Roasting coffee ... by bike!

Davis is one of America's best bike cities. Bikes are everywhere. That may be why Alex Roth rides an old Schwinn for a living. He's the "Pepper Peddler."

Roth used to roast peppers and never changed the company name. On his rickety stationary bike, with the assist of propane, Roth pedal-powers a giant steel drum. Inside, coffee beans roast. A low cost, environmentally friendly way to run a coffee business.

How Davis is this?

Roth described his roasting drum as a "glorified dryer. Clothes dryer, basically. Tumbling the coffee in there."

Roth has been peddling coffee behind an industrial warehouse for eight years. He sublets a small space from a bakery to save money.

Tuesday is roasting night. For three hours Roth will pedal 200 pounds of raw green beans into various roasts ready to grind. Thursday is delivery day to homes and businesses in Davis. Sacramento too. By train.

"I take AMTRAK out to Sac for deliveries and bike from there and continually bump into people who know about the product and that's one of the most rewarding things," Roth said.

The Pepper Peddler - coffee peddler - rides the train to Sacramento with his bike and puts in another 15-20 miles delivering his Peruvian La Florida blend in Mason jars.

He'd love to expand from the back of a bakery into, say, San Francisco and Palo Alto. Coffee lovers seem to be drawn to the unique way the coffee is roasted and delivered by bike.

"I do limited shipping, that's mainly like my mom and some family members, and what not," Roth said.

He keeps it basic. More of a passion than a way to get rich, but the chemistry major from UC Davis is riding a unique way to stand out in a crowded coffee world.

SOURCE: NEWS 10 ABC

The Space Station Gets A Coffee Bar

In space, all they have is instant.

"For an instant coffee, it's an excellent instant coffee," says Vickie Kloeris, who manages the space station's food supply for NASA. Astronauts are allotted up to three freeze-dried cups (pouches, actually) a day, and Kloeris says it's "extremely popular."

But, she adds, "can it compete with brewed espresso? No."

And that is a problem, particularly for the Italian astronauts that occasionally come to the station. In 2013, Luca Parmitano reportedly said the only food he missed from Earth was espresso coffee.

Now a resupply mission with a space-aged espresso maker is coming to the rescue of Italy's current astronaut aboard the space station, Samantha Cristoforetti.

The machine was designed by Argotec, an Aerospace company based in Torino, Italy, together with the Italian coffee company Lavazza.

It's called ISSpresso.

"I-S-S for the International Space Station," says David Avino, Argotec's managing director. "'Presso' like the espresso."

The ISSpresso is a box about the size of a microwave. You put in a pouch of water, add a little capsule of espresso and press the button marked "brew." The espresso comes out in a second pouch. (Avino says the Italians are still trying to develop a little cup that will work in zero-Gs.)

As The Salt has reported previously, this is an experimental machine. Nobody's sure how all coffee and steam will behave in zero gravity, and they've had to take extra safety measures, including steel tubing and lots of sensors. Avino says he's confident hot espresso won't squirt into the cabin.

Assuming it works, Italian astronaut Cristoforetti will probably get the first shot, but Avino says the machine is for everyone.

"Everybody can join and can also be happy getting an espresso coffee," Avino says. "And this will be also a great occasion, you know, to all meet together and [have] a coffee all together on the station."

It's perfect for the astronauts, but NASA's Vickie Kloeris is anxious. "Each cup has an individual capsule that has to be packaged separately. So there's a lot of trash and a lot of volume involved in it," she says. Getting things in and out of space is expensive, and Kloeris says NASA managers are still trying to figure out how to deal with all those finicky plastic pods.

Assuming it works, she thinks the astronauts will soon be needing more: the machine comes with just 20-30 coffee capsules.

"We'll see how it goes," she says. "If it's successful, then we'll have to figure out how we're going to resupply it."

SOURCE: NPR

How to make Coffee cubes

In this instructable I will show you how to simplify your coffee routine with coffee cubes. We've all been in a hurry, fixed a cup of coffee and then experienced the agony of not being able to drink it because it is too hot. I'm going to show you how to keep your coffee at the perfect temperature (hot or cold) without sacrificing the integrity of your coffee's flavor with watery ice cubes. Let's get started!

-A pot of room temperature coffee. I used Mexican Chiapas. (Yum)

-Your favorite creamer or flavor shot

-Ice cube tray

That's it. You should have all these things on hand if you are a coffee drinker and use ice.

Step 1.

Brew your coffee and wait for it to cool down. It doesn't have to be room temperature, but I find that burns are less likely if it is cooler.

This is where your personal preferences come into play. Typically people drink coffee in three basic ways.

1.Coffee with cream and sugar=cold coffee and creamer mixed together

2.Black coffee with flavor shot=cold coffee and a flavor shot

3. Black=cold coffee

I've done all three because sometimes you want cold coffee and sometimes you don't. The great thing about these cubes is that as they melt they only add flavor and more coffee to your cup. 

Now that you have your mixed liquids just pour them into the ice tray.

Now that they are done you can use them how you want. If you are in a hurry and want to cool your coffee from scalding to drinkable in seconds pop in a couple of coffee cubes and you're ready to go. Want to make sure that your ice coffee ratio stays all coffee and no water to ensure that sweet coffee goodness hits your tongue then pop in a couple of coffee cubes. You will no longer have to burn your tongue or water down your coffee. It's cheap. It's easy. It's perfect. I hope you enjoy.

SOURCE: Instructables 

How to keep your coffee healthy

Your morning coffee may give you the energy to start your day, but did you also know that daily coffee habit is good for your health, especially your cardiovascular health?

The coffee plant and its beans are chock full of thousands of chemicals and polyphenol antioxidants, vitamins, bioflavonoids, and minerals that promote heart health and help to neutralize the effect of naturally occurring caffeine.

Drinking a moderate amount of coffee each day—one to five cups—can help you avoid clogged arteries. The plaque that forms in arteries consists of calcium deposits that contribute to hardening of the arteries, and is a big predictor of heart disease and risk for heart attack.

According to several studies, coffee appears to have a protective effect on the heart itself. Drinking over four cups coffee per day can reduce your chances of being hospitalized for heart rhythm problems by 18%. Another study found that drinking coffee might take some strain off your heart by triggering a 30% increase in blood flow in the small blood vessels.

Coffee’s effect on other conditions

There is more good news for coffee drinkers. A February 2015 report from the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee addressed coffee consumption. Based on several studies and meta-analyses, they noted that there is strong evidence showing that drinking three to five cups of coffee per day (or up to 400 mg of caffeine per day) is not associated with an increased risk for long-term health problems in healthy people.

They also noted that drinking coffee with about 400 mg of caffeine might even lower a person’s risk for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and Parkinson’s disease. One cup of coffee usually contains about 100 mg of caffeine.

Other chronic conditions that coffee may reduce your risk for include the following:

Melanoma and other skin cancer

Multiple sclerosis (drinking four to six cups per day)

Dementia and mild cognitive impairment

Parkinson’s disease

In addition, research that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that coffee consumption can lower a person’s risk for premature death. The more coffee people drank the lower their risk of death became. That includes deaths from heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease, diabetes, infections, and injuries.

Other benefits to coffee and caffeine include helping with alertness, boosting metabolism (especially if consumed before exercise), and reducing risk of injuries.

How to get the most benefits from your coffee

Coffee is best when your drink it black. When you add milk, creamer, nondairy creamer, flavors, sugar, and artificial sweeteners you are potentially hurting your health and reducing the therapeutic benefits. To get the most health benefits from your coffee skip the add-ins. If you really need to doctor up your coffee, try coconut milk.

If you want to reduce hunger cravings, do what my grandparents used to do and put some butter in your coffee. Butter has healthy fats and is rich in fat-soluble vitamins, which all helps signal your brain you’ve had some nutrition and you’re full.

The color of your coffee makes a difference too. Choose darker roasts, which typically have more neuroprotective agents and can help restore antioxidant levels (vitamin E and glutathione) than unroasted green and lightly roasted coffees. Darker roasts also have been shown to have significantly better weight-loss results in obese coffee drinkers.

Going green

Whenever possible, buy certified organic coffee. Coffee beans are heavily sprayed with pesticides. Purchasing sustainable “shade-grown” coffee also helps protect the planet, rainforests, and all the birds and animals that live there, all while protecting your body from harmful pesticides.

SOURCE: Easy Health Options

These Dissolving Coffee Pods Are The Anti-Keurig

THESE SUGAR-COVERED PODS DISSOLVE IN YOUR COFFEE, SO THEY'RE GENTLE ON THE ENVIRONMENT.

A minimally designed new coffee maker from Singapore-based designer Eason Chow fixes one of the biggest problem with single-serving coffee machines, like Keurig: their plastic coffee pods are incredibly wasteful. Chow's Droops Coffee Maker—unfortunately just a concept at this point—uses coffee pods covered in sugar, which dissolve as hot water pours through the pod. His pods come in various shapes and sizes to include different coffee flavors and to adjust the amount of sugar to the drinker's liking. Chow said he was inspired by sugar-coated candy from his childhood, which would reveal different flavors as the layers dissolved.

Chow's design is brilliantly simple: the three-part machine is stacked on a heating base. On top of that, you have a metal water container and a pump. When all three are stacked, they complete a circuit, allowing the product to function without any additional wiring or controls, aside from an on/off button on the front.

Chow says that the aesthetic of the machine was as important to him as the function. Most coffee machines, he told Co.Design "neglect the importance of their appearance and of social responsibility." Droops seems like a smart alternative for all the Keurig-crazed consumers out there—as long as they can handle a little sugar.

SOURCE: Fast Co. Design

Coffee Flour a by-product of java production that can be used for cooking and baking will soon be available

Perk up, java lovers. Coffee Flour is coming your way.

The light-brown processing by-product is set to jolt caffeinated cooks with its earthy, dark, fruity flavor lending itself to baking, cooking and even chocolate-making, according to its purveyors.

Coffee Flour will make its debut Monday at two TED2015 conferences in Canada, and should be available in New York later this year.

Dan Belliveau and Andrew Fedak are on track to produce 1.2 million pounds of the buzzy product this year — 900,000 more pounds than they made in 2014.

The coffee they grind every day comes from a cherry-red berry, the interior of which is a bean and an inedible pulp. The bean gets processed into coffee, and the pulp gets discarded or turned into fertilizer — until now.

Belliveau, who was fired from Starbucks for wanting to change facility operations, came up with the idea after realizing how much waste coffee production creates.

“If you try to take all the pulp from a harvest and put it in a field, it’s too much, you can’t,” Belliveau told the Daily News. “The pulp is not a great fertilizer, although it can be a really great part of it.”

The farmers — in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico and Vietnam — aren’t tasked with any extra work either. They take their crop to the mills for processing and get 3 cents for every pound that’s turned into flour. That’s on top of the 5-to-10-cent take-home they tend to get for every pound of coffee.

Belliveau hopes to leave 50% of the product in origin countries so that their citizens can benefit from its nutritional and financial potentials.

The flour’s nutritional stats read like a dietitian’s dream. Coffee flour has more fiber than whole-grain flour, more protein than kale, more potassium than a banana and more iron than spinach — and it’s gluten-free, to boot.

But how does it taste? According to one James Beard-winning chef, pretty darn good.

“Coffee flour brightens the flavor of existing ingredients, much like a vinegar or fat,” says Seattle chef Jason Wilson, who called it “a breakthrough.”

And despite the name, it won’t give you the shakes. The amount of caffeine in a typical coffee flour recipe is just 12% to 15% of that of a cup of coffee.

But some fear the flour rips off farmers who use it as fertilizer.

“Buying up the pulp and exporting it as flour is another way of extracting wealth from us so that people in rich countries can have another fancy product,” one Salvadoran farmer told The Guardian.

Belliveau was quick to back his brand.

“We’re interacting with farmers to ensure there’s a revenue stream that gets back to them,” he said.

The Fair Trade USA Council, which certifies businesses that pay farmers fairly, told The News that Coffee Flour has not yet approached the council, but “it is something we would be open to exploring.”

SOURCE: NY Daily News