World Record set for Largest Coffee Party

I would assume that a coffee party is simply a party where coffee is consumed, perhaps like any other type of party but with less alcohol. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, a coffee party is a party where every attendee is given a slice of cake and a cup of coffee. There is actually a world record for it, too. The previous record was broken this weekend to much fanfare in Cologne Germany. The koffeeklatch was held by German company Kruger Kranzchen and involved 8,162 people. The previous record had just 4,585 attendees in London in 2008.

No statistics were given on the amount of coffee or cake used. Assuming an 8-oz serving of coffee, somewhere around 510 gallons of coffee may have been served, along with the equivalnt of 511 bundt cakes’ (a bundt cake usually serves 16 people with small slices) worth of cake.

(STARBUCKS)RED Whole Bean Coffee, reviewed

(Starbucks)RED is a whole bean coffee that Starbucks introduced to support the (PRODUCT) RED charity, a charity that partners with various retailers to raise money through the sale of special products that goes towards providing treatment for children and adults living with HIV in Africa. In the case of (Starbucks)RED, $1 per pound of this blend goes towards the charity, so you get good coffee and support a good cause all in one cup.

The coffee itself is a blend of Rwandan and Ethiopian coffees that is supposed to evoke some of the classic characteristics of African coffees. It is bold and smooth, with fairly low acidity, and notes of citrus and a sweet spiciness. The spiciness actually seemed to hint at the sweet-spicy combination of fruitcake, which is not too sweet but fairly rich tasting from all the dried fruit in it. The coffee also had a slight bitterness to it, like the pith of a citrus fruit, but it was subtle and made the coffee a little more interesting.

Starbucks Coffee College

There are a lot of different things that you can go to school to study, from anthropology to virology, from auto mechanics to cooking. But some fields are best learned on the job – either because you need experience to achieve peak performance or because it just isn’t taught anywhere. Coffee falls into that later category, even though plenty of people specialize in it, since you can’t gain tasting experience from a textbook. Recently, however, I was invited to attend Starbucks Coffee College. The Coffee College was a day-long seminar hosted for several food writers courtesy of the specialty coffee chain.

Coffee College started with a quick trip through Starbucks history and a little tour of the store in Los Angeles that we met at. College was small, just myself and one other writer, and two members of the Coffee Experience (i.e. Education) team from Starbucks’ corporate office. Primarily, this portion of the day talked about how Starbucks started as a specialty coffee retailer, providing and creating blends of coffee beans that were representative of beans from a specific region of the world.

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Coffee Bean Tiramisu Ice Blended, reviewed

I immediately liked the idea of a Tiramisu Ice Blended when I saw it appear as a “possible” new menu item a few weeks ago at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.  Tiramisu is a dessert that has a lot of great espresso flavor to it in its own right, and actually seemed like a fairly natural extension to a cold, blended drink (I wouldn’t want it hot, though).  Fortunately, the drink did the dessert justice. It was very creamy, with a little bit of extra dairy flavor that you might get from the mascarpone or whipped cream in a tiramisu, and seemed to have hints of butter cookie and sweet marsala in it, too. The best thing about the whole drink was that it had a really nice flavor of espresso to it. As a coffee fan, I’d say it was even better with an extra shot of espresso blended in to bring of the coffee flavor more

Sea Island Coffee Royal Tonga Coffee, reviewed

As you might suspect, Royal Tonga Coffee comes from the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific. The coffee is a rare one and there is only one company, South Seas Coffee, that commercially produces and sells Tongan coffee. Just over 2 tons of coffee is produced and exported every year  – a figure that might sound like a lot until you compare it to the more than 55,000 tons exported from Kenya annually.

Tongan coffee is grown close to sea level and, as a result, has a unique element to its flavor profile: a hint of the sea. The coffee has a hint of a salty, woodsy element to it that reminded me of the small of driftwood at the beach. It has a very full, medium-bodied flavor with distinct notes of leather and a bit of spice as you finish. The coffee has a very round flavor, with only a bit of mild acidity to it. It’s very unusual, but also very drinkable and tasty. I think this is a great breakfast coffee that needs no sweetener or cream to complement it.

You can buy it online from Sea Islands Coffee.