Gizmodo has been featuring an in-house gadgeteer to basically test out different methods to cook most things. One such feature recently is the "How to Actually Make Coffee" - which we found both insightful and amusing. What's odd is how they leave out making coffee the right way - the single serve coffee way. We do agree on one thing - the basic elements, no matter what voodoo you're invoking to make coffee: beans, roast, grind, dose, water, temperature and brew time are the "WHY" you might have a great cup or awful cup of any coffee regardless of the method.
Maybe you think of tea when trying to dunk things into a cup, but we often think of coffee. We love to dunk a good cookie into a cup of single serve brew to make it a bit softer and more flavorful. The Mocha Dunk Mug fits the bill when it comes to dunking items being on hand for your coffee or tea - they're stored right in the bottom.
It's been a while since we've done a "mega review", so we apologize in advance to our readers if this article seems excessively long. Just keep in mind that we're reviewing over FIVE different products at once. So if you're ok with that, grab a cup (or 2) of your favorite single-serve coffee and read along.
A quick look on Trung Nguyen's website reveals that the company has been around since 1996 (possibly longer) and started off as a small business processing coffee in Ban Me Thuoc city, Vietnam. What was unique at the time was that Vietnam was one of the world's leading coffee producers but only of green, unroasted coffee beans that were sold primarily on the commodity market. This would result in no control over the final coffee quality or overall prices.
Soon afterwards, the company's owners realized the best way to be independent of the world commodity markets was to control every aspect of the growing & processing techniques and follow-through all the way to the final packaged product. They later launched Vietnamese coffee houses throughout Vietnam and a number of other countries. Today, Trung Nguyen is one of the most established, respected and successful producers of branded coffee in Vietnam.
Designed by Brazilian designer Lucas Vieira, this coffee cup cubicle may be the ultimate work space for any single serve coffee drinker. We imagine an integrated Nespresso in this cubicle, along with plenty of different blends to enjoy throughout the day. Lucas calls this space the Coffee Office Workstation, and it features a touchscreen computer, space for your laptop and a spot for coffee (just a regular mug - no travel mugs). Not sure if it will ever be made, but if it does get made we're changing out our boring cubes for some cool coffee ones.
You can get just about any K-Cup, T-Disc, or coffee pod at CoffeeWiz.com and best of all it's going to be 5% off for orders of $50 or more provided you use the "summersale" code at checkout. The sale ends August 31st, so get your orders in soon.
Sometimes you get that K-Cup in your life that is very special. Each morning you wish you could drink 3-5 cups instead of just 2 cups of it - for us it's Tully's French Roast. The flavor and profile fits the bill of a robust interesting cup of french roast coffee, and we love the sweet finish we get every time.
The Groundfloor is a coffee table with a built-in fire pit. We're featured a fire pit coffee table before, but we love the split colored design of this table more. We're not sure if you want to use this inside or if you want to use this on your outside covered patio, but whatever you decide this is one hot coffee table.
Although we've reviewed it in the past, we decided to revisit what is normally a traditional flavor found around Thanksgiving and decided to try some leftover 2008 Green Mountain Pumpkin Spice K-Cups on a lazy Sunday afternoon while digging around our ever-growing coffee stash. We had second thoughts about drinking a decidedly non-Summer flavor but seeing as how there was nothing good on TV and nothing else to do around the Single Serve Coffee kitchens, we figured why the heck not? The fact that we noticed there was still a few months left before the expiry date also "helped" us in our decision.
Green Mountain will once again make these K-Cups available on September 1st of this year, so unless you've got a stockpile stash like we do, you'll have to wait until then to get some. As with the plethora of pumpkin-flavored coffees on the market each year, familiar scents of pumpkin pie started to emerge during brewing... all-spice, nutmeg & very faint hints of pumpkin were present. The body was medium with a usual brown/amber color.
We're not big Stargate fans, but we are big fans of this cool coffee coaster. We love the transparent blue middle, and can imagine sitting our single serve coffee cup upon it, only to have it whisked away to another world. Wait - that's our coffee cup! :-)
Green Mountain Coffee has been producing a ton of cool content on You Tube recently. This video features Don Holly from Green Mountain and delivers the details on how a K-Cup works.
We often take it for granted when filling up coffee cups or other liquid vessels - we can see how full they're getting unlike the blind. Braun has developed a coffee mug that plays a sound when the mug is full to the rim with single serve coffee. The Braun Bell concept mug plays a chime when the liquid hits one of three levels within the mug.
There's a new giant box of K-Cups in town, and it's the 50 Count K-Cup package from Diedrich Coffee. A bunch of their coffees come packed in 50 count boxes and we really like the Donut Shop blend (read our full review here). The entire idea is more efficient resulting in both a lower cost and a green sensibility, given the reduced waste.
This story is kind of funny and kind of sad. Most modern scoots have plenty of room to hold a cup of coffee, but at least if you want to drive through on your scooter to get food or coffee you should be allowed to. Geez!
Here's pretty much the same story about a customer on a motorized scooter not being allowed to use the drive through, this time at a Tim Hortons coffee establishment in Nova Scotia. He's not going to sue, but plans to appeal to Nova Scotia's Human Rights Commission.
The attendant wouldn't serve him because of a company policy banning pedestrians, bicycles, and wheelchairs, including motorized scooters, from using the drive-thru. Matthews says that means no coffee for him, because he can't manoeuvre his scooter through the front door.
"It would take three people to get me in. And I don't even know if I'll be able to turn around when I get inside. And, if I don't run over somebody inside trying to back this up, it would be a small miracle," Matthews said.
We're always hard at work making sure you can view our site the way you want and and where you want it. Currently you can visit us here each and every day, and we have a newsletter, RSS feed, Twitter page, Facebook page, and now you can view us on your iPhone, Palm Pre, and other mobile devices that have a browser at our Single Serve Coffee mobile site. We're pretty sure you'll enjoy your coffee even more as you wait at the airport, sit in your favorite chair, or just make a shortcut on your iPhone to read us each morning while you hold us in your hand.
We thought we'd take a look at what's happening in Flavia land this morning. We recently received a set of their Rainforest Alliance Certified coffees, and we found the Kona Blend to be quite good. 10% of this Kona Blend originates from the volcanic slopes of Hawaii. These trees thrive in a combination climate of sunshine, rainfall, location and volcanic soil only available in Kona, thus creating a balanced flavor ranging from a medium to full body, with some acidic notes. We think this coffee is quite smooth, and it's nice to see Flavia offering some interesting and new blends for the Flavia line of single serve coffee makers.
The Kona Blend coffee packets will work in any Flavia machine.
In his Dallas-based Weld House Joel Hester is scrounging the scrap yards of Texas and turning grizzled steel into coffeee tables. We really like them, and have to say the connection to Cars in the above picture seems likely. The cost is going to be in the $800+ range for a coffee table, and the creator Joel Hester has an entire gallery over at Flickr. His web site also lists other furniture made out of cars including armoires, beds, and larger tables.
That's right - you heard it here first. We believe after receiving a teaser package from Senseo which contains a Rubix Cube with Quadrante pictures and one of the cube glass shaped mugs abobe that the Senseo Quadrante is coming to the US markets.
It makes sense given Senseo's need to relaunch and rebrand their brewer for a larger single serve coffee market here in the US. The new design is cube like and gives the Senseo single serve coffee pod brewer a new look and fresh start. We're not sure of the timing, but given the lack of any Senseo single serve coffee makers at retail and Amazon - we think it's got to be early this Fall and maybe in time for back to school.
We also want to note we covered this rumored design over a year ago here at Single Serve Coffee, and the final design is almost the same as our rumor pictures.
Update: We don't have a confirmation on when the Senseo Quadrante is coming to the US. We did get word the Senseo Quadrante will launch this September in France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany.
Wondering what to do with all of those leftover coffee filters since you switched to Single Serve Coffee? Well wonder no longer - you're going to clean all of those ethernet connections in your life. Yep - coffee filters can be used to clean the tips of ethernet cables if you're having troubles with the line.
After reporting some issues with their internet connection, technicians advised the folks over at Unplggd to wipe the tips of their ethernet cord with a coffee filter. Apparently the filters are excellent at catching loose impediments like lint, plus the technician reported witnessing more than on instance where installers had left cheeseburger grease on cords. Gross.
This week, we continue our tour of Van Houtte's flavored coffee line-up by trying their Crème Brûlé K-Cups. Crème Brûlée (as described via its Wikipedia entry) is "a dessert consisting of a rich custard base topped with a layer of hard caramel, created by caramelizing sugar under a broiler, with a butane torch or other intense heat source, or by pouring sugar on top of the custard".
July was an excing month here at Single Serve Coffee. We reviewed the Sun Cafe Coffee Pod Brewer and thought it made a nice addition to the single serve coffee pod brewer family. We also reveiwed several K-Cups, and had some fun finding a Toxic Coffee Mug and The Fisticup.
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D: Last December, Tassimo had a rebate promotion on its Tassimo read more david boe: About 5 months ago, we sent in the plug from read more Thomas Davie: Just ran out of these this morning (Damn). I can read more nadine dartois: hi,,Ipurchas a box of breakfast blend ,kirkland breakfast k cups read more Andrew: The wife just brought home Archer Farms Vanilla Bean Creme read more
How to Actually Make Coffee The Old Fashioned Way
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July was an excing month here at Single Serve Coffee. We reviewed the 
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Review: Brown Gold 100% Colombian Real Cups
D: Last December, Tassimo had a rebate promotion on its Tassimo read more
