Slashdot Mirror

I'm sorry. I like veggies just fine, but suggesting that a "healthy green smoothie" is remotely comparable to the experience of a nicely roasted cup of coffee is ludicrous. From your link, it appears that you're even suggesting it be consumed raw. There's nothing wrong with that, but it eliminates any possibility of the Maillard reaction that adds so much complexity to the brew. How many of these processes occur when you're making a smoothie:

Illy listed the following chemical processses that affect the development of volatile compounds in coffee (112):
1) Maillard or non-enzymatic browning reaction between nitrogen containing substances, amino acids, proteins, as well as trigonelline, serotonine, and carbohydrates, hydroxy-acids and phenols on the other.
2) Strecker degradation.
3) Degradation of individual amino acids, particularly, sulfur amino acids, hydroxy amino acids, and proline.
4) Degradation of trigonelline.
5) Degradation of sugar.
6) Degradation of phenolic acids, particularly the quinic acid moiety.
7) Minor lipid degradation.
8) Interaction between intermediate decomposition products.

I'm pretty sure you're just a neo-puritanical (pleasure is bad!) health food nut.

Actually, the proper temp for optimum extraction is not 212.. It should be between 195-205 (91-96C)

Water at 212 (100C) extracts too many of the bitter compounds that are present in the beans, which actually detracts from the flavor.

See:

http://www.boyds.com/coffee/brewingguide.html
http://www.coffeeresearch.org/coffee/brewing.htm

In practice, that means taking the pot off the boil, waiting maybe 10 seconds, THEN pouring the water over the coffee grounds.

Many home coffeemakers (Technivorm excluded) don't come close to this mark, which is why French press coffee usually tastes better..

I couldn't find that, but you might find the statistics here interesting, they have a breakdown of coffee consumption in kg per year per capita, in various countries. The USA isn't anywhere near the top of the list. Those Northern Europeans are way ahead of us.

http://www.coffeeresearch.org/market/consumption.h tm

I suspect that their advertising budgets aren't as high, because in general coffee and other caffeine-based beverages don't have the image or PR problems that alcohol does. I doubt that alcohol producers spent much money on advertising, when anyone could buy their products, regardless of age, and there was no social stigma associated with drinking them at any time. A lot of alcohol advertising isn't necessarily the promotion of one product specifically (or isn't just the promotion of one brand or product) but is the promotion of the product in general. E.g. the Sam Adams commercial where a young guy and a few flunkies are at a business lunch with the big boss, and the young guy orders a beer, the flunkies order non-alcoholic drinks, and then the big boss decides to get a beer, too. In addition to just promoting the brand (Sam Adams), they're also promoting the whole concept of drinking beer in the middle of the day, in a business situation, which might or might not be thought of as appropriate. You don't run into that a lot with coffee. Nobody's going to get judgemental on you for drinking caffeine at any time of the day or night (well, although they might wonder about your sanity if it's 2AM). Coffee advertising is mostly about the promotion of one brand over another; it's internecine.

Uhhuh... Gevalia?
It landed here in Finland few years back. The TV commercial catch-phrase was something like: "Coffee you could offer to your guests" -- Often with a storyline where someone crashed into your home in an unexpected situation.
Which was much joked as meaning "You wouldn't offer your GOOD coffee to uninvited guests now would you? So keep a pack of this horrible shit in the cupboard just incase."

And personally. I hate it...
These are my choises of coffee:
Presidentti and Juhlamokka (Sorry, I couldn't fina a link for the latter)

And yes, I feel qualified to comment on quality coffee ;)

Googled 'robusta arabica caffeine content' and this was the first on the list.

Maybe the gourmet coffee shops are actually mixing Arabica (the good beans) with lots of Robusta (the icky tasting beans.)

I use two kinds, both are 100% Arabica espresso coffee: Lavazza which runs at about 3Euro/250g and Illy which costs about double that. As to world coffee consumption, here's the stats.

For reference, here's a summary of some current decaffeination processes. An excerpt:

"Coffee is decaffeinated using a variety of processes. All of which are relatively harmless to your health, but harmful to the beverage quality."