Plain coffee is fast becoming a thing of the past. It's now quite
simple to whip up a gourmet hot beverage for guest, family, or just for
yourself. Nowadays there are a number of coffee clubs and circles in
which coffee drinking has become somewhat of a social club. These
social clubs meet in the community or on the Internet.
Where did the good old days go where you could get just a regular, good cup of coffee all across America.
It's all because there is a big craze over coffee these days. People
are almost worshipping the coffee bean now. People get a thrill out of
ordering and buying special coffees from specialty stores. They really
like grinding their own coffee beans. They like visiting places such as
Costa Rica and bringing back their special blends. And "coffee tasting"
seems to be about as popular as "wine tasting".
They even have furniture and home interior designs with a coffee theme. This would make great gifts for the coffee buff.
Coffee got its beginnings around 900 A.D. where it was at first used as
a stimulant. It was also at times used as a wine and a medicine. It
doesn't look like anything is much different today.
There are not many products such as coffee that have continued "as is"
for hundreds of years. And yet people are still scrutinizing and
getting creative with it today and probably will be for years to come.
What is also interesting is that coffee is second to oil in dollar volume as a world commodity.
Did you know that there is two times more caffeine in a pound of tea
than in the same amount of roasted coffee? This may be good news for
those of you who hate the taste of decaffeinated coffee however wait
just one moment. A pound of tea will make about 160 cups whereas a
pound of coffee will usually make about 40 cups. This means that a cup
of tea has about 1/4th the caffeine of a cup of coffee.
The content of caffeine in coffee decreases as it is grown at higher
altitudes. If you want less caffeine in your coffee, grow it higher.
Gourmet coffees are typically grown at higher altitudes so they have
less caffeine than their grocery store counterparts.
There are many different types of coffee beans and way too many to describe in this article. Here are just a few of them:
You have Latte, Espresso, Low-Fat, Organic, Cal, Decaf, Half-Decaf,
Black Forest, Cappuccino, Cafe au Lait, Alpine which has brown sugar,
Arabian (lightly spiced and without filter), Cafe con Miel (Spanish for
coffee with honey), and Cafe de Olla (a sweet coffee made with
chocolate).
And you really should attend a coffee tasting at least once. You will
get to experience how making and brewing gourmet coffee is slowly
becoming a form of art. What is fun about the coffee tasting is that
you could get a chance to taste two dozen or more different blends. You
may even leave to start your journey as a coffee connoisseur. Any way
you look at it, the tasting experience will be fun if you like coffee.
