SCIENTIFIC COFFEE

We’ve been reading a number of blogs about the science of brewing coffee so here are some hints:

Buy good coffee beans: They should be whole beans, sustainably farmed, and roasted within the past few weeks.  PANIOLA 100% Kona Coffee is available in whole bean.  It comes in a regular roast.  A lot of aficionados think that with darker roasts, you're missing out. We know of some writers who use the weird analogy that dark roast is just like taking a nice steak and charring it beyond recognition.  We don’t agree.  It’s up to you.  But, for espresso at home, we have PANIOLA in a dark, espresso roast.  Ask for the “Ruidoso Roast” when you order.

Grind your coffee just before brewing: Roasted coffee is very delicate and perishable. Coffee has many more flavor compounds than wine, but those compounds deteriorate quickly when exposed to oxygen. Grinding your coffee just before you brew it keeps those compounds intact, and it's the number one thing you can do to improve your coffee at home. Our PANIOLA 100% Kona is whole bean.  Our other gourmet coffees are roasted in small batches and packed in half-pound bags so they won’t sit around and go stale.

Store your coffee properly: Beans which you aren't using immediately should be kept in an airtight container and away from sunlight. A major point of debate in the coffee world is whether to freeze or not freeze your coffee. We fall somewhere in between. If it's going to be more than two weeks before brewing, we freeze our coffee. Otherwise, we avoid it.  Freezing allows for condensation when you take it out of the freezer and you want to keep your coffee dry!

Use the right proportion of coffee to water: A major error people make is not using enough coffee. We empathize—it almost seems wasteful to add that extra scoop. But a simple ratio of one tablespoon for each cup is a great starting point and the simplest way to get into that perfect zone by adding or subtracting to taste.

Focus on technique: It's beyond the scope of this guide to go through step-by-step instructions for every method, but underlying all of them is the fact that brewing great coffee is about precision and consistency. Each brewing method has its own particular techniques, but by doing the same thing over and over you fix your mistakes and improve incrementally.

We’ll talk about things like quality tools, the grind size of your coffee beans, water temperature, agitating your coffee beans and the ratio of water to coffee next time.  Pretty scientific, huh?

The Kona Cowboy Coffee Company is proud to provide the finest coffee available for you to brew scientifically.  You’ll get a great cup of Joe with PANIOLA 100% Kona Cowboy Coffee, grown on Hawaiian volcanoes and roasted in the Rocky Mountains … the one with no bitter aftertaste and no acidity.  CAFÉ PINON de Nuevo Mexico is the Southwest’s favorite with pinion nuts and a perfect way to improve your coffee experience during the day.  And our MOKA-JAVA is a medium dark roasted blend of Indonesian and Ethiopian coffees that just might be high octane!   We also make COWBOY ACTION COFFEE, the Official Coffee of the Single Action Shooting Society!   If you are a Chai drinker, you’ll love the Coconut Spiced Chai and Mango Spiced Chai we bring in from Honolulu.  The Kona Cowboy Coffee Company has updated our website with new prices, new products and more!  Go to www.KonaCowboyCoffee.com and look at the coffees.  Go to the “Chocolates” page and find our new Cowboy Coffee Choco-Drops, a coffee caramel smothered in milk chocolate and dusted in cocoa powder!  We have new Mescalero Morning Cowboy Coffee Candles on our “Bath Products” page, too.

The purpose of this blog is to unite Kona coffee lovers and perhaps learn a little about coffee and all the benefits of coffee at the same time.  Join up, become a member, comment and have fun!  You can find the Kona Coffee Fiends group on Facebook and we’d appreciate it if Facebook users would “LIKE” the Kona Cowboy Coffee Company page at www.facebook.com/pages/Kona-Cowboy-Coffee-Company/222070817858553.  Just copy and paste to your browser.  You can also find us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/jackshuster.  And on the web at www.KonaCowboyCoffee.com to order your gourmet coffee and coffee products.

You know you’re a coffee fiend when you go to AA meetings just for the free coffee!  So enjoy your coffee, make it Kona, and remember, Kona is the home of the Hawaiian cowboy…and we had cowboys in Kona before there were cowboys in Texas!