KONA COWBOY COFFEE RUB

I was bored the other day, my computer was down, and I decided to watch a cooking show that I had DVR’d.  They were talking about all kinds of rubs to put on meats to add exotic flavors before cooking.  Well, that got me thinking that there’s nothing more exotic than 100% Kona coffee and since I make PANIOLA 100% Kona Cowboy Coffee why not an exotic Kona Cowboy Coffee Rub?  So here it is.

Start with 2/3 cup of PANIOLA 100% Kona Cowboy Coffee.  I used the pre-ground package that we make ‘cause, well, you’ll see.  Then get a half-cup of brown sugar, packed down.  Just pat it.  Next, two tablespoons of coarse salt.  Kosher salt is perfect.  Now, pour it all into a food processor and grind it up.  Actually, if you use ground coffee you can just mix it up.  Now just rub it onto and into a nice steak and you’re all set.  Let the steak sit for a half hour and then grill away!  Ono!  As we say in Kona.

The Kona Cowboy Coffee Company is proud to provide the finest coffee available to rub on your meat.  You’ll get a delicious rub and 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 or Mango Spiced Chai we bring in from Honolulu. 

The Kona Cowboy Coffee Company has updated our website with new prices, new products and more!  Order on line and we’ll do our best to get it to you as fast as possible.  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 missive 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 also join 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/.   You can also find us on tweeting onTwitter at http://twitter.com/#!/jackshuster.  And look us up on the web at www.KonaCowboyCoffee.com to order your gourmet coffee and coffee products.

You know you’re a coffee fiend when all your kids are named "Joe"!  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!

ONLY 2 OR 3 CUPS A DAY?

That morning cup of Joe is a daily, practically sacred ritual for many of us. A large body of research has confirmed that a coffee habit is perfectly fine for most people, and may even have some health benefits – from fighting depression in women to lowering the risk of stroke and prostate cancer.

But is there too much of a good thing?

A study published recently in Mayo Clinic Proceedings suggests that when it comes to coffee, too much appears to be more than 28 cups per week, at least if you are under 55.

The researchers found that younger men who passed the 28-cup weekly threshold – which works out to about four cups per day – had a 56 percent increased risk of death from all causes. Younger women who were heavy coffee drinkers had a greater than two-fold increased mortality risk. A cup was defined as eight ounces of coffee.

"The older people, over 55, were not affected by these high amounts of coffee," study co-author Dr. Chip Lavie, a cardiologist at the John Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute in New Orleans, said in a video statement.

Now, these findings left us scratching our heads here at The Salt, where we've reported in the past on many of the health benefits linked with coffee drinking. Turns out, we are not alone.

"This result is surprising," Rob van Dam, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, told me via email, "because results from other cohort studies in U.S. men and women suggest that coffee consumption is associated with a slightly lower risk of premature mortality."

In fact, van Dam's own research has found no increased risk of death from any cause in people who drank up to six eight-ounce cups of coffee per day. And last year, research published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested that people with a daily coffee habit had a lower risk of dying during the 14-year study period than those who abstained.

What's more, van Dam notes that recent studies have suggested that coffee consumption does not increase the risk of dying from heart disease, stroke or cancers – all major causes of death. That body of research, he tells us, is "reassuring."

So what accounts for the increased mortality seen among heavy coffee drinkers in the new study? The data set used provides clues.

Lavie and his colleagues looked at data for more than 40,000 people, ages 20 to 87, who were enrolled as part of the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study, a long-term study conducted between 1971 and 2002. The researchers followed up with the participants for 17 years on average. But they were only asked about their coffee consumption once – so, as Lavie himself notes, we don't know how their coffee habits changed over time.

Another limiting factor: smoking. Heavy coffee drinkers in the study were more likely to be smokers – which makes sense, since the data were collected beginning more than 40 years ago. Van Dam thinks the research didn't do enough to control for smoking. In fact, as we've previously reported, lots of studies in the 1980s failed to control for the link between coffee drinking and smoking, which is one big reason why early research appeared to give coffee a bad rep. Evidence suggesting health benefits from coffee began to emerge only as studies separated the two habits.

So, what's the bottom line for coffee drinkers?

Lavie says his findings suggest that sipping two to three cups per day is pretty safe, and possibly beneficial. But Van Dam notes that if you're generally healthy (and not pregnant or nursing), the "totality of the evidence" suggests that four cups of Joe per day shouldn't be harmful.

But of course, don't forget to listen to your body.

"If people think they experience detrimental symptoms related to too much caffeine, such as difficulty sleeping or nervousness," says van Dam, "they should try reducing their intake."

The Kona Cowboy Coffee Company is proud to provide the finest coffee available for you to limit to two or three cups a day.  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 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've worn out the handle on your favorite mug!  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!

CIVET COFFEE

Whenever we do a trade show, someone is bound to jokingly ask about “that coffee that comes from a monkey’s …”  So, I grin and bear it, explaining to them that it’s not a monkey and, no, we don’t have it.  Then I came across this item from Erin Meister, who trains baristas and inspires coffee-driven people for Counter Culture Coffee:

KOPI LUWAK

          “Sure it's "exotic," this Pacific Island coffee that's processed by being digested and, ahem, excreted by a cat-like cutie called a civet (which is what the luwak means, kopi being "coffee"). The beans are harvested from the feces, washed (obviously), and, typically, roasted before leaving its country or source of origin, usually in fancy-seeming vacuum-sealed packs or encased in some other elaborate packaging that just reeks of "fancy coffee."

          “That's not all that reeks, however: Many of the civet coffee on the market is from farms where the animals are force-fed coffee cherry and kept in cages too small for them to turn around. Beyond that, regardless of their animal instinct to eat ripe fruit, the cat-like creatures can't always be counted on to eat the highest quality of coffee, and the animals' and plants' health, environmental conditions, and other myriad dubious factors pretty much guarantee that the only sure thing you'll get with an order of kopi luwak is a crock of, well...”

Thanks, Erin.  Lots of reasons not to spend your money on that!  Now if you want to buy expensive coffee that doesn’t come from the business end of a wild animal…or even one in a cage…the Kona Cowboy Coffee Company has PANIOLA brand 100% Kona Cowboy Coffee estate grown on the western slope of Mauna Loa volcano on the famous Kona Coast of the Big Island of Hawaii.  Sure, you might think it’s expensive but it will be the best darn coffee you’ve ever tasted!

The Kona Cowboy Coffee Company is proud to provide the finest, animal digestion-free coffee available.  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 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 don't need a hammer to pound nails!  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!

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!

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.

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 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!

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! 

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 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!

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! 

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 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!

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 talk about the top five each week for this week and the next.

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! 

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’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!

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!

 

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 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!

COFFEE CONVERGING ON SODA

According to Derek Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic, ten years ago Americans drank enough soda every year to fill a small aquarium: fifty-three gallons of the stuff per person.  That's half a liter of Diet Coke on an average day.  Compare that to our other favorite liquid-caffeine companion. For every cup of coffee we consumed in 2003, we drank two cups of soft drink. For $1 we spent on coffee, we spent $4 on soda.

Now look where we are: Soda is in a free fall, with domestic revenue down 40%.  Coffee culture is ascendant, up 50% in ten years.  In another decade, the United States could easily spend more on coffee than soda -- something utterly unthinkable at the turn of the century.

Four factors are behind this remarkable caffeinated convergence:

(1) The health thing.  This hardly requires summary.  Soda ain't cigarettes, but sugary soft drinks have faced a similar cultural and political backlash in the last decade.  As obsessively healthy attitudes have osmosed from yoga yuppies to the general population, local governments have turned on soda, pressing school bans and cup-volume limits.  Fading consumer sentiment has had twin impacts: pushing soda drinkers to switch to cheaper brands and encouraging soda companies to shift toward diet drinks, smaller bottles, and alternative drinks.

(2) The water and energy-drink craze.  Americans drink about 180 gallons of liquid every year.  That number is practically carved in stone.  It's zero-sum.  When a soda drinker decides she wants to drink iced tea with lunch from now on, she's won't order a Diet Coke and an iced tea.  She'll just switch.  When we drink more of one kind of beverage -- bottled water sales are up 50 percent in the last decade; sports and energy drink sales are up 100 percent -- those gains have been soda's pains.  The rise of energy drinks is especially important because energy drinks directly replace soft drinks among customers who buy Diet Coke and its ilk for an afternoon pick-up.  Americans still drink more soda than any other "category" of drink, like milk or juice.  But the gap is fading quickly. 

(3) Ascendant coffee culture.  Coffee consumption in the U.S. is basically flat, after two decades when Starbucks and other national coffee shops sprouted like a steroidal ragweed along urban and suburban sidewalks.  But young consumers haven't yet had their fix, and as this demographic trades up for more expensive coffee when the economy recovers, the overall industry should continue buzzing.  Just as studies showing the ill effects of sugary drinks have hurt soda, studies showing that we can basically drink as much coffee as we want, permit young people to go back for refills.  Consumption has increased the most for consumers between 18 and 24, and younger consumers are more likely to drink coffee on a daily basis today than five years ago and the most likely to drink espresso drinks.

(4) Rising coffee prices. Coffee's growth isn't just a matter of trading up to more expensive lattes, it's also a case of paying more each year for the same cup. "Much of the revenue growth in the past five years was stimulated by a 14.1% annualized increase in the world price of coffee," which were mostly passed on to customers.

The Kona Cowboy Coffee Company can satisfy your soft drink replacements with our four brands of gourmet coffees.  You’ll get a real start on having 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 happiness during the day.  And our MOKA-JAVA is a medium dark roasted blend of Indonesian and Ethiopian coffees that will make you positively positive!  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 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!

COFFEE FOR YOUR SWEET TOOTH

Got a great Coffee Caramel recipe from the Internet on about.com.  These Coffee Caramels have a smooth, smoky coffee taste and a rich, chewy, buttery texture. The recipe as written produces a caramel with a noticeable but not overwhelming coffee taste--you can adjust the amount of instant coffee to suit your personal preferences, using anywhere from 1-3 tbsp instant coffee.  Your best bet in freeze-dried Kona coffee…which I can get you.  Just ask.

This recipe yields about 4 dozen small caramels.

Ingredients:

·         1 cup granulated sugar

·         1/2 cup dark brown sugar

·         1/4 cup light corn syrup

·         1/4 cup honey

·         1.5 cups half and half (not fat-free)

·         2 tbsp instant coffee (Kona is the best)

·         1/4 cup (2 oz) butter (not margarine), cut into 4 pieces

·         1 tsp vanilla extract

Preparation:

1. Prepare an 8x8 pan by lining it with aluminum foil and spraying the foil heavily with nonstick cooking spray.

2. Place the sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, honey, half and half, instant coffee, and butter in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir until the butter is melted and the sugars dissolve. Insert a candy thermometer.

3. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the thermometer reaches 250.

4. Once at 250, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the vanilla. Pour the caramel into the prepared pan. Allow it to set at room temperature for 3 hours, or until cool and firm.

5. Remove the caramel from the pan by using the foil as handles. Flip it upside down and peel the foil off the back. Spray a large sharp knife with nonstick spray, and cut the caramel into small squares or bars.

6. Wrap the caramels in squares of waxed paper to prevent them from sticking together. (Alternately, they can be dipped in chocolate.) Store wrapped Coffee Caramels in an airtight container at room temperature for up to two weeks.

The Kona Cowboy Coffee Company can satisfy your coffee cravings with our four brands of gourmet coffees.  You’ll get a real start on having 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 happiness during the day.  And our MOKA-JAVA is a medium dark roasted blend of Indonesian and Ethiopian coffees that will make you positively positive!  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 you speak perfect Arabic without ever taking a lesson!  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!

GOT A SINGLE-SERVE COFFEE MAKER?

Jack Groot tweeted an online article that he found in the HuffPost:

If you use a Keurig single-serve coffee maker, or one of its many rivals, to brew your morning coffee, you're being gouged. According to a report from New York Times java expert Oliver Strand, the coffee in the machine's capsules comes out to a whopping $51 dollars a pound. That's more, he writes, than all but the highest-end beans produced by artisanal roasters like Stumptown and Intelligentsia -- let alone Folgers.

Time magazine notes that prices are a little lower if you buy the pods in bulk through a vendor like Amazon. But they're still much more expensive than even high-end beans.

The reason people -- especially young people -- are willing to pay that much is that single-serve makers are very convenient, and are often still cheaper than getting your fix at a coffee shop. They let you brew coffee extremely quickly and with no annoying cleanup afterwards.

The past few years have seen virtually every major coffee company rush to get a piece of the rapidly-growing single-serve coffee maker market. Anyone not marketing its own is probably making capsules for use in the market leader Keurig.  Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks, for example, both signed on in August.

One way you can make Keurig coffee using normal-priced beans by using a product called "My K-Cup." It costs $17.95 on the Keurig website and is indefinitely reusable. That makes it good for the thrifty and the eco-conscious. But it's also worth noting that a big part of the reason people use a single-serve coffee machine is that it lets them avoid having to deal with the mess of wet coffee grounds.

The Kona Cowboy Coffee Company can fill up your K-Cup with our four brands of gourmet coffees.  You’ll get a real start on having 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 single-serve happiness during the day.  And our MOKA-JAVA is a medium dark roasted blend of Indonesian and Ethiopian coffees that will make you positively positive!  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 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!