Tropical Iced Coffee in the Green Mountains

While we've still got some summer left here at Brown and Jenkins in the Green Mountains of my rural mountain home in VT I wanted to share one of my favorite coffee related summertime passions. Iced coffee!

Tropical Iced Coffee Recipe

If you love coffee, but don't think you are an iced coffee fan, maybe you've never had it made correctly. Let's face it, if you just plop ice cubes into your mug they melt and you just end up with cold and watery coffee- ugh! I found this wonderful step-by-step guide to creating a delicious iced coffee over at The Pioneer Woman. Made with this summer's Tropical Oasis coffee, it is truly paradise in a glass.

• Take a pound ground coffee (as recently ground as possible!)
• Add 8 quarts very cold water
• Stir
• Cover and let sit for 8 hours
• Strain with cheesecloth covered strainer into new container
• Cover and refrigerate until cold
  

Then just load a glass with cubes, add some half and half, 3 Tablespoons of condensed milk and the sweetener of your choice. It will be gone before the ice has a chance to melt!

Coffee Ice Cubes

However, there is another option to get around that melted ice problem if you like to sip. Make some of that ground coffee liquid into ice cubes! Add those and even as they melt you'll be getting more of that coffee flavor and no watered down coffee.
Finally, I'll just note that using a James Bond type shaker and shaking the cubes and ingredients can give your iced coffee that frothy touch that some folks like. (OK, any shaker will do, but why not go for the touch of danger?)

Until our next cup, whether iced or hot,
Sandy Riggen

Vermont Frac Packs and Local Coffee Connections

Good Morning Coffee Lovers,

Tomorrow is another Second Saturday Market right here in the Brown and Jenkins parking lot from 10 to 2. Most of you know that we are located on Route 15 in the Green Mountains of Cambridge, Vermont and across the road from the beautiful Boyden Valley Farm and Winery. Once again you can find kids crafts, Boyden Organic beef, maple syrup, crafts, jewelry and more from local artisans and entrepreneurs. Not to mention the best fresh roasted coffee for a dollar!

Online Access and Local Ties

Even though you can order Brown and Jenkins coffee online, and follow us via Twitter or our facebook page, we are a local Vermont company at heart. Yes, I love that we can ship fresh roasted coffee to you no matter where you live, but I don't ever want to lose sight of the commitment to local service that seems to connect Vermont businesses and spur our local economy.

Frac Packs for Businesses

And being a small business owner, taking care of small businesses is my passion. That's why we offer the Frac Packs of our best regional ground coffees. If you've not heard the term frac pack, a fractional package of coffee is simply a pre-portioned unit of ground coffee in a package that contains its own filter. The benefit to an office, restaurant or home business is that you can buy a case of 40 with great consistency of taste and little clean up.

Whether you are a church group, rotary club or other entity, I'd love to hear how you use these frac packs. Or, if you think this is a good option, let's talk!

Until our next cup,
Sandy Riggen

Drink Coffee to Your Health

Good Morning Coffee Lovers,

This early August morning in the Green Mountains was the perfect time to sit on the Brown and Jenkins screened-in porch and catch up on my back reading. You know what I mean; that huge pile of magazines and articles I set aside to read through, but somehow never got around to!

As I sat sipping my cup of Lake House Blend coffee, I came across an article in USA Weekend that was written by a writer for www.StopAgingNow.com on the many health benefits of coffee. Now, I'm not recommending that you ditch your doctor for a bag of coffee beans, but this is pretty compelling information for coffee drinkers.

Health Benefits of Coffee

The major health benefits from coffee as reported in this article, and based on studies, are for:

• Heart Health: Women who drink 1-3 cups of coffee per day, in the 55 to 69 age range, are 24% less likely to die of heart disease than those who don't drink coffee.
• Liver Health: Less than a cup of coffee a day decreased cirrhosis by 30%, while 4 or more cups decreased it by 80%, in a Kaiser Permanente study of heavy alcohol drinkers.
• Diabetes: Both men and women who drank 6 cups of coffee daily showed half the risk of type 2 diabetes as the non coffee drinkers in this Harvard study. Even decaf showed a reduction although that amount wasn't noted in this article.
• Parkinson's: Depending on whose study you want to believe coffee drinkers have a far lesser chance of developing Parkinson's disease. The Harvard study referred to says the chances are about 30% less, while an Italian study reports an 80% reduction.
  

So I'm no scientist, but I'll keep drinking to studies like these!

Until our next cup,
Sandy Riggen