"iced coffee" news and stories

You know how as a kid you used to stand peering out the door wondering whether or not to wear a coat, and then your mom would shout that yes, you definitely need to wear a coat, because it's brisk out there. But then you'd get outside and it was too hot, so you wrapped the coat around your waist where it was this hateful bulky thing and you wished you could have had some correct source of information that was not your mother.

Well, now we have the Internet, which is always right. Case in point: Is It Iced Coffee Weather? Demanding and capricious at once, it's an ether-mom for coffee-addicted adults. Yesterday we typed in our ZIP code and were relieved to see that yes, yes it is iced coffee weather! No more standing in the Dunkin' Donuts line like a fool, trying to figure it out! Today, however, the Web Site of Power says "no." But we want iced coffee! Who is in charge of this thing? There is no "about" button, and no contact info. Who are you, iced coffee diva?!

Is it iced coffee weather in Alaska? Chicago? Florida? Why not in 90210, whose Starbucks-slurping residents are surely enraged by that fact? We want an authoritative chart, but it's not like we're, uh, bloggers -- we can't sit around all day typing numbers into a Web site. So report back: Visit the site and for the love of all that is holy please take our poll and hit the comments to tell us the answer to this burning question.

These days, product placement (especially when it comes to food) is a fact of life. We all know that when one of our favorite television characters is holding a Coke or Pepsi product in an episode of their show, the company paid big bucks to get it there. Same goes for any mention of Kraft cheese, Cheerios cereal or Tropicana orange juice. We've come to expect this from scripted and reality TV shows (think about all the products on Big Brother or even Jon and Kate Plus Eight).

You'd like to think that the news is incorruptible, miles away from the allure of food companies offering pay for placement. Apparently, journalistic standards are a little looser in Las Vegas, where at Fox affiliate, KVVU, morning anchors now display plastic cups of McDonald's iced coffee on the podium, where a station-branded coffee mug used to sit. They hardly ever touch these cups, and the printed-on labels are angled for best viewing. The station readily admits that it's a sponsored promotion and defends the practice by saying that they cups don't come out until they start airing the lighter morning news at 7 a.m.

What do you think? Is it appropriate for food companies to get product placement on the news?

[via New York Times]

Source

So I've done two days of cold brew coffee now, and I am here to say that I love the coffee it produces. It is so smooth and has a nearly-sweet taste. I grind up a full grinder of beans, trying to keep the grinding time as brief as possible (the finer the grind, the harder it is to strain out the grounds from the mix). I dump the grounds into a wide mouth quart jar and fill it up the rest of the way with filtered water (you could use straight tap water if yours tastes good). I stir to combine, put a lid on the jar (I use these nifty plastic ones as they are much more leak-proof than the metal canning ones) and let it sit overnight.

The next morning when I get up, I strain it through a regular sieve and then through a reusable gold mesh coffee filter. There's still a little bit of fine coffee grind at the bottom that I could get rid of if I used a paper filter, but it seems good enough to me without taking that extra step. It's definitely no worse than when you make coffee with a French Press. The only problem I've discovered with this method is that you don't get the smell of brewing coffee that comes when hot water meets ground coffee. The absence of that aroma makes me think that while I adore the taste of this coffee, I may not be a permanent convert. I like the ceremony and scent of making coffee almost as much as I like drinking it and this just doesn't give me that total coffee experience.

Photo by Marisa McClellan

I started drinking coffee when I was a pre-teen (quite possibly the reason I never grew beyond 5'2") and over the last 16 years, I have tried just about every coffee brewing method available. I've had several French Presses (still a favorite when I'm making coffee just for myself), both cone and cup style filter machines, the Bialetti stovetop espresso pot and the classic Chemex pour through model (in addition to the plastic cone on the coffee cup set up). I also own a 50-cup party percolator that used to be my grandfather's and several pieces of an ancient aluminum stovetop percolator.

With all this coffee making power at my fingertips, I have never branched out into cold brew territory. However, I am becoming increasingly intrigued* by that particular style since reading this post by Leland over at Eat. He has been on a coffee journey similar to my own, and is loving the cold brew method for his summertime fix of iced coffee. There are a number of different ways to go about cold brewing coffee. He does his without any special equipment, but you can buy a kit to make the brewing process even easier.

*The process of writing this post made me so curious about making my own cold brewed coffee that I leaped off my couch and ran to the kitchen to whip up a batch. I put a full grinders worth of beans in the jar you see above, filled it the rest of the way up with water, gave it a bit of a stir and left it to do it's thing. I'll report back later on how it turned out.

photo by Marisa McClellan

I'm not a big coffee fan. Love the flavor, but it upsets my stomach. But I do have some iced coffee drinks during the summer, as long as there is some chocolate or mocha element in it. I like the Starbucks Frappuccino in the glass bottles (Mocha flavor), and I'm a fan of Nestle's Iced Java syrup.

This recipe has me a bit confused, though maybe it's just because I'm not a coffee guy. It's from allrecipes.com and it's a recipe for iced coffee. Do you really need a blender to make iced coffee? Or is this literally for iced coffee, a thicker drink, and not the cold coffee drink we're used to?