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Yellow Submarine Mug – $9.95
Does your boring, old, coffee, mug make you feel blue? You need the Yellow Submarine Mug from the NeatoShop (yes, officially licensed from The Beatles). Printed inside the mug: “Love Is All You Need.” This mug is so cheerful you can’t help but smile.
Link | Be sure to check out all the fun Glassware & Drinkware from the NeatoShop!
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If you can’t live without a cup of coffee, you have something in common with the bacterium Pseudomonas putida CBB5. The bug was discovered to live on caffeine – literally!
The caffeine-munching bacterium was found in a flower bed on the University of Iowa campus.
Ryan Summers, a doctoral student there, identified four digestive proteins that it uses to break down caffeine, which allows it to live and grow, he explains in a summary of his research presented at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in New Orleans.
"This work, for the first time, demonstrates the enzymes and genes utilized by bacteria to live on caffeine," he writes.
Are you tired of people stealing your favorite coffee mug? You need the Plug Mug from the NeatoShop. Just hide the mugs rubber plug and your favorite coffee mug is now useless. This makes a great office gag gift!
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fabulous Glassware & Drinkware!
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Half-caff latte, I choose you! Christiaan Morris made this latte surface art for the Fremont Coffee Company in Seattle. Other images at the link include Darth Vader, Batman, and Boba Fett.
Link via Walyou | Photo: Chrissy May | Previously: Latte Art Machine
Anyone who has worked in an office with a shared coffee pot will immediately relate to this clever flowchart a reader submitted over at Passive Aggressive Notes.
Love coffee? No, I mean, do you love coffee? If you’re a coffee addict, then take heart – it’s not your fault: A new research shows that how much you crave caffeine largely depends on your genes.
New research suggests that individuals who carry a so-called "high-consumption" variation of either gene appear to drink more coffee, relative to those who carry a "low-consumption" variant.
"It’s really an incredible story," said study co-author Dr. Neil Caporaso, branch chief of genetic epidemiology at the National Cancer Institute. "People don’t really suspect it, but genetics plays a big role in a lot of behaviors, such as smoking and alcohol consumption. And now it turns out that it has a part in how much caffeine we drink."
Illustration: L. Calçada, ESO
When you think of stars, do you think a hot ball of plasma in space? (I mean, our own Sun has a surface temperature of approximately 5,800 K). Well, not all stars are hot: a newly discovered star 75 light-years away from us is no warmer than a cup of coffee.
Dubbed CFBDSIR 1458 10b, the star is what’s called a brown dwarf. These oddball objects are often called failed stars, because they have starlike heat and chemical properties but don’t have enough mass for the crush of gravity to ignite nuclear fusion at their cores.
With surface temperatures hovering around 206 degrees F (97 degrees C), the newfound star is the coldest brown dwarf seen to date.
It sounds like a simple pun to accompany a funny picture, but Vader’s Dark Side Roast Coffee is a real product. It’s just one of 17 Weird Examples of Star Wars Merchandise listed at Oddee (some of which are available in the NeatoShop). Some will make you laugh, and others might make your wish list! Link
According to data compiled by environmental think tank World Resources Institute, Scandinavians drink a lot of coffee. Between 6.8 and 12.0 kilograms per year. So world travelers, does this map match up with your experiences?
Link via Ace of Spades HQ
Need coffee to do its miraculous job every morning waking you up?
This Minor Miracle Mug has a special imprinted bottom that will give you an inspiring vision after you finish your morning coffee. How do you spell pareidolia? C-A-F-F-E-I-N-E!
Link | More fun Mugs (a surprisingly large category!)
When the subject of frivolous lawsuits comes up, someone always mentions the McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit as an example, because the short version sounds so outrageous: a woman sued McDonalds because her coffee was served hot. But the short version doesn’t tell us much.
The world’s most infamous cup of coffee spilled on February 27, 1992 in Albuquerque, NM. Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old grandmother, was a passenger in her grandson’s car when they drove through at a McDonald’s, and after she received her styrofoam cup of joe her grandson pulled the car forward and parked so Liebeck could mix in her cream and sugar.
Liebeck braced the cup between her knees, but when she tried to pull off the cup’s lid, the entire cup of coffee spilled into her lap. Although subsequent developments in the courtroom turned Liebeck and her case into objects of derision, it’s worth noting that she actually suffered legitimate injuries from the accident. Liebeck’s sweatpants absorbed the hot coffee and held it next to her skin, which helped lead to third degree burns on six percent of her body. Liebeck ended up spending eight days in the hospital and undergoing skin grafts to counter the effects of the burns.
But that’s only the beginning of the story. Liebeck asked McDonalds for $20,000 to cover her medical expenses and lost wages. McDonalds offered $800. That’s when the story starts to get complicated. Read the entire account of how a jury decided to award Liebeck $2.9 million when the case went to court (and that’s not even the end) at mental_floss. Link
The Thinker Coffee Mug – $10.95
If you’re anything like me and need a cup of coffee to clear your thoughts in the morning, then this is the mug for you: The Thinker Coffee Mug from the NeatoShop has a thermochromic ink that makes the figure’s worrisome thoughts disappear, to be replaced by the soothing thought of coffee.
Ah, caffeine: is there anything it can’t do? Link | More fun and unusual coffee mugs
Q: Is that Tommy Lee Jones in a new movie?
A: Yes, that’s Tommy Lee Jones.
No , he’s not starring in a new movie.
Here’s the man behind "Two Face," Agent K, and Ed Tom Bell starring in an unusual role of pitchman for the Japanese drink Boss Coffee: Link [embedded YouTube]
Did you just get a cup of coffee (oh, I’m sorry … venti non-fat extra dry cappuccino) from Starbucks? Did you know that you’ve just ordered 1 of the 87,000 possible combinations of drinks there?
Brynn Mannino of Woman’s Day wrote an interesting article about the 9 Things You Didn’t Know About Starbucks:
1. There are over 87,000 drink combination possibilities.
We knew they had a big menu, but 87,000 options? In 2008, the company included this number as part of a full-page advertisement in two national newspapers. Starbucks spokeswoman Lisa Passe explained how they came up with it to a Wall Street Journal blogger: "If you take all of our core beverages, multiply them by the modifiers and the customization options, you get more than 87,000 combinations.”
The Plaid design team has created a coffee guide that is available as a limited print edition.
The chart maps out everything from a Basic Black (1 cup-of-coffee, 0 parts anything) to a Yuayang (1 part coffee, 1 part milk tea).
Also see the The Art of Making Espresso short film that was posted here at Neatorama earlier this year.
The Good News: Scientists have discovered that coffee can help protect the brain against Alzheimer’s disease.
Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center researcher (and coffee lover) Gary Arendash and colleagues discovered that 500 mg of caffeine can ward off Alzheimer’s:
They’ve found that adding caffeinated water to rodents’ diet results in big improvements. The mice perform better on short-term memory and thinking tests. But only if they get enough caffeine.
"The human equivalent of two to three cups of coffee does not have benefits in our Alzheimer’s mice," says Arendash.
Arendash’s team also documented that these super-caffeinated mice end up with about a 50-percent reduction in abnormal amyloid proteins, which are thought to play an important role in the development of Alzheimer’s.
The typical American drinks about a cup and a half of coffee a day. "So you can see that many of us are below that threshold level that we believe confers protective benefits," says Arendash.
Allison Aubrey of NPR explains: Link
The Bad News: You may have to wear this T-shirt below.
I’m Not Tense – I’m Terribly, Terribly Alert – $9.95
As an admitted coffee junkie, I’m curious about this NPR story about this new drink from 85C, a coffee chain from Taiwan, sea salt latte:
"It’s really unique," says Stephanie Peng, manager of the company’s flagship U.S. store in Irvine, Calif. "The sea salt’s in the cream, the foam part, so it just brings out more coffee essence."
The lattes sound exotic, but the salt flavor is incredibly subtle — you have to tease it out with your tongue. Sea salt lattes have helped establish 85C as the "Starbucks of Asia." The chain has more than 300 stores across Taiwan, and it plans to expand its presence across China, Australia and the U.S. over the next few years.
But the real gem may be the weird pastries that they sell:
One surprise crossover hit is a black squid-ink bread, made with Vermont sharp cheddar cheese and garlic paste. Each roll costs less than a dollar, meaning there’s incentive to stray outside your flavor comfort zone.
NPR’s Neda Ulaby has the story: Link
Has anyone here tried salted coffee? I have some sea salt, perhaps I should just salt my morning coffee tomorrow …
I use a permanent silk filter for my coffee maker, but I still have open packages of filters. Now I can put those filters to work doing other things! Here are a few of the list of 25:
7. Recycle frying oil. After frying, strain oil through a sieve lined with a coffee filter.
8. Weigh chopped foods. Place chopped ingredients in a coffee filter on a kitchen scale.
9. Hold tacos. Coffee filters make convenient wrappers for messy foods.
10. Stop the soil from leaking out of a plant pot. Line a plant pot with a coffee filter to prevent the soil from going through the drainage holes.
The last time I felt so cutting edge was when I got the Senseo coffee maker pod machine a few years ago. Today, it’s absolutely quaint especially when compared to the gorgeous coffee makers and espresso machines compiled by Dark Roasted Blend.
This one above is the Heart Bean Coffee Grinder, by Adi Navwany, Michal Shamsian, Itamar Paloge and Danielle Ram. It’s made from a single piece of wood and has a built-in sensor to monitor your heart beat to let it grind the coffee beans to the rhythm of your heart.
See more here: Link
Gerard Vlemmings, whom you know as the Presurfer, recently retired from his real world job and is now devoting his time to blogging. He’s launched a new project called Popular Coffee News which is, unsurprisingly, devoted to coffee and the people who love it. Some of the early posts include coffee science, coffee art, coffee making tips, and a video of a bird stirring a coffee cup! Link
The Carpuccino, built by the team at the BBC science show Bang Goes the Theory, runs on coffee grounds. These are burned and the resulting carbon monoxide powers the car:
The team calculates the Carpuccino will do three miles per kilo of ground coffee – the equivalent of about 56 espressos per mile.
The journey will use about 70 kilos of ground coffee which, at supermarket prices of between £13 and £26 a kilo depending on brand and quality, will cost between £910 and £1,820, or between 25 and 50 times the £36 cost of petrol for the journey.
Link via Fast Company | Photo: The Daily Mail
Photo: *Cencula* [Flickr]
When Siebe Warmoeskerken of VTPN (Flickr user siebe) started taking photos of cookies splashing into a cup of coffee, little did he know that he was about to spark a little Flickr meme.
Behold the Coffee Splash! Photo Pool on Flickr, where photographers do their own take of the coffee splash … Link – via Doobybrain
Last year, organizers at the Rocks Aroma Festival in Sydney, Australia, made an enormous image of the Mona Lisa using thousands of cups of coffee lightened with milk (to varying quantities) in order to create different shades:
The different colours were created by adding no, little or lots of milk to each cup of black coffee.
It measures an impressive 20 feet high and 13 feet wide and took a team of eight people three hours to complete.
Link via Digg | Photo: EpicFTW | Previously on Neatorama: Mona Lisa in Coffee (as a Paint)
Putting Weird Things in Coffee is a food blog about one man’s quest to find tasty and unusual ingredients to put in coffee beyond the traditional cream and sugar. These include salmon, blue cheese, and peanut butter. Pictured above is a mixture that he did not invent: juustoleipä, a Finnish cheese made from reindeer milk, that is often dipped in coffee before eaten.
What unusual things have you mixed in your coffee?
Link via Amanda Bensen (who notes that her family used to brew coffee with reindeer bones)
This beautiful short film shows you how to make a perfect espresso.
It’s the first part of an ongoing series of videos from The Department of the 4th Dimension that documents the search for the ultimate tastemakers.
Link [Vimeo] – Chris Glass via SimpleBits
In case you didn’t realize how far component miniaturization has progressed in the past decade: casemodder Klaus Diebel offers the iMac CS, which is an iMac case (in your choice of colors) that contains a computer (a Mac mini), a sound system, and a coffee maker! Each unit is custom-made, so you’ll have to discuss the price with him if you want one. Link -via Gizmodo
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You’ve probably heard all about the art of drinking coffee, but Karen Eland took that to a higher level and made an art of painting with coffee. Have a look at some of the world’s greatest masterpieces, such as Mona Lisa, or the scene from the Sistine Chapel expressed in espresso! Eland also talks about her technique and how it came about.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
Tim Quax of ByteMods combined a PC with a coffeemaker to make this Coffee PC case mod. Best of all, the coffeemaker is controlled by software:
The relay gets it’s power from a molex connector on the power supply; a small amount however, just enough to not flip the relay. Second connection to the relay is a cable to the COM port on the PC. Thirdly, the relay is hooked up to the power cable to the PSU that powers the coffee maker. I wrote a script in Visual Basic Scripting, that uses a module to enable the COM port on the PC. The power on the COM connection is enough to flip over the relay, thus giving the coffee maker it’s much needed power, which makes the coffee maker do it’s thing. The script enables the PC to make coffee with the push of a button!
Previously on Neatorama: Case Mod: The Ultimate List
This lamp post is an ad for McDonalds in Vancouver. You have to wonder 1. how much light does it really emit, and b. is the coffee still free? -via Gizmodo
James Hayes-Bohanan, Ph.D. is a professor of geography AND a scholar with the Vanderbilt University Institute for Coffee Studies. His website Geography of Coffee is full of information about coffee around the world, including the places coffee is produced, shipped, and sold. You’ll also find out about fair trade and the politics of the coffee business. Of course, there are also coffee reviews and instructions for making the perfect cup. Link -via the Presurfer
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