reason for it? It's probably because it is very easy these days to brew up a cup
of gourmet coffee for your family, friends, and acquaintances. There are now
coffee clubs and coffee social areas where coffee is taking on the look of a
social group. These meeting places can take place within the shops and community
or on the Internet.
Gone are the days when you just went to a coffee shop to get a regular cup of
coffee.
This is a happening because of an obsession by coffee fans all over America for
the gourmet or specialty coffee. These people visit all the coffee specialty
stores and order it from catalogues or the Internet. They love grinding the
coffee beans themselves. And when they take trips to places like Costa Rica,
they look for and bring back the specialty coffees. Now we have "coffee tasting"
events much like wine tasting.
There is even interior design products and furniture coming on the market
touting a coffee theme -- great gifts for the coffee fan.
Coffee had its beginnings as a stimulant in 900 A.D. It has also had its
beginnings in a variety of uses such as a medicine and a wine. Nothing is much
different today.
Coffee is one of the few untouched products over time but that is quickly
changing. People are coming up with all sorts of ways to improve its flavour and
aroma and will probably keep doing it well into the future.
And coffee shares a good chunk of the world's market. It is second only to oil
in dollar volume as a world commodity.
People also these days are constantly trying to reduce their caffeine intake. A
pound of coffee has half the caffeine as a pound of tea yet we get more caffeine
in a cup of coffee? Why? It is because a pound of tea will give us 160 cups of
coffee and a pound of coffee only gives us 40. This may disappoint those of you
who have to drink decaffeinated coffee but hate the taste of it.
Also, it is interesting to note, that when you grow coffee at high altitudes,
the result is less caffeine. This is probably one of the advantages of gourmet
coffee in that it is grown at much higher altitudes than the standard grocery
store blends.
There are a variety of different types of coffee beans -- too many for this
writing. Some beans we will mention are:
You have Latte, Espresso, Low-Fat, Organic, Cappuccino, lightly-spiced Arabian
with no filter, Cal, Decaf, Half-Decaf, Black Forest, Cappuccino, Cafe au Lait,
Alpine which has brown sugar, a Spanish coffee bean meaning "with honey": Caf‚
con Miel, and (Spanish for coffee with honey), and Cafe de Olla (which is sweet
and made with chocolate).
Go and enjoy a coffee tasting event when you get the chance. You will be happy
to see that gourmet coffee is slowly migrating to the classification of "art
form." At one of these events you could taste up to 2 dozen (or even more)
blends. You could even leave as somewhat of a coffee expert. This would
definitely be an activity to enjoy if you really like coffee.