Posts from — February 2010

Jerry Baldwin of the Atlantic offers a few tips on what to do when you’re stuck in a hotel and the only thing on offer in the morning is the hotel coffee in your room:

If I’ve failed to purchase bottled water, I draw the tap water the night before. This achieves two things: the chlorine will partially evaporate, and the temperature will rise to room temperature. The heaters in coffeemakers will raise the temperature a certain number of degrees. They don’t have holding tanks like commercial machines. A twenty-degree difference between newly drawn tap water and room temperature will result in nearly a twenty degree increase in brewing temperature.

I used to just bring my own coffee with me when I traveled (I know, I know) but a few years ago hotels began to replace normal filters and pouches of coffee with pre-packaged coffee that came in an unbleached pouch that doubled as a filter. I’ve toyed with some of the tips offered in this article but some are new to me–my favorite is the above tip about letting the hotel tap water sit overnight, since most of the time I loathe the overchlorinated water in hotel taps and the rubbery coffee it makes in the hotel coffee machines.

This past week, I’ve been ironing out the details of an agreement with Coffee Kids, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping families in coffee-growing communities through microcredit and other projects. Fremont Coffee is going to have a relationship with Coffee Kids so we can start giving back to the people that make the best coffee possible.

Coffee Kids has been around a long time, and they do good work. They create project lists to fund specific activities in coffee-growing regions that help to educate the populace and diversify the economy. This could mean anything from funding a new school to extending a microloan to help a farmer’s wife open a local side business. Because each community has a different range of problems facing it, Coffee Kids takes these communities individually and suggests projects tailored to address that community’s issues.

In addition to an annual cash contribution, our shop is going to donate 15% of the proceeds from our Fremont Farmer’s Market blend to fund various Coffee Kids projects. Later this year we’re going to try to host a lecture or two in the store from a Coffee Kids representative to talk about what the organization does and how it works (along with a cupping). And we have more planned for this year with Coffee Kids, so stay tuned.