In Search of the Perfect Cup, the Old Coffee Pot Is Passé

By DEBORAH BALDWIN


"I hope I'm not talking too fast," David B. Dallis, president of Dallis Coffee, said to a rapt audience during a recent tour of his roasting plant in Ozone Park, Queens.

Hardly. This was a caffeinated crowd, devotees of the perfect home-made espresso, with a thirst for knowledge and an accelerated sense of time.

There was Owen Egan, a photographer from Montreal who carried along a high-tech thermometer and a thermocouple, which he uses to test temperatures in the commercial espresso machine that he keeps in his kitchen.

Madeleine Page, a psychotherapist from Philadelphia, wanted to talk about reassembling her secondhand commercial Cimbali, which she has stripped down to its parts. The effort, she said, will be worth it: "I couldn't find a good latte."

Leaders of a zealous subculture, they and about a dozen others had come to hear insights from a master and to share the joys and frustrations of taming high-pressure steam to make the perfect cup. Normally they would meet only at sites on the Web like wholelattelove.com and coffeegeek.com.

More...

COFFEE WAKE-UP CALL

LOUISE KRAMER

July 6, 2003 -- Tougher times are brewing for the U.S. coffee industry.
The sagging economy is starting to dip into coffee consumption at the office, and 18- to 24-year-olds, a prized consumer segment, are drinking far less java - the ordinary stuff as well as gourmet brands -than they did just a year ago.

In its latest annual survey, the National Coffee Association found that 16 percent of those questioned drank coffee at the office "yesterday," versus 20 percent in 2002.

Of the respondents age 18 to 24, 7 percent said they had a cup the day before, versus 13 percent in 2002.

Gains in recent years across all age groups are drying up. The survey, an annual must-read for coffee peddlers, found that 51 percent of respondents reported drinking a cup of coffee every day, compared with 52 percent the year before.

These changes are jolting coffee peddlers into action.

More...

Not all coffee beans are created alike

Mike Lafferty
Published July 4, 2003


The scent that rises from my desk is driving me mad with desire.

It is to my nose what the Sirens were to the ears of mariners.

It whispers: Use 1 tablespoon of ground coffee per 5-ounce cup. Do it now.

But I will wait because Chris Brown told me to.

I had visited Brown earlier in the day, drawn to his business by my long and satisfying relationship with coffee, which Thomas Jefferson called "the favorite drink of the civilised world."

And who am I on this patriotic day to argue with the author of the Declaration of Independence and the smartest president in our nation's history?

More...

Coffee Houses - A Distinguished History

Written By: Jacques Buffett

The early coffee houses of Europe and America were not only places for socialising, some evolved into the most important institutions of the modern world.

The New York Stock Exchange started as a coffee house as did Lloyds of London. Up until recently the runners at the British Stock Exchange were still called waiters due to the fact it too started as a coffee house. In London many coffee houses went on to become some of the world's most powerful businesses. Lloyd's Coffeehouse became Lloyds of London. The Baltic Coffeehouse became the London Shipping Exchange and the Jerusalem Cafe became the East India Company.

Other cafe's evolved into centres for both the arts and sciences. Sir Isaac Newton was a regular patron of the Grecian Coffeehouse. Jonathon Swift and Alexander Pope frequented the colourfully named Old Slaughter's Café. Even the event that marked the beginning of the modern age began in a humble café. On July 12, 1789 Camille Desmoulins leaped on a table at the café of the Palais Royal and urged the mob to take up arms against the French aristocracy.

(Info from www.konajoe.com)

gilkatho.com