Curiosity Café: this week's update

Our reporters are going to keep you posted on curiosities and news from the world of coffee.

Coffee brewing: a mind map

Go green on St. Patrick's Day: coffee in Ireland

Ireland is not only Irish coffee. 

Even if tea is still more drunk than coffee, the trend is slowly changing. More and more people are drinking coffee, su much so that Dublin has recently been listed by a travel website as fourth best city in the world - first in Europe - for coffee lovers. 

Last year a national research found out that 3/4 of Irish adults drink coffee: Cappuccino is the most popular choice, followed by Americano. Only 10% drink Espresso.

There are more and more cafés serving different types of coffee; instant coffee sales are decreasing but, on the other hand, fresh coffee sales are increasing. That means that a new coffee culture is spreading.

Moreover, a recent initiative has drawn inspiration from the Italian tradition of "suspended coffee" and has been introduced to Ireland to help people in need, especially homeless people. For further information, visit Suspended Coffee Ireland's website or their facebook page.

A cup of coffee is really enough to change the world, even if little by little.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Coffee message

A visit to a coffee trade de niculinac

A recipe in images: Tiramisu

Tiramisu (Enhanced) from nichita on Vimeo.

Coffee Roasting

As special reporters for TIE2015 and our project blog, we have visited Caffè Benitez in Teramo, about 30 km from where we live. Anna and Viviana, our hosts, and their assistants and husbands showed us their coffee shop and roasting lab.

We saw the different blends and could touch the green beans coming from various countries all over the world.

Arabica or Robusta? We couldn't recognize them by looking only at the beans.

It was an exciting afternoon. 

We witnessed the operation of a roasting machine and could smell and taste the coffee beans.

No coffee for us: we're too young!  But we were offered chocolates! Great!                             

A cup of coffee, in the future...

Every morning I wake up at half past 6 when my bed massage program starts. After a quarter of an hour, my place becomes alive: an enticing smell of coffee invites me in the kitchen.

After  drinking a large cup of coffee with a slice of bread with seeds, I get dressed for work.

My car has a new GPS-4D help program, made especially for megacities. With the help of the fastest real time communication module, the program can memorize the starting point, the finishing point, all filters you may select (such as: short way, detours, scheduled stops to pick up buddies on the road etc.), and can modify the selection made by receiving non-stop real traffic information.  For instance yesterday, because of the New Old Computers Festival, all traffic was disturbed. I was forced to remain in traffic for two long hours, in spite of my last GPS-4D help program updated. So, I switched to my last bioengineering task concerning my research on designing, implementing, obtaining and printing of a new 4D - sort of coffee (the usual 3D plus the fourth dimension: the flavor, the unrivalled smell of coffee). I’m working together with my best high school friend…she was crazy about coffee and … genetic engineering. We almost finished the project, and the results are great! Our boss, a great coffee drinker, didn’t feel the difference between our “self made coffee” and the natural one! We do hope that we will show our research work at the next Conference of the Unified Field Sciences…and we also hope to win a Nobel Nomination for the next year.

Now it is half past 8, and I’m at the office in front of my desk. We usually start our working schedule with a small video conference. Our boss, wherever he is, wants to discuss with us our tasks, so, at half past 8 sharp, every day, the large holographic monitor who occupies the northern wall of our office becomes alive, and we discuss our future projects. The office acoustics is amazing, so you can hear his voice wherever you are. But all our desks have microchips built-in that allow us to move during our conversation.

This new technology permits us to constantly change our body position, so that old problems of body improper position are only history. And I forgot to add, a peerless smell of coffee spreads over all of us. Yes, we are testing our new project… I reset all my thoughts, and close my eyes, and I drink a cup of coffee, and I start woking!

by Christina (”Food for life”)