Which has more of a kick in the cup: espresso or brewed?

Well this may surprise you.  Truth is neither actually wins.  They are about the same.  Let me explain.

The traditional American espresso based drinks, cappuccino or latte, are made from one to several “shots” of espresso and steamed milk.  One shot of espresso is approximately 1 1/2 ounces, two shots 3 ounces and so on.

Espresso is prepared by grinding beans to a finer consistency than for traditional brewed coffee.  The water is passed through the coffee rather quickly and under high pressure (20 seconds +/-) and the result is a bold, concentrated dose of coffee.  We call this espresso.

By the way, espresso is not a specific bean or roast level it is a method of making coffee.

Any bean or roasting level can be used to produce authentic espresso.  In Italy, the birth country of espresso, roast levels can vary quite a bit. In Southern Italy, a darker roast is often preferred, but the further north one goes in the country, the trend moves towards lighter roasts.

Brewed coffee on the other hand is made with much less coffee generally (as a ratio of dry coffee to finished beverage), more coarsely ground and then allowed to float in a bath of hot water (as in a paper filter basket type) then draining through a calibrated orifice (hole) in the bottom or in a percolator where water is continually passed over the coffee for several minutes.  The result generally is coffee with a distinctly milder body. Drip or percolator brewed coffee strength is varied by the amount of coffee used.

There are other ways to  process roasted coffee like a french press for example, but the point here is not process but end result.

Conclusions

Here it is: by the drink, a 12 ounce latte made with one shot of espresso has no more and possibly less caffeine that 12 ounces of brewed coffee.  Each shot of espresso adds approximately the equivalent caffeine of one 12 ounce cup of brewed coffee. Ounce for prepared ounce they are all about the same.

Our preferences for espresso based drinks, brewed coffee and even french pressed coffee should really be defined more by their unique characteristics of flavor and not misconceptions about caffeine potency.

In other words, a triple shot  latte will produce about the same results as three cups of regular brewed coffee.

“So how do I add  a little more kick to my coffee?”

-If you want more caffeine in your cup of brewed coffee or french press add more coffee not more time.  Remember this: steeping coffee longer, in a french press or percolator for example, will just make it bitter.

FYI, real hard-core-caffers often add shots of espresso to regular brewed coffee.  This is called a “Shot in the Dark”.

-In the case of espresso based drinks, add more shots.

“What if I don’t like coffee all that well but need a boost some mornings?”

One popular alternative is to add a shot of espresso to hot chocolate or to a chai tea.  The intense richness of these drinks masks a lot of the coffee flavor, still providing the caffeine.

Another popular alternative for energy seekers not wanting a lot of caffeine is white and green tea, both of whom have a component called ECGC (not available in black teas), which some studies show to increase metabolism and fat burning as well having other potential anti-oxidative effects.  This is largely unsupported through extensive scientific testing, but results so far are at least promising.

At Toomer’s coffee we serve a wide variety of loose teas which we brew by the cup.  Good stuff!

Wi-Fi in Coffee Shops: The Digital Dichotomy

I was surprised the other day to walk into our local tire shop and find this sign on the door: “WIRELESS INTERNET AVAILABLE”.  It’s everywhere and is a service that is almost ubiquitous.

However more and more there is a trend arising that may surprise people: More and more coffee shops are pulling the plug on internet access or at least curtailing it’s usage.

Why?

It’s obvious.  The tire store doesn’t have a problem because you are already buying a service from them and will leave when your car is ready.

Coffee shops and restaurants on the other hand, are running into an issue in these down times as people come in, linger over a $1.80 cup of coffee for hours, taking up precious table space and in many cases also taking up valuable parking slots on the street from other potential customers. The only item they are consuming in any quantity is bandwidth.

However you might be surprised (or maybe not) to find out that a lot of people come in, log on and never buy anything. Nothing. We have even experienced cases where people stealthily sneak in their own food and drinks.  They are as the French say “le mou chers”.

Who raised these people?  It wasn’t my folks.

How do we deal with this?

First we have several in-your-face signs posted that say this:

Our Wireless Internet Access is Not Free.
It is a complimentary service we provide to purchasing customers only.
If you want to use our wireless internet and not buy our wonderful products
it costs $5 per hour and there is a two hour max.

Tough Love

Once in a while we run into the errant visitor that still doesn’t get it and we will go to them quietly and explain the policy.  Most of the time they buy something but in one or two cases they have actually gotten up and left.  No doubt in search of another free wi-fi gig in town.

Other solutions

On a recent trip to Birmingham we visited a popular coffee shop that has a great solution.

They have their internet routed through a service (like in hotels) and have a keypad by the register.  If you have purchased a product and ask for a key to get on the internet, they simply press the keypad which spits out a unique 64 bit key.  If on the other hand you come in and just ask for a key, they inform you you need to either buy something or pay a usage fee.  The key is good for two hours.  Slick.

Still other shops just flat out tape up all the outlets.  Now your only going to have internet as long as your battery lasts.  I know of one shop that has no outlets at all in the customer area.

Bottom Line

If you are one of those [rare] folks who uses the local coffee shop as an office/library extension but rarely buys anything (or worse yet asks the question that makes all baristas cringe, “Can I just have a cup of water?”) I recommend you do the following…..stop.

Support you local coffee shop and their desire to continue to provide you with the atmosphere that you can only get in a coffee shop: Buy their products each time you come in.

Please, don’t be  “le Mou Cher“.

___________________

Further reading:

Link to a Wall Street Journal article on this subject:  No More Perks: Coffee Shops Pull the Plug on Laptop Users

Magnation article: The Problem with Free Wi-Fi

Hub Pages: Problems and Solutions Free Wi-Fi Access at Cafes 74

Toomer’s Office Coffee Service for your business or church

Toomer’s Coffee Roasters can provide all your coffee needs for your business or office.

We provide industry standard,  Bunn equipment along with our famous custom roasted coffee.  We encourage the use of airports as they are more efficient at brewing the best cup of coffee and keeping it fresh and hot for many hours.

Why do we use Airport Brewing Systems only?

Typical glass or stainless steel brew stations are not good for office environments as they allow coffee to “over-cook” (burn) on the hot eyes, enabling the flavor rich oils to separate out as the water evaporates, killing the flavor characteristics of fine coffee.  This makes the coffee bitter.  Yuk!

Not so with a Toomer’s Office Coffee system in place.  The coffee will taste the same at 10 o’clock as it did when you made it at 8.  That’s the Toomer’s Office Coffee difference. Plus you’ll never have to worry about coming in the next day to find a pot full of sludge after it cooked on the eye all night.  Double yuk!

Call us today!

Call us today  at 334-329-9852 [or use our Contact form] and let’s build a plan to suit your needs.

Remember, “Life’s short, drink great coffee!”

Catering Coffee Cambros from Toomers Coffee Roasters

One of our most popular catering services is our on site coffee delivery for larger  events, parties, meetings and even weddings.

We use a standard Cambro beverage container that will serve approximately 100-150 people per Cambro (see photo)

Over the past year we have provided coffee for large events for many local organizations and churches.  Some of those are the Mises Institute, Auburn Research Park, the Auburn Chamber of Commerce and the Auburn Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

Price includes delivery with options for set-ups (cups, creamer & sugar etc).

Call Toomer’s Coffee Company today and let us make your life and event planning a little easier!

Where do coffee beans come from?

This is the first is a multi-part series on coffee to help educate our customers.

First, there are two types of coffee beans

Coffee beans come from two basic versins of coffee plants: either the Robusta ( aka Coffea robusta, or Coffea canephora) or Arabica (aka Coffea arabica) version.

At Toomer’s Coffee Roasters we do not roast or sell Robusta beans. I once asked our coffee broker how much Robusta they sell and she said less that 5% of their total volume is Robusta. While it is higher in caffeine content (the main reason I guess a dubious roaster might add it..to jack up the “vibrancy” of their blends), the overall taste issues and roasting peculiarities she said make it a less than desirable option.

Arabica beans on the other hand, while lower in caffeine content have a number of factors that make them the number #1 preference amongst 99% of roasters today, taste being the main factor.  But we will cover that in a later articel specifically on Arabica beans.

They start life as a fruit

Arabica beans are grown on low (3-6 feet) shrubby plants that bear white blossoms that produce the coffee fruit called “cherries” (about the size and color of cranberries).

These coffee cherries are clustered along the limbs of the plant ( See image).  The cherries are harvested from approximately October through January each year.  Since the coffee cherries do not ripen together, several pickings of the the same plant may be required until all of the cherries have been harvested at the peak of ripenness.

This is the first step in the chain of factors that seperates fair coffee from truly exceptional coffee: only picking the red cherries.  Mixing in under-ripe/ greenish cherries with red cherries will result in bitter coffee no matter how well it is roasted.

In our next article we will talk about the regions beans are grown in and how that affects flavor.

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Toomer’s Coffee Roasters – Your wholesale coffee source

Toomer’s Coffee Company is a local private roaster located in Lee County, with a reputation for satisfying the discerning palettes of regional coffee lovers.

If you are a coffee shop, church, hospital, gift shop, on-line gift retailer, or other business, you should be buying Toomer’s Coffee for a lot of reasons:

SUPPORT ALABAMA SMALL BUSINESS:  We are an Alabama based business.  We are also a Lee County business and the areas only coffee roaster.  We are also family owned.   In short… Shop Alabama, Shop Lee County……Shop locally!

QUALITY: Because we use only the finest Arabica beans from 11 countries around the globe and we roast our coffee weekly so you know you are always getting FRESH!

PRICE: For our wholesale customers in Southeast Alabama, we can meet or beat any..ANY..other coffee roaster in the Southeast.  Why?  We’re local which translates into no commercial shipping which save gas.  Go green…buy local.

WE HAVE A WORLD VIEW: We support practices of buying directly from coffee plantations thereby supporting local third world economies directly. Within the coming year will have establishedseveral links to particular farms in South America as well as Asia and the Pacific Rim. No, this isn’t Fair Trade.  We believe our approach is better.  We call it “Relationship Trade” where we are building relationships with our overseas green coffee suppliers.

So if you are looking for coffee of unrivaled quality yet reasonably priced for your shop, corporate gift giving, your office, church or as a product to enhance  your on-line presence, contact Toomer’s Coffee today!

Get to know Auburn’s Coffee Roaster

From the beginning we felt the only way we could keep our product consistent with our own expectations would be  by roasting our own coffee.  We like to think of ourselves as a coffee roaster first and a coffee shop second.  The shop is where we display our craft, much as first class art gallery is a show place for fine art.

That said here is a short FAQ about our coffee roasting operation:

What exactly do you mean by “custom roasted”?

Just that; we roast using customized roast profiles for each coffee depending on where it was grown, the altitude and process used to process the bean (i.e wet or dry process) .  Profiles are similar to recipes, except there is only one ingredient, high grade Arabica coffee beans.  The customization is the way each bean is roasted by varying several factors such as time, temperature, length of roast.

Where do you get your beans?

We primarily work through a coffee brokerage firm who imports coffee from all over the world for us.  They buy various grades from each country and we in turn choose which beans we buy based on their offering.

However this year we are working on several import arrangements with a number of small family, tribal and community coop coffee farms in Central America and the Asiatic region to purchase their coffees direct.  This is what we call Friendship Coffee.  Our goal is develop a personal relationship with our farms in these regions.

If all goes well, someday we hope to offer tours to visit these new friends!

Currently we are test roasting and cupping to validate sample batches of these coffees.

How do you roast coffee?

First, someone has to teach you.  It’s a craft. A craft is a passionate enterprise and we are passionate about good coffee.

Sandy was taught by Mr. Stephen Diedrich at Diedrich Manufacturing in Sandpoint, Idaho.  In the beginning Diedrich Coffee Roasters was a Southern, California icon of custom roasted coffee for decades (read more).  They built their own coffee roasters and eventually branched their coffee roaster manufacturing off as a separate enterprise. Hence, today we have Diedrich Manufacturing; considered the Rolls Royce of roasters.  We use a Diedrich 7 kilo IR Roaster.

Next, you buy the best green Arbica coffee beans.  We currently work through an acclaimed broker in New York and import coffees from:

Sumatra and Papua New Guinea (Indonesia)
Tanzania, Kenya ,and Ethiopia (Africa)
Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Columbia and Brazil (Central & So. America)
India

We also have our own house blends, such as top seller, our Auburn City Blend, Christmas Morning (seasonal), Harvest Morning (seasonal) and of course our proprietary Espresso Blend (for espresso based drinks).

In addition we offer a half dozen flavored coffees: Vermont Maple Nut, Snickeroo, Southern Pecan, Kahlua & Creme, Vanilla Butter Cream, and our own blend called Caribbean Cruise

Give us a try and you will taste the 14 day difference

The primary variation between our coffees and what you typically buy in the store has to do with the 14 day window.

When you roast coffee the heating initiates a chemical reaction that generally lasts for 14 days.  This is why so many coffees are packages with those valves you see.  Because for the first 14 days or so after roasting the coffee produces it’s trademark aroma.  Without the valve the bag would rupture.  After 14 days, that stops.

The trademark aromas range from chocolate, fruity, winy, floral notes, and so on.  Actually each coffee will normally produce a range of aromatic values in each cup.

You don’t get this in mass produced coffees.

We ship anywhere anywhere!

Want to share some of this unique taste from the “loveliest village on the plains”?    However if you are looking for another not listed, just call us.  We’re a family owned operation and thus you are dealing directly with the owners!

VISIT OUR ON-LINE STORE HERE>>>

Call us today!  334-329-9852

French Roast

What is a French Roast anyway? It is a very dark roast. However not as far as an Italian Roast. In fact, many people mistakenly call Italian roast “Espresso Roast”, mainly because many Italian espresso bars use this roast.

Bottom line it is a dark roast, however that doesn’t have to mean bitter. People often are surprised that our French and Italian roasts, while full bodied, are not in the least bitter.

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