Talking Espresso and Great Coffee

A friend in Italy was talking about the new Ferrero Pocket drinks have changed their taste this year. The wha?

Looking around the US, they appear to be available from Parthenon Foods, selling through Amazon. There are two versions, a Coffee and a Espresso version. Both are listed as having chocolate included. Of course, we had to order a couple of both to see if they are good by themselves and how they are over our ice cream. Heh-heh…

Pocket Espresso:

225g, 18 pieces of Pocket Coffee with real Italian espresso coffee inside and covered in a chocolate praline. This candy starts out with a caramelized sugar pocket for a sweet espresso liquid. The caramelized sugar is coated with European milk chocolate. The manufacturer (Fererro) claims that eating three pieces is equivalent to a shot of espresso

Pocket Coffee:

Ferrero Pocket Coffee is a bittersweet chocolate tasting exactly like an Italian espresso. 3 pieces of Pocket Coffee is equal to 1 Cup of Espresso. The chocolate taste Like a liquor chocolate, but with strong espresso in the middle instead of liquor. Pocket Coffee is a delectable combination of espresso filled dark chocolate that combines a gourmet chocolate experience with an authentic espresso taste and energy boost.

I never mind when a company sends me a free coffee recipe… especially when it isn’t linked to a hard sale.

Illy sent an email today giving their recipe for a Marocchino Caldo. It is a pretty simple drink to make and was oh so good this morning! No special equipment needed.

Of course, illy does mentioned they have many more coffee drink recipes in a book they have for sale. Since it was a light mention of the book and they didn’t make the email a pressure sale, I feel good about passing on the recipe and passing on an unsolicited mention they offer many more in a 44 page hardcover book. Keep it fun!!

I was sent a link directly to this graphic that is a really nice piece of work. It shows how much of each ingredients goes into a variety of coffee drinks. The different coffee drinks are mentioned with an arrow to it’s ‘mix’ group. The overlapping circles show how much of what goes into a successful drink. It isn’t something you will actually base your pour on but it is a fun reference when you think of a drink for what it will be when handed to you.

At the bottom of the graphic is a t-shirt image and the link to the jpg is for a threadless.com subpage. But, I have searched the site using the number in the graphic’s URL and for espresso/coffee… nothing. If I find the actual items with the graphic printed on, I’ll post later. For now… enjoy.

Martha Stewart to the rescue for the holidays. A particularly great idea if you just went from a drip coffee maker to a single cup pod machine… what to do with all those paper filters up in the kitchen cabinet. Why not make a holiday wreath out of them?

The project is actually pretty quick and takes the filters, something to poke the holes with, a bit of ribbon, a paper plate (read the directions, you can substitute for different size wreaths) and a glue gun… the ever crafty ‘glue gun’. She frowns on people taking her plans from her sites and books, so the next step is to jump over to her site and see the ‘very’ simple instructions. The only age restriction is the need for the hot glue gun… maybe a kids glue stick could be used, will have to play with that.

Two fun espresso cup items came my way this weekend, without even looking. Strange how things work out like that.

The first was a group of designers doing a ‘espresso cup of the day‘. Which you can purchase individually. The cups are all over the place in what makes each one unique, here is one that looks like a cupcake!

If your a technology fan as well as an espresso fan, you will be interested to know that the ones you can order are made when you order – “The cups are printed in Glazed Ceramics by Shapeways.” You can read more about the concept and info on each of the cups on the cunicode site.

So many to choose from… where to start?

The second was a postal print mailer I received from Illy USA. It was full of their coffees and coffee makers. A couple pages had their new espresso cup ‘art’. They looked like a lot of fun so I buzzed to the illy USA site to see more information. Sadly, the site has must smaller images and less info than was even in the mailer. I scanned the printed page to share with you so you can see the art much better if your a fan of fun like I am.

We received an email from Starbucks… yes, we hit the button for them to tell us about specials and deals. Sadly, we missed this small bit of text till we where in a Starbucks last night and everyone around us where there with friends for their free holiday drink!

The text from Starbucks:

“Grab a friend and head to a participating Starbucks® store – because November 17-20 from 2-5 p.m., when you buy one holiday drink, you’ll get another one of equal or lesser value for free. Take your pick of your most-loved holiday beverages, including Peppermint Mocha, new Skinny Peppermint Mocha, Caramel Brulée Latte, Gingerbread Latte and Eggnog Latte.”

See ya there… friends…

Photo created on an iPhone using Hipstamatic

During this time of year, Starbucks introduce their holiday drinks… and holiday cups. We will cover the holiday drinks later, for now we will have fun with the paper cups you get your cup of coffee in. They have a variety of different animals and scenes. If you grab the free iPhone Starbucks Cup Magic app, this scenes pop out of the cups in some fun 3D actions.

Launch the free app on your iPhone/iPod Touch or iPad, point the camera at the cup and the characters jump off the cup to entertain you. Don’t take too much time playing, your coffee is getting cold.

The Starbucks Cup Magic app lets you collect the different cup art, as well check out the latest discounts and specials. If you find yourself in need of a quick gift but don’t want to stop playing, you can order and send a eGift Card directly from the app too.

I had mentioned last year at this time that illy was offering a big discount on one of their machines if you signed up for monthly delivery of coffee delivery (illy Y1 iperEspresso Machine discounted). They had no length of time requirements but the machine only used illy’s capsules so if you didn’t do their service you didn’t have coffee in the morning.

A friend posted up on twitter that he just got his Tonx delivery. He was so excited that I had to look into what he was talking about. Tonx.org is a small company that looks for beans they like, they roast them and send out a lb to folks that subscribe. They can’t promise a particular bean each month as they never know what they will find and how long their inventory will last.

Do you subscribe to a espresso bean delivery like Tonx offers? There are offerings from a lot of the larger bean providers, but not the giant chains. Do you like a variety of beans from time-to-time or do you like to stick with what you love? Since coffee beans are a crop, it means a location will have a different flavored bean from one year to another, only the giants will match on flavor consistency. While the smaller shops like the variety.

In the past, folks have given gifts of magazine subscriptions, cigar subscriptions, and even movie services like Netflix… will espresso bean subscriptions be the next big thing?

A week after we saw Starbucks roll out their holiday season drinks, McDonald’s has announced that they too will have a seasonal drink. Both of these companies will only offer these drinks over the year ending holidays.

For McDonald’s, we get the Peppermint Mocha, bot as a coffee drink and a hot chocolate drink.

The addition should be a nice add to their product line. A product line that I have read makes up 20% of the total sales McDonald’s does. To make sure plenty of folks try, love, and buy the new Peppermint Mochas, there will be sampling dates around the US. Keep an eye on the McDonald’s twitter posts (@McCafeYourDay and @McDonalds) for a mention of a town near you.

For Nutrition concerns, they are available via the McDonald’s McCafe site:

It’s getting close to the holiday time of year. We know this because the rains have started and we are staying in the 40s over night instead of the 70s before. With the windows open overnight to let the fresh air in, it means the morning coffee had double duty.

We have our normal espresso pulls for your ‘wake up’ coffee, but after that we turn to our trusty K-Cups to fill in through the day before the afternoon break cappuccinos. The K-Cups have really expanded their bean and flavor choices over the last couple years. The bigger Coffee Shop, Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks are all putting their beans in the little cups.

A recent find, for us, is the Gingerbread K-Cup coffee option. We can enjoy our coffee with a hint of gingerbread, that isn’t actually overpowering sweet or spicy. The Green Mountain folks producing these holiday flavors claim it is one of their ‘fair trade’ coffees.

As luck would have it, when going to order a new box this morning, we found the Green Mountain Gingerbread flavor listed as out-of-stock. Guess we will have to try the Donut House Cinnamon Roll K-Cups this time.

We’re up for a challenge so we’ll see what we can do to put a list together of all of the ‘winter’ and ‘holiday’ flavored K-Cups. As they come in, we’ll post up how the flavors where. You know how some things sound good on the wrapper and don’t stand up in reality, we’ll see!