cold water in the pot.

HOWTO:

#1): Put the dry coffee grounds in the pot.

#2): Put the morning's breakfast egg shells in the pot, crushing each shell as you drop it in. A bit of leftover egg inside the shells doesn’t hurt anything. Use about 6+ egg shells per quart of coffee.

#3): Fill the pot ¾ full with ice cold river water (SERIOUS FACT: UPSTREAM from where the horses spent the night). OR use tap water if your courage leaves a bit to be desired.

#4): Move a few hot coals off to the side with a stick and level them as much as is possible. Place the pot directly on the coals… OR…You can also set the pot on a couple of pieces of damp firewood with the hot coals in between the firewood sticks.

#5): WAIT A BIT & THEN WAIT A LITTLE MORE. Once the coffee foams and boils out of the spout the first time, immediately move the pot to an easier accessible and cooler spot near the fire to keep it hot. Handle away from the heat.

Pour yourself a cup of the BEST coffee you'll ever get. A stout stick with a short branch stub sticking out near to the end will work GREAT for hooking onto that REALLY HOT handle and a second similar stick to hook the pot bottom so you can safely pour into one of those WONDERFUL big, porcelain coated tin cups that will keep your hands warm & toasty on the coldest of mornings!

CAUTION: Your cup WILL have grounds lurking in the bottom. DO NOT drink the last ¼ inch of coffee in the bottom of the cup unless you consider yourself to be an expert at filtering out those errant grounds with your teeth - ALTHOUGH, spitting into the campfire IS considered to be an art form by a select few - there are additional points awarded for distance from the fire.

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