Chamie's Coffee Blog

What do our favorite coffee roasters get up to when they're not firing up beans for our enjoyment? Well, if it's Dean Cycon of Dean's Beans, it could be just about anything... and it will almost always be fun. I'm on the Dean's Beans mailing list to keep up on new coffees and good deals, and because every once in a while, they send out something cool, like this video of Dean getting down with a group of their coffee partners in Papua New Guinea:

A couple of days ago, I posted about the TextSpresso machine developed by the tech and coffee geeks at Zipwhip -- you remember, right? The ultra-cool coffee machine that makes an espresso when you send it a text -- and prints your name on the crema? Here's a follow-up video with a lot more detail for all you guys that were drooling over having this baby at work:

Coffee and mustard may not sound like go-togethers, but tonight's Easter ham. glazed with an apricot, coffee and mustard glaze was a big hit. In fact, I caught both boys licking the spoon after they stirred the glaze. This one was an improv -- I just added ingredients to taste, but it was so good that I know I'll be playing with it again to fine-tune the measurements so I can write a real recipe for it. In the meantime, here's the general recipe if anyone wants to give it a try.

The official household coffee roaster

About a week ago, I posted about the Congo coffee over at The Captain's Coffee and mentioned that I'd be picking some up when my paycheck came in. Well, it took me longer to get around to it than I'd planned (yay, procrastination!), but I just popped back to place my order for 2 pounds of Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kivu 4 Special Prep at the below-cost price of $2.65/lb. It's been a while since I've roasted my own, but I'm looking forward to firing up the retro-inspired popcorn popper and filling the house with roasting smoke and blowing chaff.

File this one under "Holy cappuccino, Batman!" A company in Seattle has created an unmanned espresso machine that acccepts your coffee order via text and brews it up for you. Check out the report from Seattle's KOMO News:

Discovered this one via Dear Coffee I Love You, one of my favorite non-ROASTe coffee blogs. This Steampunk coffee brewer will be featured at the  April 19th SCAA Event in Portland. The video is your standard slick marketing video, but the coffee machine is pretty neat.

Are you one of those people who has trouble making decisions before your first cup of coffee? Now there's a new Android coffee app that can help you make that all-important first decision of the day -- what kind of coffee should you order?

I finally broke out the Brazilian Oberon coffee from The West Bean this morning, and I'm writing about it, as promised. This is the "great customer service" coffee -- the one that didn't reach me originally, and which The West Bean and ROASTe collaborated to get to me when the USPS failed to deliver my original order.

warrenski / Stock Photos

Got coffee and sugar in your pantry? Then you have two of the three ingredients for one of the sweetest, most effective skin care concoctions I've ever used.

ROASTe and its roasters rock customer service in a way you don't see in a lot of other places, and I just got another example of that yesterday.

FreeWine / Stock Photos

If the photo looks familiar to you, you've probably fired up your popcorn air popper to roast some heavenly beans at home. I ran into a little something online this morning that may be of interest to folks who roast their own at home and aren't afraid to experiment a little.

This morning, my local paper reported that Allen's Coffee Brandy is still the best-selling liquor in the state of Maine. It's such a big seller, in fact, that it holds four of the top ten spots for liquor sales in Maine. The little sidebar news story brought back a lot of memories for me and reminded me that I've been meaning to share my recipe for homemade coffee liqueur.

marioanima /Stock Photos

Is your cell phone missing? It might be waiting for you at a coffee shop in Philadelphia. Lookout, a mobile phone security company that ofers a "find my phone" app, has compiled statistics on more than 15 million lost phones and come up with a list of the most common places to lose your phone and the cities where phones get lost most often.

So pretty I had to share!

I had a 4-day coffee drought when my ordered coffee from two weeks ago didn't arrive on schedule, so I was especially pleased when my ROASTe order from Joe Bean showed up yesterday.This one is a first for me -- the first time I've liked a coffee so much that I've reordered it instead of going for a new flavor experience. A question about that later, but first: in my cup: Joe Bean's Fruto del Fuego.

It seems like it should have been bigger news in the coffee world, but somehow it slipped past with little mention. On March 12, Samuel Glazer, one of the partners who birthed a coffee revolution, passed away.

Glazer and his high school buddy Vincent Marotta had this crazy idea that American women would like an automatic drip coffeemaker in their kitchens. The pair hired an engineer to design the machine, talked Joe DiMaggio into pitching it to the public and the rest is history.

Back in December, there was the guy who completed a mural using a million coffee beans. Last month, the artsy-crafty blogs were all talking about "coffee cup art" -- filling Dixie cups with various shades of coffee, arranging them in various ways and photographing the result from above. This morning, the coffee art buzz is about a Malaysian artist who used coffee in an unusual, artistic way:

Apparently, there are people who need to be reminded when to take a coffee break. Now there's an app for that. Caffeine Zone, a new app created by a pair of researchers at Penn State, keeps track of your caffeine level and tells you when you need to drink more coffee to stay in the zone.

Did you forget today is Valentine's Day and find yourself giftless and destined for the doghouse? If you've got coffee beans, a glass jar and a tealight candle in the house, you can mark the day in style and impress your Valentine with your creativity.

mcwaffle89 /Free Photos

We all see the world through our experiences and interests. The things we know influence how we perceive and understand other things. Sometimes I forget that and it surprises me, as it did this morning when I read the parable of the carrot, the egg and the coffee bean.

I was wondering who drank up all the CBTL espresso!

Yes, the CBTL makes great espresso. And the cat is cute, but I haven't trained her to make me a coffee yet, but the CBTL Contata is practically easy enough for a cat to use.