COFFEE NEWS ROUNDUP: WEEK ENDING MARCH 15TH

An espresso sits atop a newspaper, seen from above

Another week has flown by, with too much to do and far too little sleep. On the plus side, however, that does mean it’s time for another edition of the Coffee News Roundup, where hard-hitting news and journalistic integrity… never really appear.

This is a news roundup about coffee—what did you expect?

Aeropress On the Move with the Forthcoming Aeropress Go - via Daily Coffee News

It’s been nearly 15 years since the Aeropress was introduced to the world, kick-starting a revolution in simplified coffee brewing utilizing durable but ill-fitting and occasionally infuriating plastic and rubber components.

An Aeropress coffee maker brewing on top of a scale, seen from above

The Aeropress’s key selling point has always been its travel-worthiness—light-weight, robust, and relatively easy to clean—which makes it even stranger that it’s taken this long for another one to hit the market. Travel people love new things, and they especially love new gadgets they can take camping or whatever.

So what’s new about the Aeropress Go? Well, it has a travel mug. That… seems to be it.

Basically it’s an Aeropress with a travel mug component to brew into, which then has a screw-top lid for safe carrying. How popular this will be with the travel coffee crowd remains to be seen, as most already have far too many reusable travel mugs as it is.

However, the fact that the Go mug is designed specifically to be used with the Aeropress, and will therefore hopefully lead to fewer instances of startled overflowing, means it might be a hit.

Read the full story here.

Nespresso is recycling its single-serve coffee pods to fight the problem it helped create - via Business Insider

You know how single-serve coffee pods are extraordinarily bad for the environment? You know how nearly a third of all Americans own a pod machine, but only a very small percentage of used pods end up being recycled? You know how the guy who invented the K-cup doesn’t even own one because of the waste problems?

Yeah, a lot of that is (surprise) Nestlé’s fault.

Nespresso is one of the two largest coffee pod producers in the country (the other being Keurig, obviously), helping to sell almost 4.5 billion (billion) pods in 2017. Now they’re trying to tackle the problem. Kind of. A bit.

Nespresso has partnered with a New Jersey-based company called Ag-Choice to recycle their used pods, but they’re still reliant on customers to take the time to ship them back. Which is asking a lot in the first place. Oh and then there’s the carbon footprint of the shipping itself.

Also, recycling is a far less effective earth-saving tool than simply not using the damn coffee pod in the first place.

Maybe just get some of those reusable filters and buy your coffee fresh instead. Most coffee places will even grind it for coffee pod machine use.

Read the full story here.

Burger King launches $5 a month coffee subscription - via The Takeout

You’ve got your Spotifys, your Netflixes, your Cheese of the Month clubs.

How about a free small coffee at Burger King, every day, for only $5 a month? That’s right, for about 17 cents per day, you too can drink a delicious cup of hot black water, and you don’t even have to take the time to put in your pesky card details or hand over a soggy dollar bill.

The modern world is amazing.

Read the full story here.

Americans Drinking More Gourmet Coffee Than Ever Before: Survey - via US News

OK first things first: what the heck does “gourmet coffee” mean? Gourmet is one of those lovely coffee-related weasel words that companies with badly-designed labels put on their bags to get you to buy their coffee in a dimly-lit grocery store at 8pm on a Thursday.

Premium is another. Hand-roasted is a good one (ouch?).

Two hands holding a cup of coffee each, seen from above

Right. So. The National Coffee Association did a survey, as they are wont to do, and according to them sixty-one percent of coffee drank in the United States is described by consumers as gourmet.

Great, utterly meaningless.

The article doesn’t say how the question was worded, or what options were given, or how they even defined gourmet.

So essentially, a lot of people drink coffee and a lot of those people consider the coffee they drink to be fancy in some nebulous way.

Nick Brown from Daily Coffee News goes into the NCA’s report in more detail here, and according to him their definition of gourmet is coffee brewed from “premium varieties”.

Glad we cleared that up.

Read the full story here.

Is coffee good for you?

Well, this one person doesn’t think so. A writer for Insider gave up coffee for three months after drinking it for years, and replaced it with tea. Probably better to wean off the caffeine addiction rather than going cold turkey, but apparently it still sucked: “So shortly after I stopped drinking coffee, I wasn't surprised when I got a painful headache that pulsed around my temples.”

Not surprising, really.

After a while everything evened out, and her sleep improved (a bit) and her skin got clearer (a bit). But guess what? She missed coffee. Because coffee is delicious, and as long as you don’t consume it like a hyperactive child with access to the candy bowl, it’s fine.

Oh hey you’re not sleeping very well? Maybe don’t drink that third cup of coffee. Have some chamomile.