Category — Coffee

Coffee makers can be a minor purchase, or a major purchase depending on how many “options” you need.  I’ve been through a few, and have finally settled on this one: the Cuisinart Grind and Brew.  I’ve been brewing coffee every day, often twice a day, with this coffee maker for the last 2 years, and it still seems to be holding up very well.  Here are the pros and cons:

The Pros: I like this coffee pot because it grinds and brews the coffee in an enclosed unit.  If you’ve ever fumbled around with a coffee grinder at 6AM, spilling ground coffee on the counter and floor- you’ll appreciate this too. I also like the thermal carafe, because it eliminates that scorched taste you can sometimes get with coffee makers that have burners and glass pots, and it keeps the coffee hot for hours.

In addition, the Cuisinart Grind and Brew has a built in charcoal water filter, something which I think makes a big difference in the quality of the coffee brewed.  And, if you don’t want to use coffee beans for every pot, you can just add ground coffee to the basket.

The Cons: Although it’s my favorite coffee pot of all time, I would change the following things if I could. First, the grinder mechanism has to be cleaned every time you grind coffee beans, because it steams up when the coffee brews.  This means a few extra minutes of prep time.  Second, the Cuisinart water filters for this model are a little bit expensive.  They’re around $5 each, which is higher than the water filters for other coffee makers.

The Cuisinart Grind and Brew is available at 1st in Coffee for $129.

Ever just want one quick cup of coffee with out all the trouble of making a whole new fresh pot?  When I was in the mood for just that, I remembered these plastic gadgets from a trip I took to a cabin run on solar power in St. John’s.  Two weeks of morning coffees made from what I now know to be called, the aptly named, “coffee filter holder” and I’m a believer.

These are great because they’re so easy to use and clean up is a sinch.  All you have to do is put a cone coffee filter in the holder, boil water, put coffee in the filter and pour the hot water through over a coffee cup.  Then you just toss the filter out, give the holder a quick rinse and you’re done.  Hot coffee, no mess.  And compared to the prices I saw online for single cup coffee maker machines from $40-100, this beauty above definitely beats the pack at $2.99.  For less than the cost of one coffee at Starbucks, you could have a kitchen supply that will perk you up for a life time.

I asked for a French press three years ago for Christmas. My parents bought me one that I love and use every day. It’s by Frieling and I highly recommend it. It’s very sturdy and has stayed completely functional over the years. It has a thermal system that keeps the coffee hot all morning. The design is comfortable to use, modern and chic looking, and I’m not the only one who shares this opinion. I was out at one of L.A.’s hippest restaurant, the Phillip Stark designed Katsuya, and they serve coffee in the same pots. I felt so cool when I saw that. And to think that my parents were the ones that picked it out in the first place… they upped their hip-factor by leaps and bounds with that single move!

A new study from the Journal of Neuroinflammation looked at the ability of caffeine to block serum cholesterol from entering the brain. The blood brain barrier is a membrane which prevents all but the smallest molecules from entering into the blood supply of the brain. This barrier helps protect the brain from infections and various toxins circulating in the blood stream.

One theory of the cause of Alzheimer’s disease is that it is associated with a breakdown in the blood brain barrier. This breakdown allows larger substances such as amyloid beta and other potentially harmful particles to enter and accumulate in the brain. The experiment looked at how the caffeine equivalent of about 1 cup of coffee a day is able to prevent damage to the blood brain barrier caused by a high cholesterol diet. The study was done with rabbits, not humans, but the blood brain barrier is something that evolved in all mammals so you would expect things to work the same for us.

In my opinion, coffee is the best delivery vehicle for caffeine because it also has some good antioxidants such as chlorogenic acid which have been shown to slow the release of glucose into the bloodstream after a meal. However, if you can’t stand the taste of coffee or don’t want to pay Starbucks prices, you can always just swallow a pill. Caffeine is pretty much a commodity so you might as well shop for the cheapest caffeine tablets you can find.

You might want to add some black tea to that counter-terrorism kit you keep under your bed and pour yourself a nice hot cup before opening your mail. Scientists from the Biodefense Institute at the University of Maryland and Cardiff University recently tested English breakfast tea and medium roast coffee to determine which was most effective at killing anthrax. It turns out that some of the polyphenols found in tea have the ability to inactivate bacillus anthracis and its toxin. More info can be found in the press release located here. This isn’t a huge surprise because the anti-bacterial properties of tea are well known. The experiment was done in vitro so I’m not so sure that just drinking a cup or two will do much good. I’m going to wait for the follow up study in mice before I post any cartoon pics of the prophet Mohammed on this blog.