Capresso C1300 Espresso Machine
Capresso is very well known for the ability to produce great coffee and espresso machines. The C1300 comes with many features such as Capresso’s Claris Water Care System, built-in automatic milk frothing system, separate funnel allowing use of pre-ground coffee, 6 temperature selections for water and coffee, self-cleaning system, and auto shut-off.
Multi-function Digital Display
The C1300 features a bright blue backlit digital display; providing a lot of information about the machine’s status, beverage selection, language, water temperature, cleaning indicators, auto-off times, and counter and machine statistics. Also, the display will show status messages of; Warming Up, Steam, Hot Water, Rinsing, Fill Water, and Empty Tray.
Adjustable Coffee Dispensing Nozzle
You can place anywhere from a small 2 ounce cup to a large 12oz depending on the height and size of your coffee cup.
Thermo Block Heating System
The built-in boiler is powered by 1450 watts; this allows use for a large numbers of servings within short time periods.
Professional Built-In Grinder
A professional built-in quality burr grinder accompanies the C1300. The “Conical” burr grinding mechanisms are heavy duty and are usually found on expensive grinders. Furthermore, the heavy duty grinding wheel is made of tempered steel, providing a long service life.
64 Ounce Built-in Water Tank
The built-in water tank holds enough water to produce about 40 espressos. Refilling the water tank is easy; this can be done by adding water while the machine is on.
Coffee Extraction
The C1300 has a maximum pressure output of 18 bars, which allows excellent coffee extraction.
Coffee Bean Storage
The built-in coffee bean hopper can hold 8 ounces of coffee beans, while keeping the coffee beans fresh at the same time.
Automatic Cleaning System
The C1300 features Automatic cleaning cycle indicator, which prevents coffee oil build-up in the brew chamber. The machine will remind you automatically after approx. 200 cups of coffee when it’s time to clean itself.
More on Green Coffee
In many cases, organic coffee is shade-grown and bird-friendly. It is believed that the soil in a full-sun coffee farm is depleted of many nutrients, whereas the native soils retains its complex nutrient base. Organic coffee plants channel nutrients steadily and more slowly to the beans. As a result, organic coffee beans have a smoother, richer flavor and are considered more nutrient-rich.
Choosing organic coffee also helps preserve biodiversity. It helps support small, family farms as well as farmers with a commitment to sustainable methods.
Purchasing Organic Coffee
Organic coffees are available in just as many types, roasts, and flavors as regular coffees, but they tend to be slightly more expensive. Organic coffees are available in light, medium and dark roasts and grown around the world in Uganda, Indonesia, Guatemala, Peru, Costa Rica, Indonesia and Ethiopia. Flavored organic coffees are also available for purchase.
If you want to have a greater impact on the environment as well as the lives of organic coffee farmers and growers around the world, opt for Fair Trade organic coffee or organic coffee marked as shade-grown/bird-friendly.
Organic coffees are available at your local health food store or organic grocery store and are becoming increasingly popular in conventional grocery stores and coffee houses. They can also be purchased online through a variety or online retailers, including Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and Jim’s Organic Coffee.
Green Coffee? Know Your Organic Coffee
Organic coffee is a coffee production practice. Organic coffee is grown on farms that don’t use chemical inputs. To market a coffee as certified organic, a farm must be inspected to receive certification. At each step in the processing chain, inspectors track the coffee beans as they move from source to cup. To protect the integrity of the process, the coffee must be sold through certified importers and roasters. These certification processes help protect consumers as well, guaranteeing the products they buy are genuine.
As the world market gets flooded with inexpensive, low-quality coffee from places like Vietnam and Brazil, traditional coffee farmers — who produce much smaller crops — can’t compete and are often left to abandon their farms or convert their fields into full-sun coffee plantations. Due to this recent “coffee crisis,” half of the region’s traditional coffee farms have been converted to full-sun plantations.
For hundreds of years, coffee plants were grown using organic practices: inter-planting coffee with shade trees, composting, and eliminating harmful chemicals. These traditional, “sustainable” plantations often yield the best tasting variety of coffee, according to industry experts. So why aren’t all coffee beans grown this way? Because farmers can produce more beans more cheaply in “full sun” fields. Unfortunately, those fields carry a hefty environmental price.
It is important to support organic coffee cooperatives that are avoiding pesticide use and keeping a variety of trees, thus providing a much-needed stopover for migratory birds.
The Big Fuss Over Civet Coffee – Part 2
Only about 50 kilos of this blend is collected per year, making it the ultimate in exclusivity and rarity. And when we tell you where the beans have, er, been, you’ll understand why. You see the primary reason for Civet Coffee’s distinctive taste is that it’s been partially fermented by passing through the digestive system of a Sumatran Civet Cat. No, really!
Basically this feral feline prowls Sumatran coffee plantations at night, choosing to eat only the finest, ripest cherries. The stones (which eventually form coffee beans) are then collected by sifting through the Civet’s number twos.
Revered for its luscious chocolatey flavour Civet Coffee is totally safe, totally sterilised and totally delicious. Plus there’s no discernable aftertaste.
Native Sumatrans consider this to be the finest coffee in the world, and it really is the ultimate brew to serve to all those annoying Johnny-come-lately coffee shop connoisseurs. Of course, telling them where it comes from is completely optional. Put the kettle on!
The Big Fuss Over Civet Coffee – Part 1
Thanks to the coffee culture explosion, connoisseurs are now proactively seeking new twists on their beloved bean-based beverage. Cappa-this, frappa-that, double mocca doodah – the permutations are endless.
But despite all the commotion surrounding these newfangled concoctions, it’s gonna take more than a few choccy sprinkles and an injection of hot milk to get us frothing with excitement. And that’s exactly what we told our roving product scouts when they returned from the depths of the Indonesian jungle claiming to have found the most extraordinary coffee in the world.
Civet Coffee (Kopi Luwak), originates from the stool of a wild cat found in South East Asia. Following a brief explanation and a quick sip of the stuff we were asking our charlady if she could muster up a few slices of humble pie, because Civet Coffee, also known as Kopi Luwak, is indeed the most astonishingly different coffee we’ve ever tasted.
The History of Viennese Coffee – Part 2
Coffee, as it was prepared then in Istanbul, was a concoction of pulp in water. The Viennese did not take to this, and business was bad. Kolschitzky then, had the inspiration to filter his coffee, to add to it a spoon of cream and a spoon of honey. Success was immediate. This gave Kolschitzky the impetus, to start again.
First he decided to use every newspaper in the city. Then he asked a friend and local pastry cook, Peter Wender, to create a cake especially for him . “What can I make which is completely new?” objected Wender, “with only flour, sugar, eggs and milk, one can not make anything really different!” “Then, give it a new shape,” replied the cafe owner, “my coffee comes from the victory over the Turks, the Turks have a crescent on their flag. Make me something in the shape of a crescent.” Thus was born the Kippel, the basis of what is today called the “viennoiseries”.
The History of Viennese Coffee – Part 1
In 1683, Vienna was, for the second time, besieged by the Turkish army of Kara Mustapha Bassa, called Mustapha the Black or Mustapha the Terrible. In September, the city was on the point of surrender when a Christian army, lead by the Archduke of Lorraine, arrives in the vicinity. To intervene, the reinforcements need information on the position, the number, and the armament of the enemy forces. Each night, the count Ernst Rudiger Starhemberg, controlling garrison of the city, sends informants towards the army of the Archduke. Each night, the Turks intercept them and slice their throats.
One night, a 23 years old Polish noble named Franz Goerg Kolschitzky, entered the scene. Having lived ten years in Istanbul he spoke Turkish. He offers his services to try and cross the Ottoman lines. Accompanied by his servant George Mikalowski, he succeeds in passing through and provides to Charles of Lorraine all that he needs to know. Empowered by this information, the Archduke attacks and puts out the Turkish invaders. While fleeing, the latter give up guns, ammunition and provisions. Among the spoils were five hundred coffee bags. Kolschitzky is celebrated like a hero and decorated. He is offered Austrian nationality, as well as the five hundred bags of coffee beans and is given the authorization to open his own coffee enterprise. Today it is known as “Zur Blauen Flasche” (The Blue Bottle).
Drip – The Most Common Method of Brewing
Drip brew is a method for brewing coffee which involves pouring water over coffee contained in a filter. Water seeps through the coffee, absorbing its oils and essences, solely under gravity then passes through the bottom of the filter. The used coffee grounds are retained in the filter with the liquid falling (dripping) into a collecting vessel such as a carafe or pot.
Paper filters are commonly used for drip brew all over the world. One benefit of paper filters is that the used grounds and the filter may be disposed of together, without a need to clean the filter. However, metal filters are also common, especially in India. These are made of thin perforated metal sheets that restrain the grounds but allow the coffee to pass, thus eliminating the need to have to purchase separate filters which sometimes cannot be found in some parts of the world.
Drip brewing is the most popular method of coffee brewing, owing to the overwhelming popularity of the automatic drip brewing coffee machine. There are, however, several manual drip-brewing devices on the market, offering a little more control over brewing parameters than automatic machines. There also exist small, portable, single serving drip brew makers that only hold the paper filter and rest on top of a cup. Hot water is poured in and drips directly into the cup.
Brewing with a paper filter produces clear, light-bodied coffee, which is free of sediments, but lacking in some of coffee’s oils and essences, which are trapped in the paper filter.
French Press Whys and Why-nots
These are intended as a “starting point” for the respective type of brewing. Ultimately, you will figure out the best and most convenient ways to use these brewing devices, so please remake, twist, turn, distort, decomplile, torch, grind and brew these instructions to suit your own needs!
French Press Brewing
Now that you can buy a cheap French Press (also called a Press Pot) at K-Mart or Target, people seem to think they are missing something by not trying it out. Personally I love brewing in a press. It is the primary way that I drink coffee! The advantages are many:
- No paper filters to dispose of, to absorb aromatic coffee oils or to impart a “paper taste” to the coffee
- Total control over water temperature and brew time, unlike the auto-drip coffee maker that is rarely at correct brewing temperature (195-200 degrees) when the water hits the coffee.
- Its simple, easy and quick.
- Its fairly easy to clean up.
- I don’t mind the additional sediment in the coffee, because there is also more body in the cup.
… but is French Press Brewing for everyone? No!
- There is more sediment in the cup: You never take that last sip.
- To manage the sediment, you need a decent burr mill that can create an even grind. If you have a whirling blade mill, you can install a Nylon Filter in addition to the Stainless Steel one to help manage the sludge. But it will always be there. Personally, I would not brew in a French Press if I had only a whirling blade grinder … but they don’t tell you that when you buy it!
- French Press brewing is used to make fresh coffee to consume immediately …which is ideal. It is not good to leave the coffee in the press for any length of time. Tailor the size of the press or the amount you make to what can be consumed in 10 minutes or so. Don’t try to keep it warm. Don’t let the coffee sit longer in the press, even in the plunged position it continues to extract.
- For the above reason, I discourage the “travel press” design in which the press doubles as a cup and you drink out of it. And I don’t like the stainless steel thermal French Press that insulates the coffee because it is not meant to store coffee or keep in warm while still in contact with the grounds. If you need hot coffee for a longer period and want to use a press, decant the coffee into a thermos after brewing.
Caffeine – What it Does for You
Coffee is great, and coffee connosieurs (and addicts?) can attest to that. But what do the experts say about the effects of caffeine?
Caffeine is a mild stimulant of the central nervous system and as a result can influence human behaviour. This includes effects on aspects of mood such as alertness and anxiety, mental performance and sleep. Studies of effects of caffeine on human behaviour often use very high intakes and the relevance of the results of these studies to normal levels of caffeine consumption are questionable. In addition, such studies often look at the effects of a single dose of caffeine and the relevance of this to long-term caffeine consumption can also be questioned as the body may well adapt over the long-term. It is also clear that there is considerable individual variation in the response of human behaviour to caffeine ingestion and extrapolation of the results from a small study population to the general population is likely to produce spurious results.
