Coffee Crone: Taming Coffee Blog

August 19 2006

I Should Be Golden

So, I'm sitting here sipping my morning brew. Nope, it's not time for my heat gun/bread machine beans yet. Today it's all about Ethiopian Horse Harar Lot #19. I roasted 3 separate small batches, with one of them being almost (but not quite) a Vienna roast, one to what I would call city+, and the third as a full city. I mixed the three together, thus creating a mélange.

It's one of those beans that tastes a whole lot different, depending on the level of roast, and I like hints of all of the possibilities in my cup. At day three, it has a bit of that funky smell and taste I've come to associate with this bean. Tomorrow, four days from roasting, that part will mostly be gone. It will still be wonderful, just in a different way.

Such is the lifecycle of craft roasted beans.

This is not a bean I roast and send out as gifts, not on its own, unless I already know that it will be well received. It's much "safer" to make a person's first introduction to home roasted beans a bit tamer. I do though sneak a bit of it in with something more predictable, and at about 25% of a blend, it adds a certain oomph.

There's an interesting article in the NY Times about the health benefits of coffee. It's not, btw, a caffeine thing.

From the article:

Larger quantities of coffee seem to be especially helpful in diabetes prevention. In a report that combined statistical data from many studies, researchers found that people who drank four to six cups of coffee a day had a 28 percent reduced risk compared with people who drank two or fewer. Those who drank more than six had a 35 percent risk reduction.

Some studies show that cardiovascular risk also decreases with coffee consumption. Using data on more than 27,000 women ages 55 to 69 in the Iowa Women’s Health Study who were followed for 15 years, Norwegian researchers found that women who drank one to three cups a day reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease by 24 percent compared with those drinking no coffee at all.

But as the quantity increased, the benefit decreased. At more than six cups a day, the risk was not significantly reduced. Still, after controlling for age, smoking and alcohol consumption, women who drank one to five cups a day — caffeinated or decaffeinated — reduced their risk of death from all causes during the study by 15 to 19 percent compared with those who drank none.

I should be golden, right?