Article by Gary Gresham

Specialty gourmet coffee is a very hot commodity in today’s market. The consumption of gourmet coffee has steadily grown with consumers enjoying the more sophisticated tastes of gourmet coffee beans. Specialty gourmet coffee, sometimes called premium coffee, is exceptional coffee beans grown only in ideal coffee-producing climates. These coffee beans have unique characteristics because of the soil they grow in which produce very distinctive flavors. Gourmet coffee has a more balanced flavor and richer taste than the standard mass-produced coffee. Gourmet coffee beans go through a rigorous process of certification that is stricter to help keep the quality high. In the 1974 issue of the “Tea & Coffee Trade Journal”, Erna Knutsen first used the term ‘specialty coffee’ to describe these unique coffee beans that are produced in special microclimates with these distinctive, exceptional flavors. In 1982 the Specialty Coffee Association of America was created by coffee professionals to help set quality standards for the specialty coffee trade. Since the 1990′s the growing popularity of the coffee houses and specialty gourmet coffee retailers, have made gourmet coffee one of the fastest growing food services markets in the world. In the United States alone, it nets approximately .5 billion a year. Some have compared specialty gourmet coffee to wine. The aromas and flavors have similarities in how the consumer connects with the two beverages. The characteristics of gourmet coffee however, are more even complex than wine. The coffee bean is more dependent on altitudes, climate and soil variation than with the grapes used for wine. The history and tradition of the specialty coffee grower makes this a very complex beverage. So pour yourself a cup of your favorite specialty gourmet coffee, sit back and enjoy, you deserve it. Copyright

Welcome to the all new Coffee Cups Mugs.org, a site dedicated to everything coffee.  Its kind of funny to me that so many people drink coffee every day and know so little about it.  I myself have been drinking coffee for years, but only now, in my forties am I really learning to appreciate how very different one cup of coffee can be from another.

Coffee and Coffee Beans

You’ve got coffees from different regions, you have different roasts, light, medium and dark as well as various blends.  You have instant coffee, ground coffee, fresh coffee beans and even organic coffee beans.  There seems to be no end to the variety of coffees available.  We could seemingly fill our coffee cups to the brim with a different brew every day for years.

From Coffee Bean to Coffee Maker

No one makes coffee from whole beans, but you may start with already ground coffee, or you may grind your own.  If you are talking about coffee grinders you have another whole realm of possibilities.  There are the single blade grinders, which will grind coffee into a powder if you over do it and you have various quality levels of burr grinders, many of which can be adjusted to grind your beans to various consistencies from fine to coarse.  This is important depending on what kind of coffee maker you are using.

Coffee Percolators, Coffee Makers and Coffee Presses

Now that you’ve got ground coffee, you need to somehow turn it into the drink we all know and love.  For that, you’ve got the old fashioned percolators like my grandma used to have, which actually make pretty good coffee.  You then move into a whole array of drip coffee makers, which can range in price from $19 to $199 or even more.  At the classy end of the spectrum you have coffee presses or French presses.  These are my personal favorite.   A coffee press does use a little more coffee and often only makes enough to fill two or three 11 ounce coffee cups at a time, but the coffee is pretty wonderful.

Coffee Cups and Mugs

Finally, now that you have your coffee brewed, you have to pour it into something.  This something could be a Starbucks cup, a plain typical 11 ounce coffee cup, a larger coffee mug or perhaps even a travel mug if you are heading out the door.  This is another whole world as you can get into cups and mugs of varying designes, sizes shapes, and themes.  They can be individuals or they can be sets of matching cups or mugs.  They might be photo mugs, promotional mugs, or they could even be personalized.  Many times, a person’s choice of morning coffee cup or mug can say as much about them as the car they drive, the clothes they wear, or the purse they carry.

I bet you never considered how much variety existed in the world of coffee.  In the coming months, I hope to share my favorite coffee related stuff, and I’d love to hear from all of you on the web.  Together maybe we can find coffee nirvana… the perfect cup of joe.  If not, we’ll at least have a little fun sitting around the computer with our favorite coffee cups and enjoy a laugh or two.

Cheers -

Joe