Cool Beans

Ten Ways to Recycle Coffee Grounds

I'm always amazed at the information I find online. Today I discovered numerous ways to recycle coffee grounds, along with some rather unusual ideas as well. Enjoy!

1. Mix the grounds with water to provide your houseplants with an "energized" drink. Plants need the nutrients found in coffee grounds, including nitrogen and potassium, both common ingredients in store-bought fertilizer. Using organic grounds will provide a healthier and happier plant environment!
2. Sprinkle used grounds on your outdoor plants.
3. Sprinkle a ring of used grounds around a tree or plantings to deter ants.
4. Use slightly damp grounds on icy steps and sidewalks. The grounds stick to the ice, creating a safer walking surface.
5. Pour a few grounds down your drains to gently scrape the sides of the pipes. Do not use if pipes are already slow draining or clogged.
6. Use to scrub gunk off surfaces such as grills and greasy pans. Use wet or dry grounds.
7. Keep a container of dried coffee grounds in a shaker near the kitchen sink. Use to scrub strong odors such as fish, garlic and onion, from your hands.
8. Wet your face and scrub with one tablespoon coffee grounds. This is a gentle exfoliating wash for your face.
9. Use steeped grounds and a cotton swab to touch up furniture scratches.
10. Coffee grounds are a great addition to any compost pile. Just throw them into your compost bin, filter and all.

Be sure to check out the JavaLog ~ Voted "One of the Coolest Inventions" by TIME Magazine. Rumor has it you can make these yourself by mixing coffee grounds with candle wax and forming it into a log. If you attempt it, let us know how it works out!

Feel free to add your tips on Recycling Coffee Grounds in the Comments section.

For the best organic grounds on the planet, shop at Organic Planet Coffee and Tea.

Some Interesting Facts About Coffee

The Good:

• Coffee is the second-most traded commodity in the world economy, after oil.
• 46% of U.S. consumers say they are interested in purchasing organic products.
• 69% of U.S. consumers are "extremely" or "very concerned" about pesticides in food.
• Coffee is renowned as a mild body regulator - this means it helps your poopie come out easy ;o)
• Coffee contains B-complex vitamins and no fat.
• Coffee is great as a mild diuretic.
• Coffee is great for your diet! It has no calories!
• Each pound of coffee yields around 50 cups of the delicious brew. Coffee is the world's most inexpensive luxury.

The Bad:

• For every pound of gourmet coffee sold, small-coffee farmers receive between 12¢ and 25¢.
• Pound for pound, it requires over one pound of toxic agro-chemicals to get each pound of conventional coffee to market.
• The 3,500 beans on a coffee tree that go into making one pound of coffee have to be picked by labor that may average only a dollar a day.
• Third-world coffee workers and their families are routinely exposed to high-level chemical hazards which contribute to high-numbers of diseases, illnesses, and deaths.
• After 7-10 years of chemical farming methods the land is rendered sterile. Farmers must move on to new, fertile ground. The coffee industry decimates thousands of acres of tropical forests each year.

Benefits of Organic Coffee Farming:

• Certified organic coffee uses no pesticides, herbicides or chemical fertilizers.
• Shade-grown organic coffee contributes to a healthy eco-system. (When natural folliage is retained local flora and fauna continue to thrive.)
• Local farmers and their families are not endangered by chemical pollutants.
• Organic farmland remains fertile -- nutrients are not leached continually from the ground -- farmers can use the same plots of land for decades.

For the World's Finest Organic Coffee visit Organic Planet Coffee & Tea at www.organicplanetonline.com

How to Make the Perfect Latte

You could save yourself upwards of $5 a pop if you knew how to make a latte. You know those frothy beverages are well worth large sums of money, but it would be even more fulfilling if you could make one on your own, right? All you really need to become an independent latte drinker are the basic steps on how to make a latte. Once you have those, then you can perfect the process on your own.

The first part of the process of how to make a latte is making a great espresso. And the first step to this is grinding your espresso beans properly. If you don’t grind them enough, your grounds will be too coarse. The end result will be espresso that is thin and weak.

On the other hand, if you grind your espresso beans too much, your grinds will be too fine. Your espresso will then be bitter. Why even bother with a grinder, you ask? Grinding your own espresso beans, using a special espresso grinder or burr grinder, is only recommended by all the espresso experts in the know!

Once you have properly ground espresso beans, get your machine going. It should take 15 to 20 seconds to brew if you have a good pump. When it comes out, the espresso should have a darkish-brown foam on top, which is called crema by people who know how to make a latte. (You want to become like these people, remember?)

The most important part of how to make a latte

Make sure to stop the whole process once the liquid flowing out of the espresso machine becomes whitish-brown. This stuff will ruin your latte. Forcing more water through the grounds at this point will only give your drink a bitter taste.

Once you have your one to one and a half fluid ounces of espresso, it’s time to froth and heat the milk. You could heat the milk in a microwave or by stirring it in a pan on top of your stove.

However, if you really want to learn how to make a latte, then you must do it as the pros do it. This means using the steam heating tools on an espresso machine. They work better than any other method when it comes to efficiency, speed, texture, and taste.

Source: Coffee-SuperGuide.com :: Your source for gourmet coffee, espresso machines and more.

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Click on the link below for top-quality Coffee Equipment:

Zaccardi's - the "Coffee and Kitchen Specialists" offers premium coffee makers, espresso machines and our very own fresh roasted gourmet coffee as well as a full selection of specialty kitchen and cooking tools. 

What is Fair Trade?

Fair Trade is an innovative, market-based approach to sustainable development. Fair Trade helps family farmers in developing countries to gain direct access to international markets, as well as to develop the business capacity necessary to compete in the global marketplace.

By learning how to market their own harvests, Fair Trade farmers are able to bootstrap their own businesses and receive a fair price for their products. This leads to higher family living standards, thriving communities and more sustainable farming practices. Fair Trade empowers farming families to take care of themselves - without developing dependency on foreign aid.

Fair trade coffee is coffee that is traded by bypassing the coffee trader and therefore giving the producer (and buyer) higher profits.  Fair Trade does not necessarily mean that the extra money trickles down to the people who harvest the coffee. TransFair USA is an independent 3rd party certification that ensures that:

• Coffee importers agree to purchase from the small farmers included in the International Fair Trade Coffee Register.
• Farmers are guaranteed a minimum "fair trade price" of $1.26/pound FOB for their coffee. If world price rises above this floor price, farmers will be paid a small ($0.05/pound) premium above market price.
• Coffee importers provide a certain amount of credit to farmers against future sales, helping farmers stay out of debt to local coffee "coyotes" or middlemen.
• Importers and roasters agree to develop direct, long-term trade relationships with producer groups, thereby cutting out middlemen and bringing greater commercial stability to an extremely unstable market.

The Fair Trade Certified label guarantees:

A fair price
The Fair Trade Certified label guarantees that farmers and workers received a fair price for their product. The Fair Trade price means that farmers can feed their families and that their children can go to school instead of working in the fields.

Quality products
By receiving a fair price, Fair Trade producers can avoid cost-cutting practices that sacrifice quality. The Fair Trade producers' traditional artisanal farming methods result in exceptional products.

Care for the environment
Most Fair Trade Certified coffee, tea and chocolate in the US is certified organic and shade grown. This means that the products you buy maintain biodiversity, provide shelter for migratory birds and help reduce global warming.

(Sources: Fairtrade USA and Fair Trade Federation)

Welcome to Cool Beans

Welcome to Cool Beans--a blog for connoiseurs of all things coffee, tea and chocolate.

The purpose of this blog is to share the knowledge I have acquired about coffee, tea and chocolate and to spread the word about Organic Planet Coffee & Tea.

My goal is to provide the best of everything here -- educational resources, product reviews, links to cool websites, gift ideas and a good dose of humor.

Your questions and comments are always welcome, so feel free to post them in the "Comments" section. Please note that I do reserve the right to remove any spam, rude or stupid comments or anything else that I don't like.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Cool Bean Queen