Colombian coffee comes with smuggled cocaine

Wow that will be sure to perk you up in the morning!!

original article HERE

Customs agents discovered an extra ingredient in a shipment of Colombian coffee: nearly a half-ton of cocaine.

U.S. Customs officer Troy Simon said Thursday it was his agency’s biggest cocaine find at the Port of New Orleans since more than two tons turned up in a transformer shipment about 10 years ago.

He said officers opened the shipping container Monday after a gamma-ray scan showed squarish shapes on top of the rounded burlap bags of coffee beans. They turned out to be 15 duffel bags.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Virginia Dabbs says they held 400 packages of cocaine weighing a total of 994 pounds.

The case was turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Drug Enforcement Administration; no arrests have been made.

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Funny Coffee Poem

Coffee Told Me
By Evan Hawkins

Coffee told me that it loved me

It woke me up in the morning
And kept me warm in the cold

Coffee told me that it loved me

It kept me company driving to Denver
And reminded me of all the names of my old acquaintances

Coffee told me that it loved me

It helped my nine to five go by faster
And it perked the mood of my house while selling it

Coffee told me that it loved me

It stained my teeth
And gave me an ulcer

Damn you coffee

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A nose for coffee

As Bob Weeks offers me a cup of coffee made with a stock of organic Ethiopian beans he’d roasted the day before, I can’t wait to see how he’s going to prepare it.

His kitchen is outfitted with choice coffee-making hardware, including a restaurant-caliber espresso machine and a Dutch Technivorm Moccamaster, which he calls the only drip pot that heats water to the correct temperature for proper extraction.

It’s clear I’m in the hands of someone who has a nose for coffee the way a wine connoisseur has a nose for wine, so I’m curious.

Weeks had been home-roasting coffee for years when he left his job at a top Boston ad agency in 2006 and started Redeye Roasters. He now produces about 80 pounds a week in his Hingham home. His brand is sold in specialty stores including the Fruit Center, Whole Foods, and Foodie’s Duxbury Market, for about $11 to $13 a pound.

He also sells at the Hingham Farmers Market out of his traveling cafe – a van outfitted with an array of professional equipment. His menu includes all the popular espresso drinks, iced toddies (a hard-to-find iced coffee made by cold brewing), and hand-poured drip cups. For Weeks, it’s all about extracting the truest flavor inherent in each particular coffee variety.

That effort begins with the best green beans he can find. Since Redeye is too small to purchase directly from farmers, Weeks forges relationships with large, high-quality roasters willing to sell him beans from places such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Brazil. According to Weeks, it’s rare to find fine beans – actually the seeds of red berries – since they are vulnerable to poor processing at many stages of their journey from the tree. To ensure quality, the fruits must be picked at the peak of ripeness and depulped, dried, husked, and stored properly.

From there, Weeks can carry them over the finish line with careful roasting.

It takes between 13 and 15 minutes to roast the 6-pound batches Weeks’s drum roaster accommodates. As he works it, Weeks uses his senses of smell and hearing to adjust the heat and airflow to put the beans through the optimal stages of roasting.

“There are two phases to roasting,” said Weeks. “The first crack and the second crack.”

The cracks are actual sounds that the beans make as their moisture and sugars expand during heating.

“You want the first crack to happen nine to 10 minutes into the roast,” said Weeks. “If it comes too early, the coffee will be underdeveloped. If it comes too late, it’ll have a baked flavor. So, the heat and air flow have to be just right.”

Depending on how dark a roast Weeks wants, he removes the beans from the roaster within seconds after the first crack, or waits for a second crack. The longer the beans are in, the darker the roast.

Weeks keeps a log of the roasting process as he gets to know a new bean. These are the categories on the form: time of charging (when he drops the beans in the drum); time when the beans smell like wet grass; time when the beans smell like hay; time when the beans smell like baked bread; time and temperature when the beans hit their first crack; time and temperature when the beans hit their second crack (if he’s roasting them that dark).

The three aromas – grass, hay, and bread – are standards in the roasting business. This identification of aromas comes from a vast vocabulary of tastes and fragrances that coffee connoisseurs have identified, much as wine experts have with wine.

To develop his senses, Weeks has visited coffee farms in several countries, goes to coffee tastings (called cuppings), and fiddles with a kit for coffee cupping developed by Jean Lenoir, a Frenchman known for his wine-tasting kits.

“Le Nez du Café” (the nose of coffee) is a wooden box containing 36 numbered bottles. You pick one, smell it, and try to identify it. After you’ve guessed, you can look up what it is and read about the characteristics of the substance in a book that comes with the kit. We did three, and I couldn’t identify any. Weeks got two and was close on the third. They were cucumber, pipe tobacco, and apricot.

How did he make my cup? Using a Bodum French press – the 32-ounce model – with five level scoops of coffee. He added water from a stainless steel Breville electric kettle, stirred it for a few seconds, let it brew for four minutes, then plunged.

It was fabulous, but I couldn’t say how. Weeks, on the other hand, described it in universally standard coffee terms.

“It was a rich, fruit-forward cup,” he said. “It had a sweet, juicy body full of chocolate and wild raspberries and a refined, clean finish.”

Later, at home, I ground some of the Ethiopian beans I bought from Weeks and took a deep breath over the grind. For the first time in my long coffee-loving life, I identified an element in a coffee: blueberry muffins – clear as day. Blueberries aren’t raspberries, but they’re close. I’d say I’m developing a nose.

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How To make Espresso

Here is a short video i came across on how to make a wonderful espresso I thought i would share it with you !

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History Of Espresso

Human beings, being cognitive of their mortality, have a strong sense of the preciousness of time. One of the principal forces that drives the development of technology is the intrinsic desire to do things faster. An overwhelming aspect of measures for the standards of living are the conveniences and leverages that we as a species have obtained for ourselves. For modes of transportation, the jet airplane is most highly regarded for covering large distances. For methods of communication, the perceived instantaneous telephone call is considered acceptable. In our home kitchens, the most valued modern addition is the microwave oven because it can prepare a potato in eight minutes, when a conventional oven requires sixty. With just the power of gravity, water takes 4-6 minutes to extract a cup of coffee from ground beans, and given human nature, 4-6 minutes can seem a near eternity. Speeding up this process of brewing requires putting greater pressure than gravity behind the water.

Another more personal human characteristic also helped inspire the creation of espresso. It can be generally said that most individuals, educated and inspired by their cultures, have developed a personal ego that appreciates attention and recognition. The act of individual preparation of something to be enjoyed expressly for oneself is a sought after luxury.

It is these human desires, for speed and individual service, that were the roots of inspiration for the invention of Espresso. There were several technological inventions begun in the early to mid-1800?s that worked on the concept of brewing coffee faster, but it was not until 1901 that an Italian named Luigi Bezzera patented a machine that employed steam pressure to force water through ground coffee held in clampable filters. The basic design of this machine is shown below, and the dynamics of how it works is still widely used today in many steam-pressure based “espresso machines” sold to the home market.

It also required consummate skill on the part of the operator. They were in control of the intensity of the heat source, which determined the internal pressure of the tank, and the length of time that the hot water valve was opened which determined the volume of the beverage. The temperature of the water was at boiling point, necessary to produce the pressurizing steam, but too hot for properly brewing coffee. Also, the typical maximum pressure provided by these machines was too low, only 1.5-2 atmospheres, to satisfy our current standards for the ideal espresso method.

Still, Bezzera?s machines satisfied many of the original intents in that it prepared quick coffee by the cup, on demand. The resulting brew was also stronger in flavor and body than coffee prepared using less pressure. And there was an added bonus with the machine – the steam pressure could be used to heat and froth milk for addition to the coffee !

 

Desidero Pavoni acquired the patent for this machine from Bezzera in 1903, and began commercially producing them and distributing them throughout Europe.

Significant improvement was provided in 1948 by Gaggia?s development of the spring-piston espresso machine that was capable of producing a higher and more exact pressure upon the grounds. Further water pressure and advancement in precisely portioning the flow was provided by Cimbali?

introduction of the hydraulic machine in 1956. Finally, the precursor of the modern machines was created in 1960 by the FAEMA E61 which employed an electric pump to supply the pressure. Heat exchangers for the proper control of water temperature below boiling was also provided by these later machines.

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