Caribbean hot Coffee drinks

1 coconut
2 cups milk
4 cups strong coffee
1 tablespoon sugar

1. Punch two holes in to coconut, pour liquid into saucepan
2. Bake coconut for 30 minutes at 300 F degrees
3. Break open coconut, remove meat, and grate.
4. Mix coconut meat, coconut liquid, and milk in a sauce pan
5. Heat over low heat until creamy.
6. Strain
7. Toast grated coconut under broiler
8. Mix milk mixture, coffee, and sugar
9. Pour into mugs, garnish with toasted coconut.

Nogged Coffee Drinks

1 cup coffee
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup cream
dash nutmeg

1. Beat sugar and egg yolk together
2. Place cream into sauce pan, and heat over low setting
3. Whisk in egg mixture
4. Heat to 200 F degrees
5. Pour coffee into to cups, and top with cream mixture
6. garnish with nutmeg

Mexican Mocha - Coffee drinks

1 1/2 cups strong coffee
4 teaspoons chocolate syrup
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup whipping cream

1. Put 1 teaspoon of chocolate syrup into each cup
2. Mix Whipping cream, 1/4 teaspoon of the cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar.
3. Whip until you have soft peaks
4. Place the last 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon into coffee, and stir
5. Pour coffee into cups, stir to mix in chocolate syrup
6. Top with whipped cream mixture.

Cafe Borgia Hot Coffee

for 4 servings


2 cups strong Italian coffee
2 cups hot chocolate
whipped cream
grated orange peel (garnish)
1. Mix coffee and hot chocolate
2. Pour into mugs
3. Top with whipped cream and orange peel

Coffee as a Spiritual Sacrament

Coffee has a long history as spiritual substance. Frederick Wellman, in Coffee: Botany, Cultivation, and Utilization, describes an African blood-brother ceremony in which "blood of the two pledging parties is mixed and put between the twin seeds of a coffee fruit and the whole swallowed."


Coffee in its modern form, as a hot, black beverage, was first used as a medicine, next as an aid to prayer and meditation by Arabian monastics, much as green tea is used by Zen monks in Japan to celebrate and fortify. Pilgrims to Mecca carried coffee all over the Moslem world. It became secularized, but the religious association remained. Some Christians at first were wont to brand coffee as "that blacke bitter invention of Satan," as opposed to good Christian wine, but in the sixteenth century Pope Clement VIII is said to have sampled coffee and given it his official blessing.

Coffee Ceremonies

For people in the Horn of Africa and parts of the Middle East coffee has maintained its religious connotations, and the ritual aspects remain conscious and refined. Ethiopians and Eritreans brought their coffee ceremonies with them as they immigrated to the United States. My first experience with a formal coffee ceremony was in the apartment of an Eritrean friend in a thoroughly urbanized part of Oakland, California.

His wife carefully roasted the green coffee beans in a shallow pan, passed the just-roasted, steaming beans around the room so that everyone could enjoy their sweet black smoke, cooled them on a small straw mat, ground them in an electric grinder (at home in Eritrea she would use a large mortar and pestle, but she explained that the pounding disturbed her downstairs neighbors!), brewed the coffee in a traditional clay pot, and served it in tiny cups. The entire event was an opportunity to talk and gossip while basking in the smell and spectacle of the preparation of the beverage whose consumption consummated the morning.

On a less literal level, a multitude of coffee ceremonies take place simultaneously all over the world: in office lunchrooms, in espresso bars, in Swedish parlors, in Japanese coffeehouses, wherever coffee drinkers gather to stare into space, to read a newspaper, or to share a moment, outside time and obligation, with their friends. Ritual is further wrapped up in the smell and taste of coffee. Certain aromas, flavors, gestures, and sounds combine to symbolize coffee and suggest a mood of contemplation or well-being in an entire culture. This, I am convinced, was the reason for the persistence of the pumping percolator in American culture in the 1940s through 1960s. To Americans of that era, the gentle popping sound of the percolator and the smell the popping liberated signified coffee and made them feel good before they even lifted a cup.

Other cultures have similar associations. To people from the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe, the froth that gathers in the pot when brewing coffee is an indispensable part of the drink, not only because it tastes good but because it symbolizes the meditative glow that comes with brewing and consuming coffee. Italians put a comparable, if somewhat less ceremonial, emphasis on the froth produced by espresso brewing. An Italian will not take a tazzina of espresso seriously if it is not topped with a layer of what to a filter-coffee drinker may look like gold-colored scum. Yet this golden scum, or crema, is what marks espresso as the real thing. Similar satisfaction resides in the milk froth that tops such drinks as caffè latte and cappuccino. The froth has almost no flavor, but a cappuccino is not a cappuccino without it.

The world wide tradition of coffee

The tradition of the coffeehouse has spread worldwide. Australia is paved with Italian-style caffes and Japan has evolved its kisatens, an elegant interpretation of American 1950s-style coffee shops and coffeehouses. In Great Britain, the espresso-bar craze of the 1950s came and went, but shows vigorous signs of a Starbucks-style comeback. Other parts of Europe and the Middle East have their own ongoing traditions. In Vienna, the home of the first European coffeehouses, the café tradition has undergone a renaissance.


In the United States, the 1930s and 1940s brought the classic diner, and the 1950s and 1960s the vinyl-boothed coffee shop, together with the coffeehouse -- haunt of rebels, poets, beboppers, and beatniks. All of these incarnations are still with us. The classic diner is enjoying a revival, coffee shops still minister to the bottomless cup, and in American cities hundreds of new coffeehouses cater to a fresh generation of rebels, complete with funky furniture, radical posters, jazz, and folksingers.

But the 1970s and 1980s appear to have produced still another North American café tradition. Classic Italian-American caffes of the 1950s, like Caffè Reggio in Manhattan and Caffè Trieste in San Francisco, appear to have influenced the development of a style of café or caffe that takes as its starting point an immigrant's nostalgic vision of the lost and gracious caffes of prewar Italy. From that vision come the light and spacious interiors of the new North American urban café, together with the open seating, the simple and straightforward furnishing, and an atmosphere formal enough to discourage customers from swaggering around and putting their feet on chairs, yet informal enough to mix students doing homework and executives having business meetings. Add an espresso machine and some light new American cuisine, and the latest version of the American café is defined.

The Coffee Ritual

Ritual often chooses for its vehicle consciousness-altering substances such as wine, peyote or coffee. People may assume a bit of God resides in these substances, because through using them they are separated for a moment from the ordinariness of things and can seize their reality more clearly. This is why a ritual is not only a gesture of hospitality and reassurance, but a celebration of a break in routine, a moment when the human drive for survival lets up and people can simply be together. This last aspect is to me the fundamental meaning of the coffee break, the coffee klatch, the happy hour, and the after-dinner coffee. These are secular rituals that, in unobtrusive but essential ways, help maintain humanness in ourselves and with one another.

In many cultures, the ritual aspects of drinking tea or coffee are given semi-religious status. The most famous of such rituals is the Japanese tea ceremony, in which powdered green tea is whipped in a traditional bowl to form a rich frothy drink, then is ceremonially passed, in complete silence, from one participant to the next. The tea ceremony is consciously structured as a communal meditation devoted to contemplating the presence of eternity in the moment. Doubtless the caffeine in the tea aids in such psychic enterprise.

from
coffeereview.com

Six Steps to Great Coffee At Home

Here at Coffee Daily , we aim to provide you with coffee information that is useful and to-the-point. Our six-step guide is here to help you get straight into enjoying coffee making, without wading through exhaustive detail and complex reviews.

As you read through each of the steps, you will find buying tips designed to help you find the right coffee maker or machine for you. You will also find great brewing tips and instructions for each coffee maker. For making great coffee at home, we have all you need to know!

Follow these steps for happy coffee making!...


Step 1 - To Espresso or not to Espresso?:
The first step to choosing your coffee maker is to decide whether you would prefer an espresso machine or other (drip, filter, percolator, etc.). This article helps you decide. The article also covers the "French Press" and "Stovetop Moka Express" for those coffee lovers who prefer not to use a machine.

Step 2 - Manual, Steam, Pump, Automatic or Super-Automatic Espresso Machines?:
If after reading Step 1 you decide that an espresso machine suits you best, the next step is to choose the type of espresso machine. Should it be manual or automatic? Should it use the steam or pump method of extraction? This article helps you decide.

Step 3 - Drip, Filter, Plunger or Combination Coffee Maker?:
If after reading Step 1 you decide that you would prefer one of the other types of coffee maker, the next step is to choose the type (drip, filter, percolator, French press, etc.). This article helps you decide.

Step 4 - Get the Beans:
Once you have invested in your own coffee maker, you will no doubt want to try different styles of beans and roasts. The articles in this section cover all you need to know.

Step 5 - Accessorize:
Accessories for coffee makers, machine and coffee lovers. From milk frothers to cups, mugs and filter paper, these articles will help you choose the right accessory.

Step 6 - Learn More About Coffee:
Once you begin learning about coffee, and indeed enjoying coffee, you will find that there is always more to know - coffee making is a continual learning curve. These articles are provided to help you enjoy that learning curve.