Kona Cowboy Coffee

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

MORE COFFEE PROHIBITION

A contemporary example of religious prohibition of coffee can be found in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.The organization holds that it is both physically and spiritually unhealthy to consume coffee. This comes from the Mormon doctrine of health, given in 1833 by founder Joseph Smith in a revelation called the Word of Wisdom. It does not identify coffee by name, but includes the statement that "hot drinks are not for the belly," which has been interpreted to forbid both coffee and tea.

Quite a number of members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church also avoid caffeinated drinks. In its teachings, the Church encourages members to avoid tea and coffee and other stimulants. Abstinence from coffee, tobacco and alcohol by many Adventists has afforded a near unique opportunity for studies to be conducted within that population group on the health effects of coffee drinking, free from confounding factors. One study was able to show a weak but statistically significant association between coffee consumption and mortality from ischemic heart disease, other cardiovascular disease, all cardiovascular diseases combined, and all causes of death.

For a time, there had been controversy in the Jewish community over whether the coffee bean was a legume and therefore prohibited for Passover. Upon petition from coffeemaker Maxwell House, the coffee bean was classified in 1923 as a berry rather than a bean by orthodox Jewish rabbi Hersch Kohn, and therefore kosher for Passover.

Some folks say that the Kona Cowboy Coffee Company’s four brands of gourmet coffees are certainly on their way to becoming spiritual! 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!

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 your eyes stay open when you sneeze! 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!

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

COFFEE PROHIBITION

Coffee was initially used for spiritual reasons. At least 1,100 years ago, traders brought coffee across the Red Sea into Arabia (modern-day Yemen), where Muslim dervishes began cultivating the shrub in their gardens. At first, the Arabians made wine from the pulp of the fermented coffee berries. This beverage was known as qishr and was used during religious ceremonies.

Coffee drinking was prohibited by jurists and scholars meeting in Mecca in 1511 as haraam, but the subject of whether it was intoxicating was hotly debated over the next 30 years until the ban was finally overturned in the mid 16th century. Use in religious rites among the Sufi branch of Islam led to coffee's being put on trial in Mecca: it was accused of being a heretical substance, and its production and consumption were briefly repressed. It was later prohibited in Ottoman Turkey under an edict by the Sultan Murad IV.

Coffee, regarded as a Muslim drink, was prohibited by Ethiopian Orthodox Christians until as late as 1889; it is now considered a national drink of Ethiopia for people of all faiths.

Its early association in Europe with rebellious political activities led to Charles II outlawing coffeehouses from January 1676 (although the uproar created forced the monarch to back down two days before the ban was due to come into force). Frederick the Great banned it in Germany in 1777 for nationalistic and economic reasons; concerned about the price of import, he sought to force the public back to consuming beer. Lacking coffee-producing colonies, Germany had to import all its coffee at a great cost.

A look at contemporary religious prohibitions next time.

You know you’re a coffee fiend when you're the employee of the month at the local coffeehouse and you don't even work there! 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!

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

COFFEE SHAPES CULTURE!

Coffee is a powerful beverage, according to historian Mark Pendergrast, author ofUncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. On a personal level, coffee helps keep us awake and active. On a much broader level, coffee has helped shape our history and continues to shape our culture.

Coffee plants grow wild in Ethiopia and were probably used by nomadic tribes for thousands of years, but it wasn't until the 1400s that people figured out they could roast its seeds. "Then it really took off. By the 1500s, he says, the drink had spread to coffeehouses across the Arab world. Within another 150 years, it took Europe by storm.

Coffeehouses became a spot not just to enjoy a cup but to exchange ideas. The insurer Lloyd's of London was founded hundreds of years ago in one of London's 2,000 coffeehouses, he notes. Literature, newspapers and even the works of great composers like Bach and Beethoven were also spawned in coffeehouses.

It is often said that after the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when American colonists raided British tea ships and threw crates of tea into the harbor, Americans universally switched over to drinking coffee. "There's a lot of truth to the story, I found," Pendergrast says. He cites a letter John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, in which the Founding Father proclaims his love of tea but says he will have to learn to embrace coffee instead, because drinking tea had become unpatriotic.

The Kona Cowboy Coffee Company’s four brands of gourmet coffees are certainly on their way to becoming historical! 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!

You know you’re a coffee fiend when lick your coffeepot clean! 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!

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

COFFEE POWER!

Coffee: Is there anything it can’t do?

A tweet from coffee guru Jack Groot mentions a coffee-powered car breaking a world record and that led me to an on line article in TIME by Yue Wang.

In addition to providing a morning energy boost for millions of under caffeinated people and reportedly helping lower stroke risks, coffee can also be used to fuel a Guinness World Record–breaking car.

Martin Bacon converted a Ford pickup truck into Coffee Car Mark 2 — the world’s fastest coffee-powered vehicle. Bacon installed a charcoal stove on the car, which breaks down coffee-bean chaff (a by-product of the roasting process) into carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The gas is then cooled and filtered, and the hydrogen is used to power a modified gasoline engine. The coffee car hit a top speed of 65 m.p.h. in the presence of a Guinness adjudicator at Woodford Airfield in Manchester, England, on Feb. 19.

Starting the machine is no easy task. Instead of simply turning the ignition key, Bacon has to load the coffee pellets to the boiler and wait for enough pressure to build up. After two test runs on that chilly morning and some tinkering with the machine that generates fluffs of white smoke when started, he successfully broke a world record.

Bacon has long been fascinated with coffee-powered vehicles. According to BBC, he converted an old Volkswagen Scirocco into Coffee Car Mark 1 and drove it 210 miles from London to Manchester in 2010. The Car-puccino, which reportedly reached 60 m.p.h., claimed the Guinness World Record of the longest journey by a coffee-powered car.

Now, Bacon and his team are driving the Mark 2 on a tour across the U.K. to promote Co-operative Food, a British fair-trade brand.

The Kona Cowboy Coffee Company’s four brands of gourmet coffees are certainly too good to power your car! 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!

You know you’re a coffee fiend when Starbucks owns the mortgage on your house! 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!

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

MORE ANNOYING COFFEE

No one wants coffee that has passed through an animal and costs $13 per defecated cup! Jack Groot recently tweeted a story by James Mulcahy and Anne Roderique-Jones on the ZAGAT website about the ten most annoying coffee trends. They rounded up the most frequent complaints, from fatty Frappucinos to ultra-pricey espresso machines and we’ll continue to talk about the top annoyances.

Animal defecated coffee is made from coffee beans eaten by a civet. Once nature takes its course, the bean is roasted and you have Kope Luwak, a concoction coffee houses charge a fortune for. I can see why folks would be turned off by this but how did someone figure out how to do it in the first place?

Stay away from any drink hat requires more than four syllables to order. I love descriptions like coffee from a single-farmer owned estate on the shady side of the mountain under dwarf palm trees picked by a left-handed singing troubadour on a sunny Tuesday afternoon during a lunar cycle while an asteroid was approaching.

Many of the mega chains call it coffee when it's 95% fat and sugar. Inhaling a milkshake for breakfast and calling it “coffee” is a direct ticket to fat camp. Coffee should just be simply made, full aroma and taste, not with a whole bunch of other flavors and sweeteners to cover the bean.

Another annoyance is ultra-expensive one-single-cup-of-coffee-at-a-time machines that are popularized every Christmas buying season. There’s one that costs a cool $1,200 but unless you’ve set your sights on being an amateur barista, you might find a cheaper way to DIY.

And last but not least, blond roasts. It is just under-roasted! The coffee is weak and some pretend that it is like fine wine! Coffee should not be a tall blonde. That’s a woman, not a beverage.

The Kona Cowboy Coffee Company’s four brands of gourmet coffees are certainly not annoying! 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 is one that just might knock your socks off! We also make COWBOY ACTION COFFEE, the Official Coffee of the Single Action Shooting Society!

You know you’re a coffee fiend when people get dizzy just watching you!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!

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

ANNOYING COFFEE

The Number One complaint was rude baristas. It seems that people want to order their drinks without snobbery. That attitude seems to prevail in some coffee house “laboratories” that act that way just to up prices.

Burnt offerings from the big boys was Complaint #2. Burning the bean and calling it “dark roast” is not impressive. While the big chains will dominate the world they’ll never have the lower prices and unique menu items found in the small coffee shops. They know how to roast the beans there, too.

It ain’t 20 year old single malt scotch! You know there’s a problem when you are charged more for a shot of espresso than for a gallon of gas!

And coffee is a drink not a life style! It’s coffee, not some holy communion.

It may look pretty but taking ten minutes to make pretty latte art does not equal a good cup of coffee.

We’ll talk about more annoying coffee trends next week. The Kona Cowboy Coffee Company’s four brands of gourmet coffees are certainly not annoying! 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 is one that just might knock your socks off! We also make COWBOY ACTION COFFEE, the Official Coffee of the Single Action Shooting Society!

You know you’re a coffee fiend when you’ve built a miniature city out of little coffee stirrers! 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!

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

ROBBER TAKES COFFEE OVER CASH

When a would-be robber asked for all of the cash in the register of an Alabama Starbucks, either a quick-thinking cashier or the limits of technology got in his way. According to police, the cashier told him that the drawer wouldn’t open….so would he like a free coffee instead?

Score! Free coffee!

Of course, we don’t recommend this method of getting free coffee. Mostly because police caught up with the man in a nearby parking lot and arrested him.

The Kona Cowboy Coffee Company’s four brands of gourmet coffees are certainly worth stealing!. You won’t need a mask and a gun for 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 loot during the day. And our MOKA-JAVA is a medium dark roasted blend of Indonesian and Ethiopian coffees is one you won’t find in the hoosegow! We also make COWBOY ACTION COFFEE, the Official Coffee of the Single Action Shooting Society!

You know you’re a coffee fiend when your T-shirt says, "Decaffeinated coffee is the devil's blend." 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!