Coffee gains foothold in tea-drinking China

By Niu Shuping and Nao Nakanishi

XINGLONG, China/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Du Yansheng, a farmer on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, hasn't gone without his morning cup of coffee in five decades, not even during the Cultural Revolution -- when such "mock-Western" practices could have landed him in prison.

"People here have never stopped drinking coffee," Du told Reuters in Xinglong, the cradle of coffee culture in an otherwise tea-drinking country.

Du's father was one of China's first coffee farmers, at a time when it was considered an exotic foreign beverage. He brought robusta beans from Indonesia in the 1950s -- decades before Nestle or Starbucks Corp. arrived on China's shores.

Today, coffee is fast catching on, especially among younger urban Chinese, and the percentage increase in demand is in the double digits -- though still less than one tenth of tea consumption.

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Coffee wars

By Richard Slawsky Reporter

15 May 2007

When the Specialty Coffee Association of America recognized a retailer this year with its latest Golden Cup Award for excellence in brewing coffee, the honor didn’t go to a coffeehouse chain like Starbucks or Caribou Coffee. Instead, the award went to a gas station/convenience store located in Oklahoma City.

Star Fuel’s 53-unit All Star Stores received the award after submitting a sample of the company’s brewed coffee for laboratory analysis by the SCAA. The association analyzed the samples to ascertain the amount of minerals in the water, as well as the ratio of water to coffee.

“There are some convenience store operators who believe that all customers want is a ‘good cup of coffee’ at a cheap price,” said Alan Wilkerson, Star Fuel’s chief operating officer. “We'll let them have that piece of the market, and we’ll continue on our course of capturing the discriminating customer that wants that really good coffee.”

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Banished Home-Roaster? Meet the Behmor

In Vermont, it’s said, there’s nine months of winter and three months’ rough sledding. While that’s fine for skiing and snowmobiling and such, it can put a real damper on the aspirations of the dedicated home coffee roaster, banished to the garage or the wide open spaces beyond after that incident with the dark-roast batch that triggered the smoke alarms at midnight.

It’s little surprise, then, that home roasters everywhere — in wintry places, especially — find themselves drawn like so many moths to the flame of a coffee roaster due to hit retailers soon… the Behmor 1600. Its spec sheet is promising: batches of up to one pound, a number of programmed roast profiles and the ability to tweak them on-the-fly at roast-time, quiet operation so you can hear the audible cues of roast progression, and built-in smoke abatement technology.

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Snnnt?...?sooot: the sounds of coffee connoisseurship

By DEBRA McKINNEY
Anchorage Daily News

Published: May 13, 2007

HOMER, Alaska -- It's Friday afternoon at K Bay Caffe Roasting Co., and the table is set for extreme coffee tasting.

Freshly roasted beans from around the globe will be scored on aroma, flavor, aftertaste, brightness, body and balance. Words like "nose" and "mouth feel" will be tossed around. And "citrus," "floral play" and "grassy."

"Cupping," this thing is called. It's kind of like wine tasting, only everyone's a whole lot more alert.

In front of each of this session's four cuppers -- Michael McGuire, Keren Orr, Mary Cameron and Mike Hiller -- is a chorus line of small glass cups, water for cleansing the palate, paper cups for disposing of that palate cleanser, spoons, pens and score sheets. Center stage on the table is the day's lineup of contenders -- organically grown coffee beans from Hawaii, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Brazil.

You think wine connoisseurs have an interesting vocabulary. Once these cuppers get into it, this is the kind of thing you hear:

"I think this is a little grassy, like sweet-tart hay."

"Yeah, it was definitely hanging out in that grassy range."

"Citrus floral play with chocolate undertones -- I was just like, goodness gracious."

"Man, the aftertaste just went wooooo. Positive, positive experience."

"Better than a Bordeaux. It's up there in terms of palate experience."

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Brewing up a romance? Coffee houses are new, hot date spot

By Karen Rorie
The Post-Bulletin

You've finally made the move and decided to meet the person you've been chatting with online. Where do you go on that first "real" date?

It needs to be someplace public for safety's sake. A place that's not too romantic and where you can converse without shouting. And if the date turns into a dud, you need to be able to make an early exit.

More and more, people are passing by bars and restaurants in favor of coffee shops for their first dates. It's the new hot date spot.

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Israeli cafe chain may be targeted by protesters

Zosia Bielski, CanWest News Service

TORONTO - Israel's answer to Starbucks will open its first Canadian location in Toronto this week amid threats of boycotts and a possible protest by an anti-Israel group.

Although Aroma Espresso Bar will fly its coffee beans in from South America and bake its bread on site, the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid has the cafe in its sights as an Israeli business worth boycotting until that country ends its "colonization of Arab lands."

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Starbucks thoughts stir the pot

Some customers find contemplative quotes provocative, anti-Christian

Vito Pilieci, The Ottawa Citizen

Starbucks says it won't change an advertising campaign that some believe is anti-Christian, despite boycotts across the United States.

The Seattle-based coffee chain has drawn protests because of its "The Way I See It" campaign, which prints comments submitted by customers on its paper cups.


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Banned 'Cocaine' energy drink re-emerges as 'Censored'

An energy drink that was barred by the US government from going on the market with the name "Cocaine" will re-emerge under the tongue-in-cheek moniker "Censored," its maker said Friday.

NEW YORK (AFP) - "We love the 'Censored' name because it has the same rebellious and fun spirit that our original name did," said Redux Beverages LLC founder Jamey Kirby.

The company announced Tuesday it was going to change the name of the "Cocaine" beverage in the face of pressure from officials and others who said it glamorized illegal drug use.

The Las Vegas, Nevada-based firm said it took the action about the title of its caffeine-loaded drink -- which contains no cocaine despite the name -- in the face of "threats" by the US Food and Drug Administration and state officials.

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