"best coffee" news and stories

Great tasting ground coffee doesn't have to cost a bushel, according to a new taste test by Consumer Reports.

Eight O'Clock Coffee 100 percent Colombian bested Folgers and Starbucks to take the top spot in the magazine's coffee taste test of 19 ground coffees. The results can be found in the March issue of Consumer Reports.

"At the very top was Eight O'Clock -- Eight O'Clock Coffee -- your grandmother's A&P brand," Bob Markovich, the magazine's home and yard editor, tells Slashfood. "And it was also the least expensive, and by that I mean that it was like half the price of the other two that scored at the top."

Over at Engadget, there was a post on how to convert your air popcorn popper into a coffee roaster. An interesting bit of tech work, but they definitely made it more sound more difficult than it really is. And the commenters seemed certain that trying to use an air popper to roast coffee beans was a move likely to burn down the house. Clearly, they haven't roasted coffee before. I have used an air popper to roast beans successfully, without any serious modifications to the machinery - and without burning my house down, as I cleverly thought to do my roasting outside. In retrospect, this was an excellent move, as the process produces a fair amount of smoke.

Here are some tips and instructions for roasting your own coffee.