Maple Syrup Coffee Liqueur
Those who love coffee, rum and North Woods maple syrup will be pleased to know there is a maple syrup coffee liqueur. Liqueur coffee comes with various sources of alcohol but Ardilla Negra from the Black Squirrel Distillery is the first use of maple syrup for this purpose. Buffalo Rising reports that a local distillery in Buffalo, New York has a new coffee liqueur product, Ardilla Negra Maple Coffee Liqueur. By the way, ardilla negra is Spanish for black squirrel.
The Buffalo distillery that is known for ingeniously using NY State maple trees to create its line of spirits, has struck sugary gold again. Black Squirrel Distillery is unveiling its third distilled product in the form of Ardilla Negra Maple Coffee Liqueur. The distillery, discretely camouflaged at the corner of Elmwood and Amherst, first opened a little over a year ago. Since that time, the outfit has been busy producing its initial varietal, Aged Maple Spirit, along with its spin-off product, Mapleshine.
The newest distilled masterpiece to utilize Grade A New York State maple syrup is sure to become a household favorite in no time. According to the distillers, the maple has been blended with a proprietary cold brew coffee blend and aged Caribbean rum, giving the concoction a completely unique flavor profile that will appeal to a wide variety of coffee, maple and/or rum fans.
If you want more info go to the Black Squirrel Distillery page. And if you are considering innovative ways to serve Ardilla Negra Maple Coffee Liqueur read a few of our articles about various coffee drinks with alcohol.
Irish Coffee
Irish coffee has been around for quite some time. We wrote about making the organic variety. But you can modify this recipe with maple syrup liqueur.
Organic All the Way
Start your organic Irish coffee with Panama Mountain Grown organic coffee or coffee from Colombia. You can order organic whiskey from http://www.graigfarm.co.uk/ if they do not have any at your local liquor store. Use organic brown sugar and organic whipping cream. Because of all the cooler ingredients you will be adding make sure that you start with hot coffee poured into a pre-heated glass. For each cup of organic Irish coffee use the following:
- Coffee mug (A glass mug is traditional.)
- Tablespoon
- 4 ounces of hot coffee freshly ground and brewed organic coffee
- 1 ounce of organic, preferably Irish, whiskey
- 2 teaspoonful of brown sugar
- 1 ounce of organic double cream whipped just lightly
The Steps
- Have everything ready.
- Warm your coffee mug.
- Put the brown sugar into the glass and then add the hot organic coffee.
- Stir until the sugar dissolves.
- Add the whiskey and stir again.
- Add the cream by pouring gently over the back side of the tablespoon so that the whipped cream sits on top of the coffee.
- A little cinnamon and or nutmeg sprinkled on top of the whipped cream are an American addition to this treat and are optional.
If you want to spruce up your maple syrup coffee liqueur, consider using this liqueur instead of Irish whiskey and skipping the brown sugar.
How Can You Detect Counterfeit Coffee?
The best coffee is Arabica coffee. The coffee with the most caffeine per bean is Robusta coffee.
If you are looking for a pick me up, robusta coffee beans contain more caffeine than Arabica beans. And Robusta coffee futures are sitting at around $1.10 a pound while Arabica futures are more than $2 a pound for lowest quality Arabica beans. So why buy Arabica coffee? People buy Arabica coffee because it tastes better and has a better aroma. Arabica is higher quality coffee than Robusta.
As high quality coffee becomes more popular and profitable to see there is a temptation for coffee traders to mix a few Robusta beans in with the Arabica to increase their profits. If they go too far you can taste the difference but how can you detect counterfeit coffee before the coffee fails the taste test?
Chemistry to the Rescue
According to The Washington Post scientists are using chemistry to fight off counterfeit coffee.
The Robusta species of coffee bean (which, as its name suggests, is quite resilient to disease and adverse growing conditions) is cheaper than the complex Arabica bean, so the former is frequently used in instant coffee. In a study published earlier this month in the journal Food Chemistry, Italian researchers analyzed each bean – and came up with a chemical that could be used to tell the percentage of each species of bean in blends. The scientists think their method is cheaper than current blend identification methods, and could help brewers catch coffee traders who mislabel their blends – which is especially important given the rising popularity of specialty coffee among Americans.
The group observed 20 times more homostachydrine (a harmless, naturally occurring chemical) in the Robusta beans than in the Arabica beans. They also noted that the chemical remained even after roasting. Servillo’s team was able to use the chemical to verify the percentage of each bean advertised in store-bought blends, like “100 percent Arabica” vs. “60 percent Arabica, 40 percent Robusta.”
Although this test would be useful for coffee roasters to spot check shipments it is too expensive for individuals or even coffee shops to test for the percentage of Robusta beans in a batch. As noted in the article anyone with a few thousand bucks, lab goggles and a chemistry kit could try out this process to check for the percentage of Robusta beans in a one pound bag. For us mere mortals it comes down to taste and aroma. Arabica has the distinctive set of flavors that coffee lovers crave while Robusta has the punch that keeps you awake on a long drive across the American heartland. We recently wrote about Death Wish Coffee which is enhanced with Robusta.
If you watched Super Bowl 50 you may have seen the commercial for Death Wish Coffee. Vikings rowing a long boat on a stormy sea that turns out to be… Death Wish Coffee! So what’s with Death Wish Coffee? Forbes published an article about the commercial, the company and a small business ended up with a Super Bowl commercial.
Mike Brown, the founder and owner of Death Wish Coffee, a blend with twice the amount of caffeine of most coffees, won a contest for small business owners who wanted to advertise during the Super Bowl. In the commercial a Viking ship forges through stormy seas, which turn into a river of strong brew that flows into the mouth of a satisfied coffee drinker. The contest sponsor, Intuit QuickBooks, paid for the production plus the cost to air it during the Super Bowl, a reported $5 million for 30 seconds.
Mr. Brown started packaging and selling his coffee online in an attempt to add some profit to his coffee shop business. While the commercial was running the visits on his web site went up to 10,000 a minute and his sales have doubled. But, what’s with Death Wish Coffee and why is it so strong?
It’s the Robusta!
Coffee for the Perfect Nap
If you are really tired it helps to take a nap or drink a cup of coffee. But who would have thought that combining the two produces optimal results. It turns out that you drink coffee for the perfect nap. Vox writes about coffee naps.
If you’re feeling sleepy and want to wake yourself up – and have 20 minutes or so to spare before you need to be fully alert – there’s something you should try. It’s more effective than drinking a cup of coffee or taking a quick nap.
It’s drinking a cup of coffee and then taking a quick nap. This is called a coffee nap.
It might sound crazy: conventional wisdom is that caffeine interferes with sleep. But if you caffeinate immediately before napping and sleep for 20 minutes or less, you can exploit a quirk in the way both sleep and caffeine affect your brain to maximize alertness.
Here is how it works.
Caffeine and Adenosine
When you drink coffee and it enters your blood stream it eventually arrives in your brain which is where it exerts its wake up effect. Caffeine fits onto chemical receptors that normally accept the molecule adenosine. Adenosine is a byproduct of activity in the brain and when it accumulates in the receptors you get tired. Caffeine blocks the ability of adenosine to build up in the receptors and make you feel tired!
Naps and Adenosine
The body’s natural way to clean adenosine from the “tired” receptors is to sleep. When you take a nap your body starts clearing adenosine from the receptors and when you drink coffee before the nap you further clear out the adenosine as caffeine competes for the receptor sites. So what are the results of using coffee for the perfect nap?
Testing the Nap and Caffeine Hypothesis
Researchers report in Psychophysiology that caffeine and a nap improved performance in a driving simulator in a paper titled Counteracting driver sleepiness: effects of napping, caffeine and placebo.
Caffeine and nap significantly reduced driving impairments, subjective sleepiness, and electroencephalographic (EEG) activity indicating drowsiness.
So if you want wake up refreshed and able to do your work more effectively consider coffee for the perfect nap.
Coffee, Nap and Better Memory
Japanese researchers looked at the alerting effects of caffeine combined with a nap followed by bright light and face washing.
The effects of a short nap against mid-afternoon sleepiness could be enhanced by combining caffeine intake, exposure to bright light, or face washing.
Although all measures were useful the best combination was a cup of coffee immediately followed by a nap.
But Not Too Long a Nap
The one pitfall in using coffee for the perfect nap is that if you sleep past twenty minutes or so you enter deeper stages of sleep and rather than waking up refreshed and able to perform better at the task at hand you wake up later on not remembering where you are and why you are there! Coffee provides the perfect nap but make sure it is just a nap.
Coffee: the Wonder Drug
There is abundant evidence that drinking coffee is good for you? But how much coffee should you drink to obtain the various benefits that coffee offers? Bloomberg Business weighs in on this issue with an article entitled How to Transform Your Coffee into a Wonder Drug.
Coffee lovers of the world know that their morning cup contains a substance to be reckoned with. Caffeine is so effective at juicing our energy and productivity that until 2004, its intake was restricted by the International Olympic Committee. But the original performance-enhancing drug doesn’t just provide a jolt to athletes.
But while caffeine is best known for its ability to keep us awake and alert-more than a few of you are likely reading this piece with a cup of coffee in one hand-research suggests it can sharpen performance across an astonishing range of tasks. As with most things, though, it’s easy to overdo it and negate those positive effects. Here’s how, and when, to dose yourself with coffee just right.
It turns out that coffee works better if you are not tired! It has to do with brain chemistry. And if you want to improve longer term memory over a 24 hour period, drink coffee. This particular info comes from a study published in Nature Neuroscience regarding caffeine and memory consolidation in humans.
It is currently not known whether caffeine has an enhancing effect on long-term memory in humans. We used post-study caffeine administration to test its effect on memory consolidation using a behavioral discrimination task. Caffeine enhanced performance 24 h after administration according to an inverted U-shaped dose-response curve; this effect was specific to consolidation and not retrieval. We conclude that caffeine enhanced consolidation of long-term memories in humans.
Want to remember what is going on? Drink coffee.
Coffee Fosters Cooperation as Well
Another interesting study cited in the Bloomberg Business article has to do with people being more cooperative after drinking coffee. Nutritional Neuroscience reported that caffeinated coffee enhances co-operative behavior.
The present study examined the effects of caffeinated coffee on antidepressant-related co-operative behavior. Seventy-seven low-caffeine users took part in a randomized, double-blind, cross-over study of single dose of caffeinated coffee (150 mg caffeine) and decaffeinated coffee (9 mg caffeine) with at least a 3-day washout period. In each session, participants were asked to imagine a fictitious person and play the Mixed Motive Game with that person 45 min after coffee consumption. Heart rate, blood pressure, and state moods were measured at baseline and at 45 min post-coffee consumption. After caffeinated coffee, participants exhibited significantly higher blood pressure. They also allocated significantly fewer scores to themselves and sent significantly more sadness message during the game. These results suggest that caffeinated coffee may help to improve social support and depressive symptoms.
Do you want workers in your business to cooperate with each other? Keep the coffee pot full!
And Much More
Coffee works on the adenosine system which has important functions throughout the brain so it is not surprising that everything from typing speed to overall creativity are improved by coffee. And, by the way, don’t forget that coffee reduces the risk of various cancers, Type II diabetes, depression and Alzheimer’s disease.
Do Coffee Go Cubes Really Help Cognitive Performance?
A new product on the coffee scene is the Go Cube. This is a chewable cube that contains caffeine and has the texture of a gum drop. Oddity Central says it is a way to kick start your day.
San Francisco entrepreneurs Geoffrey Woo and Michael Brandt have come up with a revolutionary way for coffee lovers to get their early morning caffeine fix – chewable caffeine cubes. Each 35-calorie bite-sized ‘Go Cube’ is the equivalent of drinking roughly half a cup of coffee. So if you’re running late with no time to brew a fresh cuppa joe, just pop two cubes and you’re good to go.
Go Cubes are 100 percent vegan, made of a special blend of compounds that improve memory and alertness. With a texture similar to gum drops, each cube contains 50 mg of caffeine, 10 mg of Vitamin B6, and 100 mg of L-Theanine, an amino acid found in green tea. B6 helps aid cognitive function, while theanine helps reduce the anxiety associated with a pure caffeine buzz. They also contain about six grams of sugar per cube, and come in three different flavors – pure drip, latte, and mocha.
Is this just another variation on No Doze pills or do coffee Go Cubes really help cognitive performance. We know that coffee helps us wake up and we know that coffee before exercise helps athletic performance as well.
According to CNN.com there are five reasons to drink coffee before your workout.
A Spanish study, published in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, found that trained athletes who took in caffeine pre-exercise burned about 15% more calories for three hours post-exercise, compared to those who ingested a placebo.
According to the report the necessary amount of caffeine to gain this effect is 4.5 mg per kilogram of body weight. For a 154 pound person this comes to 250 mg of caffeine in a 12 ounce cup. Additionally researchers in Japan have shown that blood flow is increased for an hour and a quarter after drinking coffee with caffeine. And, it turns out that drinking two to three cups of coffee before exercise resulted in less perceived pain from a hard workout.
But, do coffee Go Cubes really help cognitive performance? What does vitamin B6 do to aid cognitive performance and how might theanine help cognition?
What Researchers Say about B6 and Cognitive Function
As far back as 2003 researchers reviewed studies relating to B6 and cognitive function. Their findings are available in PubMed.gov under The Effect of B6 on Cognition.
This review found no evidence for short-term benefit from vitamin B6 in improving mood (depression, fatigue and tension symptoms) or cognitive functions.
It is known that older people have decreased levels of B12 and B6 and that older people have decreasing cognitive function. But when researchers gave B6 supplements in a clinical trial there was no improvement in cognitive function.
So, does acoffee Go Cube really help cognitive performance? Coffee helps you wake up and stay awake. There is no evidence that the addition of B6 makes any short term difference. Effectively Go Cubes are No Doze with sugar and a vitamin.
What Is El Niño Doing to Colombian Coffee Production?
The weather effects of El Niño are unpredictable. The last time it hit Colombia torrential rains damaged coffee crops. This time around there is drought in large parts of the Eje Cafetero. In some parts the drought is so bad that the coffee growers association (FNC) and the government are discussing ways to support coffee growers struck by El Niño as reported in vendingmarketwatch.com.
Concerned about the repercussions that El Niño is having on the income of Colombian coffee growers, the National Committee met today to discuss strategies to support coffee growers. Different support alternatives will now be evaluated in teams and presented during the next Committee meeting.
Evaluate, with the Department of Social Prosperity, the possibility of granting access to coffee growing families to socioeconomic stabilization programs that satisfy basic needs.
The Minister of Agriculture will evaluate with the Banco Agrario and Finagro issues related to credit in the coffee-growing sector. This will include favorable loans for renovation using the zoca procedure.
Explore the feasibility of launching a program to reactivate coffee production. The program will include crop and zoca renovations to recover coffee plantations affected by El Niño and will be funded by the National Coffee Fund and the Government of Colombia.
Many growers have been badly hurt and need help because of the drought. However not all growers are in trouble and, in fact, overall Colombian coffee production is up!
Colombian Coffee Production Rises Despite Drought
The Latin American Tribune reports that Colombian coffee production is up 7% for the fiscal year March 2015 to February 2016.
Colombia produced 1.09 million 60-kilo (132-pound) bags of coffee last month, a 7 percent increase over February 2015, the National Coffee Growers Federation, or FNC, reported.
Output from March 2015 through February 2016 totaled 14.2 million bags, up 16 percent from the previous 12-month period.
Despite the recent increase in production growers are concerned about pests such as the coffee borer beetle which tends to thrive in drought conditions.
A major threat to coffee crops in various locations throughout the world is the coffee borer beetle. Hypothenemus hampei, its scientific name, is a small beetle native to Angola in Southern Africa. Over the 20th century it spread to the Americas and to Hawaii. The coffee borer beetle is a threat to coffee crops wherever it is found. In the Latin American regions where the pest is found it goes by the names barrenador del café, gorgojo del café and broca del café. Infestation is spread via the inadvertent transport of infected beans. The primary way to continue to produce healthy organic coffee when there is an infestation is to hand sort the beans and dry promptly after picking. Various organic approaches can be used to deter and destroy the pest while maintaining an organic crop and organic coffee certification.
Problems for drought stricken coffee growing areas of Colombia will not stop with the dry weather but will continue with the threat of plant infestations such as coffee borer beetle on weakened coffee plants.
Coffee Prevents Multiple Sclerosis
It seems that every month or so another health benefit of drinking coffee is reported. This time Newsweek reports that coffee can lower risk for MS (multiple sclerosis) when consumed at four cups a day or more.
A new study finds drinking generous amounts of coffee-more than four cups a day-may reduce a person’s risk for multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune condition in which the body’s immune system attacks the protective layers around nerves of the brain and spine. The findings, more proof that your daily Americano has neuroprotective benefits, were published March 3 online in the Journal of Neurology & Psychiatry. The study found drinking lots of coffee reduces risk for MS by as much as 31 percent.
For the observational study, researchers looked at data from two population studies conducted in Sweden and the U.S. The study out of Sweden involved 1,620 people with MS and 2,788 controls, while the one conducted in the U.S. was based upon 1,159 people with MS and 1,172 controls.
n general, lower risk for MS was associated with high coffee consumption compared with non–coffee drinkers. The Swedish researchers observed the highest level of neuroprotective benefit in people who consumed more than six cups a day, while the U.S. study suggested similar effects in members of the cohort who consumed at least four cups.
The researchers believe it’s worthwhile to conduct further investigations to explore whether compounds that exist in coffee could provide treatment for people with MS-specifically if the health benefits stem from the caffeine or certain molecules in coffee itself. Additional studies would also need to examine if, and potentially how, coffee interrupts MS disease activity.
The benefits of coffee in the case of MS are similar to those see for type II diabetes, various forms of cancer, depression, etc. The more coffee you drink the better the benefit gets. This study like many others is on observational study in which behavior such as drinking coffee is reported and recorded over the years and compared with the emergence of a given disease such as multiple sclerosis. Cause and effect studies on humans require that people in a randomized study drink or avoid coffee for years and then the results are tallied again. However, physiological studies on animals are useful.
When Mice Drink Coffee
A study on mice shows than when the furry critters drink coffee that caffeine reduces the impact of neuroinflamation and demyelization (nerve sheath damage that happens in MS). PubMed published the abstract for an article about neuroinflammation and demyelination and suggests that caffeine treatment could improve or help prevent MS.
Caffeine treatment augmented A1AR expression on microglia, with ensuing reduction of EAE severity, which was further enhanced by concomitant treatment with the A1AR agonist, adenosine amine congener. Thus, modulation of neuroinflammation by the A1AR represents a novel mechanism that provides new therapeutic opportunities for MS and other demyelinating diseases.
This is a mouthful but the bottom line is that caffeine stimulates the production of substances that help reduce inflammation, of nerves in this case, and help prevent disease. While we know from human studies that coffee prevents multiple sclerosis when consumed at 4 or more cups a day there is basic research that demonstrates how this might happen at a molecular and physiologic level. So, enjoy your healthy organic coffee as we add one more good reason to drink coffee, aside from aroma, taste and a morning wakeup.
Should We All Drink Coffee?
There are a lot of health benefits in a cup of coffee. Because coffee is a healthy beverage why don’t more of us drink it? An interesting article in this regard in The New York Times posed a question. “I Don’t Drink Coffee. Should I Start?”
Counting yourself out from the 64 percent of Americans who drink at least one cup a day can invite bewildered responses from dedicated coffee drinkers. To them, the benefits are clear, the drawbacks minimal.
Being in the minority, it’s easy to wonder: Have I been making a mistake? Should I and other coffee abstainers start now?
“There aren’t any guidelines to help guide you on this,” said Dr. Donald Hensrud, director of the Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Program. “This is kind of an individual decision.”
The point the doctors make in this article is that we know that coffee is not bad for you and has lots of positive health effects including living longer. But, should we all drink coffee? In other words should we treat coffee as a medicine like those that people take to treat high blood pressure or too much cholesterol? As one of the physicians noted this raises the bar for positive and negative effects of coffee. For example, there are people who are prone to acid reflux and ulcers and for those folks too much coffee causes problems. And there are people who metabolize coffee very slowly and therefore get very nervous from just a small amount. Those folks would need to consider how much discomfort they would be willing to undergo in order to experience the benefits of drinking coffee. And, what are those benefits again?
Health Benefit of Drinking Coffee
From our article, Health Effects of Drinking Coffee:
List of cancers that appear to have a lower incidence in coffee drinkers:
Diabetes Incidences Is Reduced in Coffee Drinkers
Drinking four cups of coffee a day appears to reduce the chances of getting Type II Diabetes by about a half. Research has shown that drinking coffee increases levels of sex hormone-binding globulin which in turn appears to reduce the incidence of diabetes.
Depression and the Incidence of Suicide Are Both Helped by Drinking Coffee
Everyone knows that a morning cup of coffee is a good way to wake up and that a good mid-day pick-me-up is coffee. Now research shows that one of the health effects of drinking coffee is that it reduces the risk of depression by about a fifth. Another of the health effects of drinking coffee is a reduced reduced risk of suicide in steady coffee drinkers. Drinking from two to four cups of coffee a day is associated with a fifty percent lower risk of suicide when compared to those who were not coffee drinkers.
Degenerative Brain Diseases Avoided by Drinking Coffee
For those who are concerned about the debilitating neurologic disease, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, help is not only on the way but help has always been there in the form a few cups of coffee each day. Researchers have discovered a reduced incidence of Parkinson’s disease and hope for those prone to Alzheimer’s in drinking coffee. Research has shown than drinking a cup of coffee a day is related to a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s than with non-coffee drinkers. More recent work shows that the reduction in the incidence of Alzheimer’s goes up with the number of cups of coffee that a person drinks each day.
Does Coffee Reduce the Risk of Cirrhosis?
A couple years ago we wrote that you can treat cirrhosis with coffee.
According to newly reported research drinking two cups of coffee a day can reduce the risk of dying from cirrhosis by sixty-six percent. Researchers looked at a variety of caffeine-containing drinks but it turns out that you can only treat cirrhosis with coffee. That is to say that only coffee leads to a substantial reduction in the risk of dying from cirrhosis. It is important to note that this benefit does not apply to cirrhosis causes by Type B hepatitis.
That was based on one study. Now doctors have considered the results of nine studies relating to cirrhosis of the liver and coffee. The new evidence confirms that coffee can reduce the risk of cirrhosis.
Undo Liver Damage with Two Cups of Coffee a Day
Fox News Health reports that one can undo liver damage from booze by drinking more coffee!
Drinking more coffee might help reduce the kind of liver damage that’s associated with overindulging in food and alcohol, a review of existing studies suggests.
Researchers analyzed data from nine previously published studies with a total of more than 430,000 participants and found that drinking two additional cups of coffee a day was linked to a 44 percent lower risk of developing liver cirrhosis.
“Cirrhosis is potentially fatal and there is no cure as such,” said lead study author Dr. Oliver Kennedy of Southampton University in the U.K.
“Therefore, it is significant that the risk of developing cirrhosis may be reduced by consumption of coffee, a cheap, ubiquitous and well-tolerated beverage,” Kennedy added by email.
Cirrhosis is the cause of death of a million people worldwide every year. The primary causes include hepatitis, immune disorders, fatty liver disease and drinking too much alcohol. A cup or two of strong coffee in the morning has long been a treatment for a hangover. Now it appears that two extra cups of coffee a day could help prevent the development of cirrhosis.
Why Does Coffee Help Prevent Cirrhosis?
It is important to notice that other caffeine drinks do not have the effect that coffee does in preventing cirrhosis. The difference is in all likelihood the antioxidants in coffee.
With your morning cup of organic coffee antioxidants are included. Healthy organic coffee is not only free of many of the impurities found in regular coffee but contains things that are beneficial to your health. These things in organic coffee include antioxidants. So, just what are antioxidants and why should we want to have more of them? Scientifically an antioxidant is a molecule that inhibits the cell damage and cell death in human cells caused by oxidative breakdown of other molecule in the cell. Oxidation is a factor in sickness and aging. Antioxidants help prevent the damage caused by excessive oxidation and to a degree inhibit the aging process. When an oxidative reaction brought on by disease gets going it produces free radicals that start chain reactions which in turn cause cell and tissue damage. The human body has or uses antioxidants to control this situation. Natural means of controlling oxidation include vitamins C and E as well as glutathione. It is low levels of antioxidants that can lead to a condition referred to as oxidative stress and resultant damage to cells in the body. Organic coffee antioxidants are in the same class of molecules that help reduce oxidation.
Does coffee reduce the risk of cirrhosis? Yes, it does and the part of coffee that does the job is likely the antioxidants.