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The former president of Matsuya Coffee in Aichi prefecture, Japan, was the inventor of the Apollo coffee machine. He once made coffee in Kilimanjaro, drank it, and found it was good. He thought and thought why it was good, and assumed that the atmosphere was related to this. So, he made a machine that brewed coffee under reduced pressure. It was in 1969, when Apollo landed on the moon, so he named it the Apollo coffee (machine). The machine looks like this Look at the machine on the left. Mr. Nakagawa of Flavor coffee has studied brewing under reduced pressure for years. When I asked him about the percentage of completion of his Apollo coffee machine, he replied that it was about 80%. I also asked him if there was anyone in Japan or abroad studying brewing under reduced pressure. He replied that there were probably no one but him. So, my question is: Do you know of anyone who studies coffee brewing under reduced pressure?

from MSNBC Own one? Want one? Any better than what you already own? Is this list complete? Opinions desired ...

I didn't see a thread dedicated to DD's coffee so I figured I'd start one. I've never been a big fan, I have to say. I like Starbuck's for my regular, everyday coffee. There are also a couple of independant roasters here in Chicago that brew a fine cup as well as Julius Meinl (from Austria). I guess I favor a strong cup of coffee. Now there are many, many people who swear by Dunkin' Donuts coffee. "They have great coffee!" I've tried it on many occasions and to me it tastes extremely weak. Like diner coffee. Maybe that's what it's supposed to taste like? Also, I usually drink my coffee black or with just whole milk. Lately it's been with the addition of whole milk. I've had DD coffee with cream and sugar and then the coffee is much more drinkable. But then, for me, it's more of a dessert. But maybe that's why it's so good? So, a question or two for the Dunkin' Donuts coffee drinkers... How do you take yours? Cream & sugar? What's your opinion of Starbucks coffee? Burnt-tasting?

clickety Edit to fix dual protocol header.

I find nothing -- but nothing -- about these, review-wise. I know no one who has one. Are they expensive or hard to maintain? Are they worth the $$; do they last? The company has been selling them for about 5 years, but I dont' know anyone, anywhere, who'se had experience with one. Again I turn to you, kind eG people who are currently holding my hand through the refrigeration selection. I do like my press pot, but Mr. FFB won't use it. Thanks in advance --

We have been losing power off and on all day and finally lost it for good around 11:30 this morning due to a tree on a power pole. Generally, I have enough freshly ground coffee to get me through but not today. After standing vacantly at my coffee grinder for over a minute, I knew I was in trouble. No problem, I thought- after all, how long can it take to cut down a tree? After 4 hours, I was getting desparate! Finally, I dumped some beans in 2 layers of paper bags and started whacking them with my rolling pin. At this point, my teenage son walked in, took one look at me and said, "Um, Mom, are you okay?" (always a good question when faced with a menopausal woman with a raised rolling pin!). My point is, I have now ground enough reserves ( and safely placed them in my freezer) to get through a prolonged outage. What lengths have you gone to to get your fix? Kate neo-Luddite

Unique Coffee Roasters offers seemingly good beans at a rather inexpensive price. Has anyone tried them, like them, dislike them?

Moving to the Northwest I greatly anticipated its famed coffee culture. Having lived in Italy, I became addicted to their concentrated short shots of coffee heaven. Sure enough, upon arrival I discovered espresso stands on almost every corner. Unfortunately I also discovered that while everyone sells espresso no one actually likes it or orders it. In fact I am convinced that the famed coffee culture of Seattle and Portland is no coffee culture at all, but, in fact, a flavored milk culture. Anything and everything is used to hide the flavor of coffee making the quality of the espresso that goes into the mix meaningless. Often I have to convince the barista (a title they should not be entitled to) that I don't want milk in my shot - as they refer to espressos in these parts. Stopping for coffee here always means standing in line as each person in front of you orders a complex concoction of mocha this or Carmel that followed by a line of other descriptors like: skinny, wet, dry, half-foam, half-caf and on and on. It takes the poor barista five minutes to make each masterpiece. They seem almost disappointed when I order my unglamourous espresso. Because no one actually tastes the coffee here, the quality of the espressos are usually quite bad and it takes a bit of detective work to search out the few coffee houses out of the thousands that surround you that can make the real deal. It seems very strange that such a well caffeinated bunch can't stand the taste of coffee.

Just tried yerba mate for the first time yesterday. I liked it. The flavor is not my favorite among teas but it was still enjoyable. Maybe I wasn't sure what to expect. And it had a nice, pleasant caffeine kick that was different from a coffee or black tea. Other than being from South America, I don't really know anything about yerba mate.

An article over at MSNBC talks about how ... As far as what kind of "coffee" they would use in the vending machines... It should be interesting to see how this turns out. Obviously this can't be a drop in replacement for their existing vending machines as they obviously will need a water supply line. Unless of course they make the units totally self contained in which it has a supply of brewing water, along with a drain bin and waste canister for the "spent" pods. I would hasten to guess this machines will require quite a lot of service and maintenance. The cleanliness factor of these machines worries me as well. Granted the pods in theory wont be leaving grinds around, but there we definately be some residual brewed coffee in the mechanisms that will turn bitter quickly.

I am looking for a online shop in the US to buy Movenpick coffee (a swiss brand). Weren't successful so far. Anybody with suggestions where I might find such coffee ?

Hi All, My wife and I had a pretty amazing tea experience at WD-50. Up until that point I've only been an very occasional tea drinker and then only earl grey or green tea in bags. I have always been a cocktail before a meal, wine during and expresso/coffee afterwards but I am toning that bit down. After some initial looking around it just seems like the flavor/paring combinations are awesome. Can someone point me to an site that can help educate me on pot types ect? What types of pots do you all use? Anyone know what kind of pot that was at WD, it had the loose tea in a cylinder in the middle? It was like a french press in a tea pot. Thanks, -Mike

does anyone own or had any Krups espresso machines ? The one I am looking at is a XP4050. I looked it up on Coffeegeek.com and the 2 reviews were split. So can anyone help ? What also would a comparable machine to this one ? Thanks

Just read the article at Gizmag about The AeroPress Coffee Machine: a new concept in an ancient art. Is this something anyone has bought and tried? Can you tell us about it?

What is supposed to be so great about them? And don't they make it very difficult to get the coffee into an espresso cup?

I've been craving a richer cup of coffee lately, so I've been using my Bodum vac pot for the last week or so. I haven't used one in years. I have a few questions. What kind of grind should you use? I've been using coarse. How long should you allow the coffee and water to brew before taking it off of the heat? Sometimes it boils, and sometimes it simmers. Does it matter? Thanks

article in Slate For extremely interesting economic details, do read the actual article ...

My dear old Gaggia Carezza has been around for nearly 5 years now, and over time it slowly degraded in performance. I finally got around to doing some invasive maintenence, disassembling the thing and cleaning out the boiler and replacing the gasket that seals the grounds into the filter handle. The machine is now totally revitalized, and making better coffee than it has in years. So, if your espresso machine is disappointing you, look into getting new gaskets and giving it a good cleaning. You'll not regret it.

Hi, I've never posted to this forum before, but since coffee's starting to become more important to me, I thought I'd better get some information. I'm not particularly fussy, liking an occasional capuccino from Starbucks or local coffee houses. But while shoveling the driveway after the last snowstorm, I kept thinking how nice it would be to go back inside and make my own capuccino. I'm not looking for great, just decent. At least mine would be consistent, which I can't say about Starbucks. So I want a cheap starter espresso machine. The Melitta 15 bar pump machine sounds like a good deal for the money. http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/sr=1-...asin=B0000645Z2 Anybody have it, try it, or know about it? I'd appreciate your experiences, or suggestions for other machines. Remember, cheap... my husband is a hard sell! Thanks.

I build small semi luxury townhomes near downtown Houston. I have a little plan that has a small room behind the kitchen. As an upgrade I was thinking about putting in either a wet bar area or a built in coffee bar area. Does anyone have any ideas for an area like this? Should the coffee maker be one of those built ins? Should I just include a good coffee machine? Thoughts...

First thing that comes to mind after using the Bunn this evening... <heavy, forced mechanical breathing> AND NOW, YOUR HIGHNESS, WE SHALL DISCUSS THE LOCATION OF YOUR HIDDEN REBEL BASE. BUT FIRST, I SHALL HAVE A MONSTER POD. YOU DON'T KNOW THE POWER OF THE DARK SIDE WHEN I HAVEN'T HAD MY MORNING CUP. Lord Vader and My Cafe.. Separated at birth. Even the lighted BUNN logo is the same color as Darth's light saber. It's a mean looking machine and it makes a mean cup of coffee -- no doubt about that. I tried it so far with Baronet French Vanilla and Baronet "Monster" 12 gram Kenya AA pods -- nice extraction at 8oz, although the "Monster" can easily brew at 10 or 12 oz and still give you a -really- strong coffee. The blue illumination while the system is brewing is really cool, and I like the manual selection switch for brew volume. I will say this, the sucker is -really- loud when the brew pump is going. Its powerful and it means business. Is it as high tech and sexy looking as the Simplehuman? Nope. I really like its Sith Lord appearance, though, and it does the job it's supposed to do. Really nice construction too. Its definitely a BUNN and true to its Bunn-o-matic heritage, no question about that. Its pricier than the Simplehuman or the Senseo, but this thing is clearly made for battle -- you could bring this into a small office and have no problem with this thing being constantly on -- its designed to power down into a hibernation mode after a few hours of inactivity and switches itself off automatically after two weeks. The re-prime is extremely fast -- you can do mug after mug with this thing, with maybe only 30 seconds wait time between mugs. <iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=egulletcom-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B0002E4VY0&=1&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000ff&bc1=000000&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe> On Amazon you can get this unit for $25 off ($175) and are entitled to free shipping if you use the checkout code "HOHOHOHO"

I've been drinking coffee recently from Peets and Starbucks and find that the coffee they serve seems to be brewed super strong. Is it me or does anyone else find this to be the case? Is this a conspiracy by the coffee chains to get their customer addicted?

During a two-week trip around Cambodia, I noticed that the coffee always seemed to have a pronounced chocolate flavor. I visited a number of places--Phnom Penh, Kampot, Battambang, Siem Reap--but the chocolate flavor was always there. (I tended to avoid adding sweetened condensed milk, although it actually complemented the flavor of the coffee quite well.) I bought a bamboo container of coffee at the Phnom Penh airport on my way home; when I brewed some a few days later in New York, sure enough, the chocolate flavor was right there. Has anyone else found the same thing? Is it a characteristic of the bean variety, or has something been added to the coffee? I believe there was an article on Cambodian coffee in Gastronomica some time ago, but I haven't been able to get my hands on a copy.

Having never had tasted the quality of the coffee coming out of a Keurig machine, I couldn't understand why people would even think about buying a proprietary coffee dispensing system like the K-Cup, with such a diversity and abundance of Pod coffee on the market. Well, sometimes, proprietary standards also means higher quality and better technology -- and in terms of the quality of product the Keurig can produce, the proprietary system is totally justified. I just tasted the Timothy's Decaf Colombian coffee and Celestial Seasonings Breakfast Blend tea, and they were excellent. The recycle/re-prime on the Keurig is very fast, and the water comes out at a nice 192 degrees (although you can manually step it down to 187 you want to go colder, such as if you wanted to flush pure water thru the system and brew a high quality loose-leaf Chinese tea in your mug, for example) As far as i understand, the primary difference between the B50 and B60 is that the B60 has 3 pour sizes whereas the B50 has two, and the B60 has a lighted control panel and reservoir plus chrome effects. I'm not sure if it justifies the extra $50, but it definitely is one seriously cool looking coffee machine and you can easily tell how high the mechanical build quality of this thing is and how strong the electrical pump is. In terms of ease of use nothing could possibly be easier -- the water tank is easy to pour into, the loader mechanism a child (or a senior citizen in assisted living) could master, and there is virtually no cleanup required. For a small office environment I'm not sure what could possibly beat the Keurig system if you were going the single-serve route. So do I like the Keurig system and K-Cups? It may be premature, but I would say its a resounding "Hell Yes!". I'm really looking forward to more and more K-cups -- hopefully Keurig will make it easier for 3rd parties to produce the cups, or that they will be partner with more companies in the future.

There has been an interesting development in the patent issues regarding the coffee pods. In Belgium, the Supreme Court has decided that only Douwe Egberts can produce the coffee pods, because they have registered this particular invention. This means that in Belgium, no other producers are allowed to make/sell coffee pods anymore. Douwe Egberts lost a similar case in the Netherlands a few months ago, but now that they have prevailed in Belgium, this may have interesting implications for the EU, the UK and perhaps the US. Translates from Dutch roughly as: