JOE PICKS A WINNER: GOURMET COFFEE

Rogers San Francisco Bay French Roast

While visiting friends in California, my hosts served an utterly delicious brew that I thought for sure was some hoity toity upscale gourmet coffee California-style, meaning pricey for my midwestern sensibilities.

Come to find out, the San Francisco Bay French Roast from the Rogers Gourmet Coffee & Tea Market is a true bargain. So much so, that the San Francisco Bay French Roast is my everyday choice. While I do enjoy a cup of Dunkin, and some select Starbucks creations, for all around value, quality and taste, this French Roast is the winner by far.

With a three pound bag of beans at only $20, add to that free shipping for orders over $50, even greater discounts on larger orders, and a loyalty club for repeat customers, the Rogers Gourmet Coffee & Tea Market will be delivering the best coffee right to my door for a very long time. Gourmet coffee gift baskets too!

Want a bigger caffeine jolt?

Sometimes you need more than just a delicious cup o' Joe, pardon the expression, and for those times I love the double dose of caffeine that Shock Coffee provides.

Not only do they make a nice regular brew, but you can get your caffeine groove on with their tasty Triple Latte, or better yet, the Triple Mocha blend. You can never go wrong with the great blend of coffee and chocolate!

Great to have chilled around the office when your productivity needs a little pick-me-up. For the ultimate in convenience, Shock-A-Lots are chocolate covered, candy-coated, hyper-caffeinated, Shock coffee beans! A handful of these are the equivalent of downing 2 cups of coffee while you're on the run. Don't waste time in that barista line, just pop a few Shock-A-Lots in your mouth, savor the goodness, and go!

Flavored Gourmet Coffee and Tea

At times I enjoy a flavored coffee, a nice french vanilla or hazelnut when I'm feeling a bit exotic, but it's so disappointing to buy a whole pound, only to discover you're not too crazy about the taste.

Either the flavoring is too overpowering to your palette, or simply unremarkable.
Capella Flavors is proud to announce a new and exciting way to flavor your coffee or tea, "one cup at a time". For the first time, you are able to add the same flavoring to your favorite coffee or tea that we add to our coffee beans to produce our flavored coffees.

Capella Coffee is the first company to actually formulate our existing flavorings into a liquid form which you can now add directly to your coffee or tea.

Coffee Makers and Accessories

Perhaps not for the squeamish, but true coffee lovers are generally never timid anyway, so the AeroPress Coffee and Espresso Maker is all about great tasting coffee and control.

Having control over water temperature, amount of coffee grounds, and steep time, means you have to be more attentive, but the end result is worth the extra effort. Besides, brewing a great cup of coffee is an acquired skill that's good to have, both for personal fulfillment, and it's appreciated by friends and family, too.

Granted, when I have guests, I use a regular 12 cup drip coffee maker. But when I'm alone, I use the AeroPress. While it doesn't have the convenience of an automatic brewing system, there's minimal clean-up, and the coffee making morning ritual has become something I look forward to every day. Sometimes twice!

And for those times when you do have guests and you need more ground coffee beans at one time, try the Capresso Infinity Conical Burr Grinder.

It has a quarter pound ground coffee bin, more than enough to adequately flavor your 12 cup pot. With a common little blade grinder, the temptation is to overfill with beans when there are more than one person drinking coffee, and that inevitably ends up with spillage.

But the Capresso Infinity is automatic in that you don't have to stand there holding down a button to grind the beans, empty and refill. Just select your grind, push the button and go. No more wiping up coffee grounds from the counter. You also have 16 levels of even grind to choose, from super fine to super coarse.

Fairly easy to clean, and for a superior burr grind, compared to most blade grinders, the Capresso Infinity approaches commercial grade making it a great kitchen investment for under 100 bucks!

Does Coffee Have Any Antioxidant Benefits?

Author: Aaron Matthews Morgan

Before we get all excited over the recent news about coffee being our new antioxidant, we need to take a look at the entire picture. Is there truly a coffee antioxidant? If there is, how exactly is coffee an antioxidant? Does it become the antioxidant when it's heated? Does the coffee antioxidant benefit everyone? Are there still dangers to drinking coffee? How much coffee is good for us and when does it become bad for us?

Brewed coffee contains many antioxidants and consumption of antioxidant-rich brewed coffee may inhibit diseases caused by oxidative damages. Antioxidants are said to be an inhibitor of certain types of diseases. However, coffee beans are not all a like. Not all coffee beans are of the same quality or even the same make up. Sort of like comparing tennis shoes to sandals. Both go on your feet, but they are not made up of the same components. You can actually break coffee down into several different water-soluble components. The dietary fiber derived from roasted coffee silverskin. This is one component of the coffee bean that has high antioxidant content. This is how the scientists find out about the antioxidant benefits of coffee in their studies. What they do in fact is the break down the coffee beans into different components. They filter out the components that the coffee antioxidant is found in, and then they test lab rats in a variety of experiments to determine how well they survive with or without the various additives in their diet. When they discover something really swell, like a coffee antioxidant, our culture of coffee drinking addicts suddenly becomes a feverish mob.

For years and years we've heard bad things about coffee. For example: it's bad for your heart, increases blood pressure, may cause breast cancer, probably keeps you awake at night, and my personal favorite, has a poisonous gas when brewed.When the world of coffee addicts even gets a tiny hint that coffee could have something beneficial, believe me they don't just drink more coffee, they try to get everyone to join them. So, here we now have scientific studies proving to us that coffee has antioxidants.

Researchers have identified several compounds in coffee that create a coffee antioxidant. Why would this be of interest to us? Because scientific studies are showing that antioxidants may help prevent cancer. You see the connection here. However, until human studies are done, science cannot state exactly how much coffee must be consumed in order gain this protection against colon cancer or any other type of cancer. Before the coffee is roasted the antioxidant benefits are varied. However, once the coffee is roasted and served as a drink things get evened out. They all seem to have the same degrees of antioxidants.

Some studies suggest coffee having other benefits such as added fertility in men and some benefits for those suffering from diabetes. You'll have to read those studies on your own. The fact that a coffee antioxidant exists may be true, but the reality is that coffee can be just as harmful if your body doesn't like it, if you consume too much, if you have high blood pressure, and if it keeps you awake at night. Is there truly a coffee antioxidant? Yes, but the actual amount needed to be consumed in order to receive the anti-cancer benefits by humans is unknown. How exactly is coffee an antioxidant?

Coffee alone isn't the antioxidant, it's several different components that are part of the coffee bean. Roasting and heating the coffee changes the total antioxidant output. Does it become the antioxidant when it's heated? It seems that although some coffee beans like green coffee beans may be higher in antioxidants that other more common beans, once they are roasted and heated for consumption, the results are the same regarding the antioxidantal benefits. Does the coffee antioxidant benefit everyone? Honestly, this is NOT a question easily answered. In fact, the truth is it is still unknown just how beneficial coffee antioxidants are for humans. Are there still dangers to drinking coffee? Yes, of course there is. If you have high blood pressure and you have seen how coffee enhances this problem, you know it's bad for YOU personally. If you can't get proper sleep or you drive everyone around you nuts because you can't sit still or shut-up, you know coffee is bad for you.

Use common sense and listen to your body. Coffee is not good for everyone and unknown just how good for anyone. How much coffee is good for us and when does it become bad for us? Again drink coffee in moderation, pay attention to your own body. Exercise and good eating habits are a far better way to get healthy than drinking 10 cups of cappuccino a day. All things in moderation. After reading everything about this new thing called a coffee antioxidant I have decided that there are better ways of getting antioxidants into my blood.

Coffee may have many benefits, but so does water and it is possible to drown from drinking too much water. Yes, I know, you have to really drink a lot to accomplish this, but it's the principle of the matter. Too much of anything is not a good thing.

About the Author:

Aaron Matthews-Morgan is the owner of Heavenly Kona Coffee, an e-business that specializes in 100% Gourmet Kona Coffee from Hawaii. HeavenlyKonaCoffee.com is also a premier website for free information and resources, providing quality info and articles on everything related to coffee. Go to: http://www.heavenlykonacoffee.com

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/home-and-family-articles/does-coffee-have-any-antioxidant-benefits-260429.html