Actually, "closet coffee drinker" probably isn't correct. My son, Jon, isn't hiding and drinking coffee. I just didn't find out, until very recently, that he's a regular coffee drinker although he rarely drinks it at home.
When you hit the middle age years, like I have, you start to take things for granted. One of those things happens to be hot coffee. I like my coffee hot, even though I've consumed iced coffee on occasion. In Japan, iced coffee is way more popular than it is in the US, or just about anywhere else. In the US, however, hot coffee is preferred by the average coffee drinker. Keeping coffee hot can be a challenge, depending on what you use to make it and where you intend to drink it.
I spotted a news article and read various sources to discover that Starbucks will be rolling out with a new instant coffee called "Via Ready Brew" in the US and Canada during September. The price? While there is no firm price set, they plan to charge USD $2.95 for a "book" of three or $9.95 for a box of 12. Come again? There is no way on Earth I would spend that much for instant coffee, regardless of what brand it is.
I usually don't follow a nationally syndicated newspaper column to its source, but this time I did. After reading a blurb, "Have a Java", I felt compelled to do so. A few hours later, I responded to a comment on that post about coffee and GERD (acid reflux disease) and I'll expound on that in a minute.
It seems that all of the coffee drinks in US coffee shops start with espresso as the base. It may not be true for all coffee shops, but it's certainly true for Starbucks and Seattle's Best.
Unlike most people who come and go and pay little attention to anything but what they're doing at the time, I observe everything that goes on around me. I have seen how both of these companies make coffee drinks — I purposely observed every facet from start to finish.
You're probably scratching your head and asking yourself "What the heck is Postum?" It would be more appropriate to ask yourself "What the heck WAS Postum?"
I originally wrote this article in February of 2007 and placed it on my main site. Little did I know at the time that Kraft Foods would be discontinuing the production of Postum in the fall of 2007. Although the article drew quite a few visitors then, and received a few comments, I believe it's better suited to be archived on this site instead of my main site because this site is about coffee and that one is not. Simple enough right? Anyway, this is the first of two articles I'll be moving over here. Enough with the explanation and on with the story — bear in mind that it was written in February of 2007:
I've already made it plain that I like coffee. In the US, coffee and donuts (doughnuts for you purists) go together like white on rice or ugly on an ape. It's not quite like that for Filipinos in the Philippines, but it is for Americans like me. What's even better than a cup of coffee and donut? A cup of coffee and a coffee cake donut!
What's the difference between a coffee cup and a coffee mug? While the terms are used interchangeably, there actually is a difference. A coffee cup, per se, holds one cup of coffee. A coffee mug, on the other hand, holds more than a cup. How much coffee a coffee mug can hold depends entirely on the design of the mug.
After watching the employees at one of the Starbucks locations in Phoenix, Arizona, my wife decided to do an experiment to see if she could make coffee that tasted as good as Starbucks coffee. More specifically, she wanted to reproduce the taste of their lattes.
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