Recipe: Hot Cinnamon Berry Martini

Were you a good little girl or boy last night, or did St. Paddy get the best of you? If it was the latter, this little number might just be a nice sweet hair o’ the dog.

Ingredients

• 1/2 oz. Monin Spicy Red Cinnamon syrup
• 1/2 oz. Monin Strawberry Fruit Puree
• 2 oz. vodka
• 2 oz. fresh lemon juice
• ice

Directions

Combine all ingredients in a shaker and shake vigorously. Serve up in a chilled martini glass with a strawberry garnish.

Field Trip: Hario USA – Cup Tasting Championships

One of the things we loved hearing about during our visit to Hario USA was Edwin’s experiences with the International and US versions of the Cup Tasters Championship. Devised to accentuate the importance of tasting the flavor of coffee — instead of seeing it simply as a commodity or a fuel — the contest brings coffee buyers from all over the world together to compete head-to-head.

Who has the best taste buds? Only the strong survive? OK, not so much. But it was fun learning about it from Edwin.

Tech Tip: My Superauto with SBS Keeps Clogging!

Have a Saeco or Gaggia superautomatic with the Saeco Brewing System (SBS) functionality? If so, this tip is for you!

We occasionally have customers calling with the following issue: They haven’t used the machine for awhile and now, when they try to use it, it’s grinding and tamping and everything but it’s either not brewing at all or giving an error. The cause? Well, if you let the machine sit unused for a few days, the coffee can dry in the SBS system, harden and clog it with a little coffee plug. This could even happen as quickly as overnight if you use dark roasted/oily beans in the grinder or if you use pre-ground flavored coffees (that sometimes have sugar in them) in your bi-pass doser.

How to resolve? Simple: Start brewing a shot and twist the SBS knob back and forth repeatedly. This combination of actions should break the hardened coffee free and coffee should start to flow.

Crew Review: Jura Capresso C5 Superautomatic

The newest superautomatic available in the US by Swiss manufacturer Jura Capresso, the Impressa C5 is economical, straight forward and has more programming options available than models available from the Ena series — although it’s right around the same price. It also has side access for the water and coffee beans, plus a heated metal cup warmer up top.

Check out Gail’s demonstration and review.

Crew Review: Capresso Flat Burr Grinders

Released this year, Capresso has a couple of more inexpensive burr grinder options now available on the scene. We tested them out to see how they perform — will they grind fine enough for espresso? And are they as inconsistent as their Infinity brethren?

Watch as Gail shows us the grinder’s specs, grinds at the finest/coarsest and then demonstrates using it with the Saeco Via Venezia espresso machine.

Gail Does Latte ‘Art’

She may be a savant in other respects, but Gail knows she is not the queen of latte art. She does practice, though, and is striving to improve herself in all ways. Look, we can all, each of us, grow as individuals, now can’t we?

Check out her not-so-mad skillz.

Field Trip: Hario USA – Different Pour Over Styles

During our visit to Hario USA HQ, Edwin showed us a few of the different styles of pour over models available from Hario — glass, ceramic, plastic versions plus different cup sizes of each.

Different available models of pour overs from Hario

Plastic vs. ceramic pour over models

Field Trip: Hario USA – Coffee: Acidity vs. Bitterness vs. Rancid Oils

Folks will often ask us for info on coffee that has less acidity because they have a real problem with that and their GI tract. So when we visited Edwin Martinez at Hario USA, we posed this question to him because we figured that someone with his extensive end-to-end knowledge of the coffee world might have some good recommendations.

What we learned was that it might just be that folks are working under the misconception that bitterness is the flavor of acidity. In this video Edwin talks about acidity vs. bitterness — and how the culprit may also be rancid coffee oils. Yeech.

Field Trip: Hario USA – Hand Grinders

Edwin Martinez of Hario USA showed us two different models of hand coffee grinders available from Hario: the Skerton and the Mini Slim. Both of these grinders are currently backordered with Hario in Japan, unfortunately, but will hopefully be available on Seattle Coffee Gear’s site in April 2010.

Vroom Vroom Vroom

With a lot of recent scientific data pointing to the adverse impact our reliance on fossil fuels is having on the environment, inventors, universities and entrepreneurs the world over have been tackling the issue of alternative energy in different manners. As we wrote about in 2008, the University of Reno had successfully developed a method for converting used coffee grounds into a form of biodiesel. At the time, the results weren’t mind-blowing — yes, it was feasible, but was it scalable?

Over a year later, the BBC1 show Bang Goes the Theory took the idea of turning coffee into a more explicit form of fuel by converting a 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco to use coffee as it test drives 210 miles from Manchester to London. Dubbed the ‘carpuccino,’ the project was taken on to accentuate the importance of experimenting with alternative energy. The catch, however, is the fact that the cost of the trip is between 25 – 50 times that what it would cost if petrol was used instead of coffee. Depending on coffee quality, the cost of the trip could be anywhere between about $1400 and $2800, compared to about $55 for a journey fueled by gas.

So, obviously, this may be a fun idea, but really not a great solution. Add to that the recent assessment by the International Coffee Organization that climate change has begun to severely impact the coffee growing regions around the world — which is contributing to the noticeable increase in the cost of coffee — and the idea of using java to power our favorite transport, digs and gadgets is even more ludicrous. But, we won’t slight them for trying — even if it was ultimately just a publicity stunt.