Island Coffee®

 We bid farewell to Billy C. who has been our plant manager and roaster extraordinaire  for the past total of fourteen years. Billy perfected his roasting skills durning the last four years at Island Coffee and is a credit to the roasting community. Billy was not only our junior resident roaster he is also accomplished in many other areas such as graphic design and office management. We look forward to reading about his success and hope he remains in the coffee industry where his knowledge will always be needed and appreciated. Good luck to our friend from all of us at Island Coffee. 

 Latte art is often put in the category of unnecessary and time consuming. It is just something that baristas with idle time do. Why would you do it when you have a line of customers who may not even notice your creation? And worse yet you will have to train your baristas to be able to do it quickly and with an artistic flair, something that may not come natural and will require practice.

 If you read between the lines you probably can see why it is a necessary addition to a successful latte service. In the days of super-automatic machines and push button baristas the only thing for certain is that you don’t want to look like the competition when it comes to the coffee drinks you make. A semi-automatic or volumetric machine and latte art can make a significant difference in your customers perception of your craft. Believe it or not,  latte art forces the barista to make a better drink.

 What did he just say? That’s crazy? Maybe not if you think it through!

  Latte art requires the proper extraction of espresso to make adequate crema. Without good crema  latte art is compromised and without crema an espresso is not extracted properly. If you don’t have adequate crema it may also reveal stale coffee, poorly designed espresso or an improper grind, tamp or dose.

 Latte art does not lend itself to reused milk that was previously steamed. (Something that shouldn’t be done anyway but is often a part of a poorly thought out cost analysis program). Reused milk tastes bad and is bacteria risky.

 Latte art does not allow for the milk to be over-steamed and therefore over-heated.  There is little worse,  other than bad coffee or sour milk,  then a mouth burning latte.

Latte art shows the customer your talents and creates an air of professionalism that a well trained and seasoned barista deserves.

Latte art seperates you from the rest or shall we say the best from the rest. The “big boxes” can’t do it but you can!

 Something to think about, or not. It’s your future.

Coffee Strong Enough to Ward Off Dementia? Moderate Coffee Drinking Reduces Risk of Dementia and Alzheimer’s by 65% in Study By Bill Hendrick
WebMD Health NewsReviewed by Louise Chang, MD Jan. 16, 2009 — Drinking coffee in moderate amounts during middle age may reduce the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in the elderly, according to a new study.Researchers in Finland and

Sweden examined the records of 1,409 people whose coffee drinking habits had been recorded when they were at midlife.

Those who drank three to five cups of coffee per day in midlife were much less likely to have developed dementia or Alzheimer’s in follow-up checks two decades or more later, the researchers say in the January issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.“Given the large amount of coffee consumption globally, the results might have important implications for the prevention of or delaying the onset of dementia/Alzheimer’s disease,” Miia Kivipelto, a researcher from the University of Kuopio, Finland, and the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, says in a news release. “The finding needs to be confirmed by other studies, but it opens the possibility that dietary interventions could modify the risk of dementia/AD. [And it] might help in the development of new therapies for these diseases.”Coffee and DementiaIn the study, participants were asked in 1972, 1977, 1982, or 1987, when they were all in midlife (average age 50), how much coffee they drank. Then they were split into three groups: low coffee drinkers (zero to two cups per day), moderate coffee drinkers (three to five cups per day), and high coffee drinkers (more than five cups per day).Of the participants, 15.9% were low coffee drinkers, 45.6% were moderate coffee drinkers, and 38.5% were high coffee drinkers.After an average of 21 years, 1,409 people between ages 65 and 79 were re-examined. A total of 61 were classified as having dementia, 48 with Alzheimer’s.The study showed that coffee drinkers at midlife had a lower risk for dementia or Alzheimer’s later in life than people who drank little or no coffee at midlife. The lowest risk was found among moderate coffee drinkers. Moderate coffee drinkers had a 65%-70% decreased risk of dementia and a 62%-64% decreased risk of Alzheimer’s compared with low coffee drinkers, the researchers write.At midlife, those who drink the most coffee daily had the highest total cholesterol levels and the highest rate of smoking. At late life, the low coffee drinkers had the highest occurrence of dementia and Alzheimer’s and the highest scores on a scale of depression.“We aimed to study the association between coffee and tea consumption at midlife and dementia/AD risk in late life because the long-term impact of caffeine in the central nervous system was still unknown, and … the pathologic processes leading to Alzheimer’s disease may start decades before the clinical manifestation of the disease,” Kivipelto says.The researchers note that previous studies have shown that coffee drinking improves cognitive performance, and caffeine reportedly reduces the risk of Parkinson’s disease.The researchers say it’s not known how coffee would offer protection against dementia, but that coffee drinking also has been associated with a decreased risk of type 2 diabetes, which is a risk factor for dementia. The authors speculate that the effect may have something to do with coffee’s antioxidant capacity in the blood.The study also showed that tea drinking was not associated with a reduced risk of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

Well, we looked north and it didn’t look good. We looked west and it didn’t look good. We looked in our backyard and it didn’t look good. My gosh, the ecomony doesn’t look good. So we pulled the plug on our booth at the SCAA. For us, there is too much uncertainty and too much money to risk when we are vunerable in the present economy.

 You can still sample our chais and espresso concentrate. Give us a call or an email for a sample. As always our products reflect what we believe in. All natural and made from the truly finest ingredients. Visit our web site for more info. From our yerba mate with mint leaf, green tea with ginger, rooibos with stevia, original recipe with clove and cinnamon, or our low sugar with stevia our chai aims to please and at an affordable price.

 Island Coffee will be participating at the Atlanta SCAA (speciality coffee association of America) show in April 2009. Plan on attending this spring and stay for a day or two. For those in a “local” commute, Atlanta can be fun with a car but not at certain times of the day. Rush hour is usually out of control.

 Island Coffee will be showcasing our line of chai and coffee concentrates. These products advance our belief in all-natural products wherever and whenever possible. The chai’s will consist of our original recipe black tea chai with clove and other natural spices. Also, our green tea chai spiced with ginger and honey, our yerba mate chai spiced with vanilla and mint leaf, and our rooibos red chai with stevia. The rooibos red chai with stevia is caffeine-free and has no sugar added.

 Our coffee concentrate is all-natural and makes a wonderful addition to your frozen or iced latte menu. The powders just can’t compete with our true-brewed flavor and our all-natural ingredients. If you read the ingredients in the powder latte products and most of the few liquid products, it is nightmare of artificial colors and  flavors and preservatives and fillers. You may not want your customers to know that or better yet get rid of it and the guilt. Why would you buy organic coffees and then buy the artificial coffee ingredients? It really doesn’t make financial or ethical sense.

 We hope to see you and have you sample what we make. Although we are a over-the-top coffee roaster celebrating our 25th year, we will be showcasing these products exclusively in Atlanta. Our coffee selection is vast and we don’t have enough convention space for everything we make and sell. Visit our website for more information about our complete line-up.

 We hope to see you there.