KRUPS Looking for Best Coffee Shops and Baristas in the US
We know you love your coffee, but do you have a coffee shop that you absolutely love?
Forget about Starbucks and all the coffee chains you’ll find in just about every corner of every city. I’m talking about the little shops that no one else in the world might know about, but that locals swear on. If you have a coffee shop in mind, you might want to enter your fave shop for the “KRUPS Best Brew Awards 2012″.
The awards is KRUPS way of honoring the best coffee shops throughout New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Dallas, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. Those who want to have a say on who wins only need to go to KRUPS USA Facebook page to be able to cast your vote. Note that voting will be limited to coffee shops on their list (from last year’s awards), but you still get to do a write up on your fave coffee shop in case it isn’t on the list.
Voting started yesterday and is only open till February 24, so you’d better start spreading the word if you’re rooting for a shop.
The best baristas also get a nod from KRUPS as they accept entries for a seat on the “KRUPS Coffee Council”, who with the rest of the Coffee Council members will get to help KRUPS out year round during regional events and promotions, media opportunities, new product demonstrations and more. If you want to be a coffee council entrant, you must submit a “video of yourself (3 minutes or less), in which you describe who you are as a person and as a barista, explain why you would be the best barista in your area to sit on the KRUPS Coffee Council, and demonstrate your knowledge and skill in preparing one coffee or espresso-based beverage.”
Image via KrupsUSA
Give Your Twitter the Equivalent of a Caffeine Boost with InstaBG
Previous generations saw dads in the morning with a cup of coffee in hand and the day’s newspaper on the other. Today, this translates to a cup of coffee in one hand while surfing the Internet for news and checking Twitter for the latest tweets. If you are hooked to Twitter though, this probably means checking Twitter throughout the day. As for drinking coffee, no matter how much of a caffeine addict you are, the number of cups you down each day will never equal the number of times you go online to check your friends’ tweets and send out a tweet yourself. The good news is that even without a cup of coffee in your hand you can still be reminded of your love for coffee by using a customized coffee theme as your Twitter background.
Customizing your Twitter background need not be complicated. In fact, you can easily change your background, even have it automatically changed daily, by using a service called InstaBG. InstaBG makes use of Instagram photos to generate Twitter backgrounds that you can use to liven up your own Twitter account. To get free Twitter backgrounds from InstaBG all you need to do is log in to the website using your TwitterID, tweak the options, preview your background image, and click on “Set this image to Twitter” to see the changes on your Twitter page.
InstaBG-generated collage using “coffee” as tag
InstaBG-generated collage using “caffeine” as tag
What’s even better is that you can choose the theme/tags of the Instagram photos that will be used as part of your Twitter background, just like the caffeine and coffee photos I used to come up with collage above. You can also choose the background color, tile size, and spacing between photos.
So why settle for a boring Twitter page when you can liven things up with a coffee-themed background?
Twitter backgrounds generated using InstaBG
Extolling the Virtues of Home-brewed Coffee
In light of the coffee price hikes last year, and Starbuck’s own price hikes early this month for some of their products, it looks like brewing your own coffee at home is starting to make more and more sense. Savings aside, there are plenty of other reasons to just brew your own coffee instead of buying one every single day.
Obviously, brewing a fresh pot of coffee will entail a bit more effort on your part. You have to grind up the beans, scoop them into the coffee maker, and wait for the delicious freshly brewed coffee to drip, but if you think about it the time it takes for you to do all that is just about the same time it will take you to wait for your coffee in line at Starbucks during the morning rush hour. What’s even better about just having your coffee at home, is that you can spend your waiting time taking a shower or doing some other chore.
If you like drinking your coffee while on the go, there’s no excuse either because you can always just pour your coffee in a thermos and drink it at leisure. Another advantage to doing this is that you end up helping the environment since less disposable cups are used.
Last but not least, making your own coffee means having the liberty to always make it your own way. Sure Starbucks and most coffee shops are great at providing choices, even letting you give very specific instructions, but it still means having to pay extra for some things. And yeah, if you like one of Starbucks’ and other coffee shops’ particular blend, you can always buy them in packs, still saving you some money when you prepare them at home.
Photo via Kamlau.com
