The Coffee and Tea Festival!

Welcome to this week's Coffee and Tea Festival. This is a weekly gathering of interesting posts regarding coffee and tea. Not just about the products but about the people, places, things and ideas that coffee and tea influence. Did you catch last week's version over at Behind the Bar? If not, break and check it out and then get back here! I'm going to start this edition with a bit of a tea lesson. I really do appreciate tea but do not know much - to be honest. As a catering company, we are always working on better ways to store our coffee when we are on the road and then when we are back at our showroom. But what do we do with our tea? Traci Hayner Vanover presents Proper Tea Storage Methods at her blog - Drink Better Tea - Tea Information & Resources - Tea Enthusiasts Blog. I was reading this post and really began to realize that tea is much like coffee or any other product that has the ability to go stale or take on flavors not native to the product. This means it is even more important to take care. As she says, you made the jump into fine teas and not the grocery store generic, take care of it! There is quite a bit more about tea over this blog so get over there if that fancies you! Let's get to coffee now. Did you hear about the latest from our friends at the green mermaid? If not, here is a post that talks more about their newest product in their "high quality" arsenal. Here is a story from Smart Money about the new product Via. What are your thoughts? Let's open it up here! There is one part of that piece that makes me a bit sad: "Consumers want coffee that is good enough, not the greatest cup". And that was said by Mike Ferguson of the SCAA! I will leave it to you on what your thoughts are. Our friends from Batdorf and Bronson Coffee Roasters are heading to Ethiopia and are going to be blogging about it. If you have not had a chance to go to origin, their upcoming posts should be a pretty honest look into the trip and what all is going on. Here we go again, another shop is taking away the 20oz size - thank you! Here is bit about Intelligentsia Coffee's decision to cut their 20oz drinks and what people (and the local news) is saying about it from Deaton: Got Coffee?. Oh, and for those that thing there is more "caffeine" in a 20oz latte from a 16oz - most likely you are wrong. I think there may even be a comment on the post about that. Many shops still use double shots in both the 16 and 20 oz drinks so really you are getting more milk - that's all. Billy Wilson is up to it again with his new store Barista set to open soon. You can read about it over at Oregon Live. And finally, a late "Happy Birthday" to my friend Chris over at Arizona Coffee. Way to go! And because it is your birthday, I thought about sending you some of what Ilana (aka the Hip Hostess) is serving up over at her blog The Hip Hostess. Espresso, chocolate, cookies, dang. I wonder where the coffee comes from? That will do it for this edition. Keep 'em coming! Do you have a submission for next week's Coffee and Tea Festival? Check out the ways to submit your post on anything (recipes, Fair Trade news, coffee house openings, new gadgets, etc) that is coffee and tea related. This edition will run on Friday, February 13th at Behind the Bar. Ways to submit your posts: E-mail them click here or use the button below: As always, I am willing to let someone else host this festival. If this might interest you, please email me at blog @ cafeevoke.com and I will pass along all the information that you need. ...be bold Tagged: cafe evoke catering, Oklahoma City, coffee catering, coffee and tea festival Add us on Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter!