July 30, 2009

Coffee and Cafein

A couple of weeks ago, I was having trouble sleeping. I have never had any sleeping disorders to speak of, so I thought that maybe switching to decaffeinated coffee would help me get back to sleeping the way I normally do, like a log.

Like many things in my life, I was wrong. The difference between regular coffee and decaffeinated coffee has had absolutely no effect on my sleep pattern.


Caffeine Fears

As I've previously mentioned, the caffeine in coffee has never had an effect on me. Drinking decaffeinated coffee for the past couple of weeks has proven it to me. I'm still having trouble sleeping, but I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that I have the head cold from hell, picked up from one of my nieces who picked it up at school. Unfortunately, the only way to avoid something like that is to become a hermit (not a bad idea).

You might think the real reason for my switch would be to avoid the caffeine curve. Sorry, but I don't believe that crap for a moment. The real reason is exactly as I stated. I needed to prove to myself that caffeine really doesn't have any effect on me and I did.

The only fear I had when I switched is that I would have caffeine withdrawals (headaches or freaking out). I didn't.

Discriminating Taste

Although I don't own a coffee maker, I drink a lot of coffee. It's all instant coffee. Even though both the regular and decaffeinated coffees I've been drinking are both instant, they are of the same brand. I can tell the difference in the taste. The decaffeinated version doesn't taste as good as the regular. With me and coffee, it's all about the taste, not the caffeine.

I like brewed coffee so much more than instant and I plan to buy a coffee maker of some kind in the near future. I have no idea what kind I'll be able to find here in the Philippines, so I may have to get one shipped in. In the meantime, and when I go grocery shopping again, I'll be buying regular instant coffee.


Article Credit RT Cunningham



What is POSTUM

A better question would probably be "What was Postum?", since Postum is no longer being manufactured. The name of the product should give you an idea of the name of the person who was behind the development of the product.

I have some Postum-related articles on another blog and I believe it's more appropriate to move them here because Postum was a popular coffee alternative. This is just one of the articles I wrote — the only changes are the reformatting. I moved another article from a different blog (it was the only one on the subject) and it has already been here on this blog for some time.


Postum History

Postum started as a caramel cereal coffee that was being brewed at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan while Charles William Post was a charity patient there. Post found the recipe when he was snooping in the kitchen and obtained it from Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of the corn flakes breakfast cereal. Kellogg gave the recipe to Post willingly, having no way of knowing it would be the start of a major corporation.

C. W. Post founded the Postum Cereal Company in 1895, which was headquartered right there in Battle Creek, Michigan, with Postum as his first product. It was a powdered, roasted grain beverage made from wheat bran, wheat, molasses, and maltodextrin from corn. Post and Dr. Kellogg both believed that caffeine was unhealthy and Postum was marketed as a healthy alternative to coffee.

Postum became very popular with the Seventh-Day Adventists and the Mormons, or the Church of Latter Day Saints. The people of both religious groups didn't drink hot, caffeinated beverages and didn't suffer from the jittery side effects that coffee gave some people. According to the director of the estate of an Adventist co-founder, Post himself was not an Adventist.

Postum Cereal Company changed its name to General Foods Corporation in 1929 after acquiring other food brands and merged with Kraft Foods in 1989. Kraft Foods spokeswoman Laurie Guzzinati told Taashi Rowe of the Adventist News Network that the company stopped making Postum in the fall of 2007 because the demand for it was so low that manufacturing it no longer made sense.

Postum Future

There are people attempting to revive Postum in one way or another. I'll be adding some of that information to the other posts I'm moving over here.

Article Credit : RT Cunningham



June 24, 2009

Aroma coffee for character in a cup: coffee that won’t make your heart beat faster

All you coffee-lovers put on your mocha loafers, for it's time for a trip down memory lane. Don't spill your beans, but let them drain. Aroma's Coffee Factory has been in the business of making good earnest coffee since the 1930's. That's right, the times when booted, mustached cursing Dutchmen were still playing command-and-conquer in Indonesia . All that dividing and ruling sure took its toll upon their energy level. Alas, Extra Joss wasn't available back then, so they built Aroma's Coffee Factory to keep spirits up. Now, more than 70 years later, Aroma's is still doing its mission: making coffee the way it should be, without artificial flavorings, pesticides or even vanilla essence.

When you enter the small shop on Jalan Banceuy, central Bandung, its wooden interior and antique coffee paraphernalia such as old coffee machines and bronze scales will make you think that you stepped into a movie set. Luckily the all-pervasive smell of freshly ground coffee beans will bring you back to reality, and as the second-generation owner takes you around on a tour that will explain all the nooks and crannies of the coffee business to you, the decor will come alive. It is a rare thing that in this day and age where profit margins dictate people's life, and actually in many occasions, their coffee intake, Aroma's coffee factory remains dedicated to entrepreneurial craftsmanship that keeps rusty German made coffee burners from the 1930's a foundation instead of a relic from a long forgotten past.

Everything in the factory is still hand-labor, from the picking and sorting of the beans to the roasting and packing. The coffee beans coming mainly from Sumatra and Jawa are dried in the back yard for an hour and then piled sack upon sack rising more than 10 meters above our heads in the storage room, where the Robusta beans will dry for 5 years, while the Arabica beans require an astonishing 8 years of lying around. In that time the acidity of the beans will drop in a natural process, and as an end result Aroma's coffee is not only tastier but also a lot healthier. ‘Arabica is fit for people with high blood pressure, and Robusta for people with low blood pressure' explains the owner. The health of his customers is more important to him than the amount of beans he sells. He is a man who believes in God...and good coffee, ‘What is the purpose of praying everyday, when in the end you cheat on your customers?' he asks.

After the years of drying, the beans are then hand-roasted in a rusty but reliable oven fired by rubber wood, and then according to customers' wishes ground or sold as whole beans. ‘It is very simple, but you need a lot of patience' the owner twinkles. Back in the shop people line up to buy their essential provision of Arabica or Robusta. Many of them have been coming here for years in search of a flavor and quality; these are real coffee drinkers who will instantly say no to instant coffee. Get a taste of authenticity and drop by at Aroma's. Open daily, if you want a behind the scenes look on the coffee making process, be there before 2 o clock or call in beforehand.




July 30, 2009

Coffee and Cafein

A couple of weeks ago, I was having trouble sleeping. I have never had any sleeping disorders to speak of, so I thought that maybe switching to decaffeinated coffee would help me get back to sleeping the way I normally do, like a log.

Like many things in my life, I was wrong. The difference between regular coffee and decaffeinated coffee has had absolutely no effect on my sleep pattern.


Caffeine Fears

As I've previously mentioned, the caffeine in coffee has never had an effect on me. Drinking decaffeinated coffee for the past couple of weeks has proven it to me. I'm still having trouble sleeping, but I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that I have the head cold from hell, picked up from one of my nieces who picked it up at school. Unfortunately, the only way to avoid something like that is to become a hermit (not a bad idea).

You might think the real reason for my switch would be to avoid the caffeine curve. Sorry, but I don't believe that crap for a moment. The real reason is exactly as I stated. I needed to prove to myself that caffeine really doesn't have any effect on me and I did.

The only fear I had when I switched is that I would have caffeine withdrawals (headaches or freaking out). I didn't.

Discriminating Taste

Although I don't own a coffee maker, I drink a lot of coffee. It's all instant coffee. Even though both the regular and decaffeinated coffees I've been drinking are both instant, they are of the same brand. I can tell the difference in the taste. The decaffeinated version doesn't taste as good as the regular. With me and coffee, it's all about the taste, not the caffeine.

I like brewed coffee so much more than instant and I plan to buy a coffee maker of some kind in the near future. I have no idea what kind I'll be able to find here in the Philippines, so I may have to get one shipped in. In the meantime, and when I go grocery shopping again, I'll be buying regular instant coffee.


Article Credit RT Cunningham



What is POSTUM

A better question would probably be "What was Postum?", since Postum is no longer being manufactured. The name of the product should give you an idea of the name of the person who was behind the development of the product.

I have some Postum-related articles on another blog and I believe it's more appropriate to move them here because Postum was a popular coffee alternative. This is just one of the articles I wrote — the only changes are the reformatting. I moved another article from a different blog (it was the only one on the subject) and it has already been here on this blog for some time.


Postum History

Postum started as a caramel cereal coffee that was being brewed at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan while Charles William Post was a charity patient there. Post found the recipe when he was snooping in the kitchen and obtained it from Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of the corn flakes breakfast cereal. Kellogg gave the recipe to Post willingly, having no way of knowing it would be the start of a major corporation.

C. W. Post founded the Postum Cereal Company in 1895, which was headquartered right there in Battle Creek, Michigan, with Postum as his first product. It was a powdered, roasted grain beverage made from wheat bran, wheat, molasses, and maltodextrin from corn. Post and Dr. Kellogg both believed that caffeine was unhealthy and Postum was marketed as a healthy alternative to coffee.

Postum became very popular with the Seventh-Day Adventists and the Mormons, or the Church of Latter Day Saints. The people of both religious groups didn't drink hot, caffeinated beverages and didn't suffer from the jittery side effects that coffee gave some people. According to the director of the estate of an Adventist co-founder, Post himself was not an Adventist.

Postum Cereal Company changed its name to General Foods Corporation in 1929 after acquiring other food brands and merged with Kraft Foods in 1989. Kraft Foods spokeswoman Laurie Guzzinati told Taashi Rowe of the Adventist News Network that the company stopped making Postum in the fall of 2007 because the demand for it was so low that manufacturing it no longer made sense.

Postum Future

There are people attempting to revive Postum in one way or another. I'll be adding some of that information to the other posts I'm moving over here.

Article Credit : RT Cunningham



June 24, 2009

Aroma coffee for character in a cup: coffee that won’t make your heart beat faster

All you coffee-lovers put on your mocha loafers, for it's time for a trip down memory lane. Don't spill your beans, but let them drain. Aroma's Coffee Factory has been in the business of making good earnest coffee since the 1930's. That's right, the times when booted, mustached cursing Dutchmen were still playing command-and-conquer in Indonesia . All that dividing and ruling sure took its toll upon their energy level. Alas, Extra Joss wasn't available back then, so they built Aroma's Coffee Factory to keep spirits up. Now, more than 70 years later, Aroma's is still doing its mission: making coffee the way it should be, without artificial flavorings, pesticides or even vanilla essence.

When you enter the small shop on Jalan Banceuy, central Bandung, its wooden interior and antique coffee paraphernalia such as old coffee machines and bronze scales will make you think that you stepped into a movie set. Luckily the all-pervasive smell of freshly ground coffee beans will bring you back to reality, and as the second-generation owner takes you around on a tour that will explain all the nooks and crannies of the coffee business to you, the decor will come alive. It is a rare thing that in this day and age where profit margins dictate people's life, and actually in many occasions, their coffee intake, Aroma's coffee factory remains dedicated to entrepreneurial craftsmanship that keeps rusty German made coffee burners from the 1930's a foundation instead of a relic from a long forgotten past.

Everything in the factory is still hand-labor, from the picking and sorting of the beans to the roasting and packing. The coffee beans coming mainly from Sumatra and Jawa are dried in the back yard for an hour and then piled sack upon sack rising more than 10 meters above our heads in the storage room, where the Robusta beans will dry for 5 years, while the Arabica beans require an astonishing 8 years of lying around. In that time the acidity of the beans will drop in a natural process, and as an end result Aroma's coffee is not only tastier but also a lot healthier. ‘Arabica is fit for people with high blood pressure, and Robusta for people with low blood pressure' explains the owner. The health of his customers is more important to him than the amount of beans he sells. He is a man who believes in God...and good coffee, ‘What is the purpose of praying everyday, when in the end you cheat on your customers?' he asks.

After the years of drying, the beans are then hand-roasted in a rusty but reliable oven fired by rubber wood, and then according to customers' wishes ground or sold as whole beans. ‘It is very simple, but you need a lot of patience' the owner twinkles. Back in the shop people line up to buy their essential provision of Arabica or Robusta. Many of them have been coming here for years in search of a flavor and quality; these are real coffee drinkers who will instantly say no to instant coffee. Get a taste of authenticity and drop by at Aroma's. Open daily, if you want a behind the scenes look on the coffee making process, be there before 2 o clock or call in beforehand.




June 14, 2009