"CoffeeBeans" news and stories

What if walking into a coffee shop were more like stepping into your local wine store? Imagine if you could peruse brews from different regions, processed and prepared by different growers and roasters -- just as you can scan the bottles for a spicy Spanish red or a crisp French Riesling. Would you feel empowered or overwhelmed?

Some boutique coffee shops are banking on the idea that more is more, with cafe owners adopting almost a curator's eye toward the caffeinated offerings. But is this a passing fad or the next wave in coffee connoisseurship?

Read on after the jump to hear what some coffee people think.

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is part of a series for the caffeine-addicted.

I know you thought we were through with the genus-species-kingdom stuff after high-school biology, but did you know there are two different species of coffee plant? Well, there are: Arabica, or high-altitude grown gourmet coffee, and Robusta, or the more environmentally tolerant (and much cheaper) sort of coffee often found in instant crystals and behind bodega counters around the world.

But is the latter really more "robust" than the haute Arabica? Find out after the jump.

Wine labels on coffee bags. Photo: biskuit, Flickr.

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is part of a series for the caffeine-addicted.

As oenophiles know, variety is everything.

OK, not everything, but definitely something. And the same goes for coffee.

Much as wine grapes come in different cultivars (as anyone who prefers a Cabernet Franc to a Cabernet Sauvignon can tell you), coffee can be born to one of thousands of types, both heirloom and hybrid, which can have an impact on a coffee's productivity, appearance and, certainly, flavor.

While much is made of the variety of a particular grape (or apple, for fruit fans; or rose, for gardeners; or rice, for starch lovers), a large percentage of coffee farmers don't grow any one single type on their land, and many can't even be sure how much of their farm is one variety or another. Largely for this reason, any coffee that can be identified, with certainty, by its type is often cause for celebration among bean heads. The famous Esmeralda coffee I mentioned last week, for instance, is special in part because it comprises an exotic, transplanted Ethiopian variety called Gesha or Geisha (likely named for a spot in Ethiopia -- many African coffee varieties are christened for their proximity to certain villages or regions, such as Harrar and Sidamo).

Read more about coffee varieties after the jump.

Coffee usually tastes better with freshly ground beans. But, if it's not ground appropriately the coffee will taste off. The key to understanding how to grind coffee has to do with knowing how you're going to brew it. The grinding and brewing processes are connected.

Thanks to the huge role the media plays in our daily lives, pregnant women now have way more to worry about than even ten years ago. Getting pregnant means you are suddenly victim to tons of fear-inducing claims and studies, each new one seeming to contract the last. Exercise! Don't over-burden yourself! Eat chocolate! Go easy on the fat!

And now, claims that a little bit of caffeine probably won't hurt you are challenged by a recent study in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology that suggests that women who consume more than 200 mg of caffeine (one small cup of coffee) a day are at a greater risk for miscarrying.

In the study, documented in a NY Times article, 1,063 pregnant women were interviewed about their caffeine intake. Out of the total, 172 women had previously miscarried. The rate of miscarriages was higher in those who consumed 200 mg or more per day (24.5% out of 164) compared to those who drank no caffeine during their pregnancy (12.5% out of 264 women).

But of course, miscarriage occurs for reasons other than caffeine, some which can't be explained away through a study. But I'd love to hear from women who were once or are currently pregnant (or their significant others) to get their take on this news. Do reports like this make you nervous? Do you drink caffeine now? If so, would this study make you think twice? Or do you eschew science in place of good ol' common sense?

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