How to End a Coffee Drought
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:55 PM

On Tuesday I had no coffee, but survived. On Wednesday, I broke my 24-hour coffee drought -- and thanks to living in Chicago, I could easily do so with Intelligentsia coffee. It is really terrific stuff.

I mention it today because of a pointer from the Alcohol and Drugs History Society to a local news story/video concerning Intelligentsia. Did you know that one bad coffee bean can spoil the brew? Here's how Intelligentsia samples its coffees:

After the coffee is roasted and ground, cups are laid out for each bean on a rotating table, 12 grams of ground coffee are placed directly into the cups, which are topped with water just below boiling. Since a single bad bean can change the flavor profile of a cup, 3 separate samples of each coffee are cupped simultaneously; this also allows tasters to get a feel for the consistency of the beans. Some coffee grounds float to the top of the steaming cups, and after 3 minutes, the taster takes a spoon and gives the brew a gentle stir while getting his nose as close as possible and inhaling deeply. This is called “breaking the crust”. After each cup, spoons are rinsed, notes are jotted down and the table is turned. Any remaining grounds are then skimmed off, and the tasting begins.

Cuppers slurp coffee quickly from the edge of a spoon, allowing some air to combine with the brew, coating the entire mouth and giving an intense impression of the coffee’s flavor. The tasters may also “chew” the coffee, evaluating the body or perceived weight of the liquid in the mouth. Indonesian beans typically have low acidity and very heavy body, where a wet-processed Central American will be lighter bodied and bright with higher acidity. Sometimes a cupper will linger for a while comparing the different samples of the same bean, or return to an interesting coffee, experiencing it at different stages as it cools down.

Coffee prices are near a ten-year high.

Labels: Chicago, coffee

 
More Reason to Legalise Khat?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:14 PM

I just realised that I somehow went through the day without a single cup of coffee. (Oh, there was some tea, and even half a can of Vanilla Coke, so I can't claim caffeine withdrawal.) This was unplanned. Perhaps I am subconsciously responding to higher coffee prices?:

Large coffee roasters including Folgers owner Procter & Gamble Co., and Kraft Foods Inc., which sells Maxwell House, said they are raising the price they charge supermarkets and mass retailers for their coffee by about 7%, or 20 cents for containers in the 11- to 13-ounce range. The price of instant coffee also is going up.

This was the second round of price increases this year. Just last month Procter & Gamble and Kraft added 15 cents to what they charged supermarkets for a typical can of ground coffee. Combined, the two increases raised Kraft's suggested retail price for Maxwell House by almost 10% to $3.94, and Southern California supermarkets often charge more than that.

At least the absence of coffee (and decline, though not to zero, of caffeine consumption) kept me from being as dehydrated as usual. What? That's a myth, too? "Most studies have found that in moderate amounts, caffeine has only mild diuretic effects -- much like water."

Incidentally, did you know that Snickers now is offering a version of its delicious treat that is specially caffeinated? It is called Snickers Charged; I might experiment by consuming only Snickers Charged bars for a week. (On a serious note, are we going to start seeing legal controls on sales of highly caffeinated products to children?)

Labels: caffeine, coffee, solipsism

 
Coffee, Inexpensive and Expensive
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:47 PM

Well, those are relative terms. The inexpensive version is the small cup of coffee that Starbucks is now offering in Seattle for $1, with free refills included. This might be in response to the increased competitive pressure from McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts. The expensive coffee is made by fancy equipment that can cost $10,000 or more -- this is for brewed coffee, not for espresso. One might think that expensive coffee-making equipment substitutes capital for labor, but it isn't obvious from the description in the linked article: the $20,000 coffee-making process requires stirring the brewing coffee with a bamboo paddle in a rather precise fashion. (Here's a photo set of the bean-to-cup transformation.)

Other caffeine news this week was that even relatively modest caffeine consumption could increase the risk of miscarriage for pregnant women: "Of 264 women who said they had used no caffeine, 12.5 percent had miscarriages. But the miscarriage rate was 24.5 percent in the 164 women who consumed 200 milligrams [about 10 ounces of coffee] or more per day." My uninformed reaction is that this result suggests an effect from caffeine that is more extreme than what actually exists. Among other issues, I think that pregnant women who consume no caffeine at all might differ from others in ways that are hard to control for in an experiment, and could influence miscarriage rates. One nice feature of the Chicago Tribune's coverage is a separate little box that indicates some of the reasons that one might question the experimental finding.

Finally, if you are robbing a bank, you might want to skip the coffee, alluring as it is. The coffee may look free, but that will prove to be an expensive cup.

Labels: caffeine, coffee

 
Could Use Some Caffeine
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:50 PM

It's late, but I wanted to post to keep up the Vice Squad streak of having precisely one post for every day of 2008 -- a streak that is the envy of the blogosphere, I understand. And so we turn to coffee. Starbucks is having a shake-up at the top, and feeling pressure from McDonald's: "McDonald's, whose U.S. coffee sales increased 39 percent during the first nine months of 2007, plans to add espresso counters at as many as 14,000 locations." (Here's another look at Starbucks v. McDonald's from Newsweek. Incidentally, Caribou Coffee also is undergoing a shake-up.) Starbucks will cut back on its plans to open new stores -- is that good news or bad news for independent coffee shops? It looks as if a Starbucks in the neighborhood might stoke the demand for premium coffee in ways that redound to the benefit of independents. Will the new competition from the UK similarly spur the coffee output of leading producers Vietnam and Brazil?

Labels: Britain, caffeine, coffee

 
Coffee in Kyiv
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:24 AM

Vice Squad is relocating today, first to London and then to Kyiv. The loyal Vice Squad reader is concerned that sans Starbucks, it might be hard to stay properly caffeinated in Ukraine. Fear no more, comrade: Gloria Jean's has come to Kyiv.

Actually, one of the more obvious changes in Kyiv in recent years has been the burgeoning of coffee shops, as the linked article mentions. The Coffee House and Coffee Time chains are particularly prominent, and at least one of them (Coffee House, if memory serves) has pretty good food, too. One thing that is glaringly absent is a public smoking ban. While Vice Squad does not support such a ban, as the bans proliferate, those places that do not have them do begin to stand out.

The temporary relocation will lead to even less frequent blogging through the end of 2007, alas.

Labels: coffee, solipsism

 
Decaffeinated
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:46 PM

The process that removes caffeine from coffee -- to produce some sort of strange concoction known as "decaffeinated coffee" -- is imperfect, and in practice, it seems, highly variable. This is more than just a nuisance, as some people really shouldn't consume caffeine for health reasons, but they might have a cup of decaf, only to find that they consumed a fair dose of the addictive, psychoactive drug. Consumer Reports recently bought and tested 36 small cups of coffee. The results:

More than half of our decafs had less than 5 mg of caffeine, but some had quite a bit more. One of the six cups from Dunkin' Donuts had 32 mg; one from Seattle's Best had 29 mg; and one from Starbucks had 21 mg. Levels of caffeine in the decaffeinated coffees we tested varied within chains, but in our sample, McDonald's decaf consistently had less than 5 mg.

While the caffeine levels in caffeinated coffee vary quite a bit too, I feel as if the distress suffered by those who order regular but receive decaffeinated coffee has been underappreciated.

A story on the Consumer Reports test in the New York Times has been causing a hullabaloo among crazed coffee drinkers and their deluded decaffeinated brethren. Incidentally, Consumer Reports has gone all ga-ga over McDonald's caffeinated coffee in the past. (OK, I am a bit bitter -- ha! -- because I think I am the only person who preferred McD's old coffee to their newish "Premium". Nor am I excited over this prospect.)

Thanks to Alcohol and Drugs History Society for pointers to some of the links; they also link to an article that explains how coffee won the Civil War, if I misread things correctly.

Labels: caffeine, coffee

 
Betel Nuts in Taiwan
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:39 PM

There's a world health promotion conference currently underway in Vancouver. According to this article in the Vancouver Sun, one of the topics that is being addressed is the consumption of betel nuts, especially in Taiwan. Betel nut chewing, which has a stimulative effect, is a popular activity throughout much of Asia; in Forces of Habit, David Courtwright suggests (page 54) that "Something like a tenth of the world's population now indulges in the practice." But Taiwan has developed its own method of distributing betel: roadside booths staffed by underdressed betel nut beauties. And the health effects of betel nut consumption can be severe, as the Vancouver Sun article notes:

The nuts [in Taiwan] are sold at roadside kiosks by scantily clad women and chewing them is a major reason why oral cancers are the third most common cancer (after lung and liver) in that country. In Canada, by comparison, oral cancer ranks ninth in men and 15th in women.

This shocking method of delivering betel nuts -- employing attractive women in revealing clothes inside roadside booths -- would never be used to peddle a psychoactive substance in the good ol' USA.

Labels: Asia, betel nuts, Canada, coffee, Taiwan

 
Pregnancy and Vice
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:37 PM

The direct costs and benefits of traditional vices, almost by definition, fall almost entirely upon the vice practitioner him or her self. (This is one of the most important features that distinguish, say, a drug addict from a thief.) A drinker enjoys the intoxication and suffers the hangover, a gambler risks her own money and reaps the (usually negative) reward. But there are exceptions, two of the most common being the harms that second-hand tobacco smoke can cause to proximate non-smokers and the harms that some drugs can bring to the fetuses of pregnant women. (Less-than-direct effects, such as those that arise from drunk driving, also fall upon folks other than the vice consumers or producers.) These direct harms to others from vice involvement, not surprisingly, can lead to both government regulations and social disapproval.

Zoe Williams, a now-pregnant columnist for the Guardian, looks at some of the advice that both the British government and others provide to expectant moms about various hazardous behaviors -- including alcohol and caffeine consumption. The government last week altered its alcohol advice to pregnant women, from a regime of very moderate consumption to one of total abstinence. This change occurred in the absence of any new scientific information concerning the effects of alcohol on fetuses. But as Williams notes, limited, non-binge consumption of alcohol does not really seem to pose any risks, and of course, moderate alcohol consumption during pregnancy was common both in the previous generation and throughout human history. Modest caffeine consumption also appears to be safe for babies, but some people (including medical professionals) urge pregnant women to give up caffeinated coffee and even chocolate bars, which contain fairly low doses of caffeine. Williams distrusts much of this advice:

Despite having got yourself into a spot of bother, pregnant women, you are still in the possession of adult judgment, and you are still allowed to use it. If the official advice sounds stringent to the point of insanity, examine it more closely - you aren't just a selfish person, looking for loopholes for your own sorry enjoyment.

Labels: alcohol, Britain, caffeine, chocolate, coffee, externalities

 
Caffeine Buzz at National Geographic
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:25 PM

Caffeine is the subject of this month's National Geographic cover story (written by T.R. Reid, with photos by Bob Sacha), and it is chock full of interesting tidbits. Caffeine from coffee was first isolated in 1820, and eighteen years later, it was determined that the stuff in tea was the same darn chemical -- though a 12-ounce cup of coffee, with 200 milligrams, contains four times as much caffeine as am 8-ounce cup of tea. At 145 grams per year, Finns lead the world in caffeine consumption. In the European Union, beverages that contain more than 150 milligrams of caffeine per liter must have a warning label about the high caffeine content: coffee generally would qualify, but most soft drinks do not. "Black tea, green tea, and oolong are all made from the same plant; the differences in taste and color come from their processing." While caffeine is an addictive, psychoactive drug, "the consensus view seems to be that the world's most popular drug is not dangerous at moderate levels of consumption -- up to 300 milligrams (one to two small -- 12-ounce -- take-out cups of coffee or six to eight cans of soda a day.)" Moderate caffeine consumption appears not to harm the fetuses of pregnant women, either. [Update: Or maybe it does.]

The National Geographic’s "Flashback" at the back of the magazine runs a 1954 photo of tea tasting. The tasting was a demonstration conducted by the U.S. Board of Tea Experts, which was tasked with, yes, creating federal standards for tea quality and taste, from 1897 to 1996. Oddly enough, there does not seem to be a groundswell to revive this now-defunct regulatory body.

Vice Squad keeps one, half-open eye on caffeine, as attested to by this post from last April.

Labels: caffeine, coffee

 
Lazy Link-Based Post
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:04 PM

(1) Hallucinogen hoasca legal (for now) in US when taken for approved religious ceremonial use. From Mark Kleiman.

(2) The New York Times looks into "dirty driving," where DVD-equipped motor vehicles play porn movies that are clearly visible to pedestrians or those in other cars. Will Baude at Crescat Sententia provides the pointer and the legal analysis. Concerned Women for America have a legal analysis, too -- in which the fact that possession of (adult) porn cannot constitutionally be criminalized in the US is lamented.

(3) While at Crescat, keep up with Will (here and here) on Chicago liquor regulators and a major Chicago wine store.

(4) More bad news for moi: even one cup of coffee per day can harm you. From a blog by Edward Staines entitled "One More Cup of Coffee"

(5) Vice Squad hasn't had too much to say about the recent vice Supreme Court cases, medical marijuana and interstate wine. I think that the "liberalizers" are going to have a hard time in both cases, but especially in the cannabis case. But if my pessimism proves to be warranted, I hope that the losing sides nevertheless use the resulting publicity to make the case that the laws in question -- the federal demonizing of marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, and the protectionist wine shipment bans -- should themselves be repealed. (Of course they make these cases all the time, but I hope they will "redouble their efforts.") Bad laws that are Constitutional are still bad laws.

Labels: alcohol, caffeine, Chicago, coffee, hallucinogen, Kleiman, pornography, Supreme Court

 
Lazy Link-Based Post
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:51 PM

(1) The health benefits of coffee (Los Angeles Times registration required; link via Newmark's Door), complementing this mid-April Vice Squad post;

(2) More on Colombia from Last One Speaks (complementing yesterday's Vice Squad post);

(3) More on the prostitution policy reform in Britain, from the BBC [this article is very valuable in presenting a variety of views, including those of a prostitute and a senior police officer] and from the Adam Smith Institute (complementing Tuesday's Vice Squad post);

(4) Steve Chapman on the end of Ladies' Nights in New Jersey (Chicago Tribune, registration-requisite link from Overlawyered, complementing Sunday's Vice Squad post).

Labels: alcohol, coffee, drugs, prostitution

 
Caffeine Variance Among Coffee Sellers
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:17 AM

Caffeine is the most commonly used psychoactive drug in the world, and is available in a wide variety of beverages -- notably, tea, coffee, and many sodas. We are used to a regime of "free availability" of caffeine -- even children can buy these beverages -- but there have been times and places with stricter regulations. Coffee has been banned in the past in Turkey, for instance, and was nearly banned in Britain, largely due to its connections with political activity unliked by those in power.

There are health effects from drinking coffee, it seems -- some negative, some positive -- but in moderate doses coffee consumption is not very dangerous (though perhaps people with heart ailments should steer clear of it.)

The Wall Street Journal has compared the caffeine concentration in popular coffees. The study was picked up by many TV stations; here is a quote from a Houston TV station that relayed the story: "The [Wall Street Journal] study found that house blends at Starbucks, Gloria Jean's and other gourmet-coffee chains have an average of 56 percent more caffeine than samples from 7-11, and 29 percent more than Dunkin' Donuts." I guess I am not surprised: I drink larger servings of Dunkin' Donuts coffee than I do of Starbucks.

Co-blogger Nikkie's previous post ended with "Breaking News" about Air America; here's the New York Times story (registration required) on the contract dispute.

Labels: caffeine, coffee

 
David Courtwright's Forces of Habit
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:48 PM

Recently Vice Squad read Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making
of the Modern World, by historian David T. Courtwright. The book deals
with how alcohol, tobacco, caffeine (tea and coffee in particular),
chocolate, opiates, cocaine, and cannabis grew into global commodities,
as well as how some other psychoactive drugs (qat, betel nuts, kava)
failed to make the transition from indigenous area to global use. Forces
of Habit is well researched and fluidly written, and Vice Squad
learned quite a bit from it.

There are all sorts of insights from Forces of Habit that I could pass
along, but I will just provide a small, near random sample. Drugs tend
to start as medicines (at least when they spread internationally), and
only later does recreational use (and correspondingly, controversy)
become widespread. This pattern holds for distilled alcohol, tobacco,
cocaine, morphine -- and sugar! Courtwright notes that
sugar has the same habituating qualities as psychoactive drugs, and he
illustrates how the spread of many drugs has been eased by their
combination with sugar. (This has been true for what Courtwright terms
the "Big Three": alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. His "Little Three" are
opium, cocaine, and cannabis.) Taxes have played a major role in spreading
the use of psychoactive substances; in particular, lowered taxes leading to
lowered prices has often led to a surge in a drug's popularity.

Coffee, tea, chocolate, and tobacco owe their popularity in part
to the fact that they cohere well with the capitalist order -- the use
of these drugs does not present any immediate threat to productivity,
unlike alcohol. Drugs are also used to make a life of dull or arduous
labor more endurable; sometimes workers (even slave laborers) have been
paid in part in drugs of one form or another, including alcohol, opium,
and cannabis. Drug consumption and military service have historically
been closely connected, and military personnel have played a role in
spreading drug habits.

Courtwright's main argument about why some drugs spread and why drug
policies have changed so substantially over the years is that these
developments largely depend on interest of the social elites.
From the mid 16th to the end of the 19th Century, the main interest
of the elites was to raise revenue by taxing drugs, and perhaps to
quiet labor by seeing to it that workers had access to drugs. (States
become addicted to drug tax revenue -- and are subject to relapse --
in a manner not dissimilar to addicts' dependence upon drugs.) The
movement from taxation to prohibition in the late 19th Century in
part occurred because industrial processes and a mechanized military
made some forms of drug use -- alcohol in particular -- too costly.
At the same time, the therapeutic value of most recreational drugs
declined, because of improved substitutes and better overall health.
The health costs of drugs also became better established.

Courtwright notes the oft-perceived mismatch between restrictiveness
of control and social costs of a drug. Alcohol brings big problems
but is widely available; peyote is relatively safe but suppressed.
Tobacco's addictiveness and health costs are both very significant.

With regard to current drug policy, Courtwright treads lightly, and
plays his cards pretty close to the vest. He certainly doesn't
endorse calls for legalization, which he associates with "a form
of reactionary libertarianism...[p. 201]" (Vice Squad, incidentally,
believes that there should be legal channels of supply for adults
to all of the currently illicit drugs, though those channels might
be hard to access and be governed by all sorts of regulations,
including quantity restrictions and possibly user licensing and advance
purchase requirements. Vice Squad is not a libertarian, but does
favor this type of drug legalization.) Courtwright also notes that
"legalization would reset the policy clock by more than a hundred
years [p. 201]", but making these drugs illegal (e.g., cannabis
in the US in 1937) reset the policy clock by centuries, so I don't
see that as much of an argument for avoiding legalization. Courtwright
identifies middle class parents as bulwarks of drug prohibition:
they fear cannabis and other drug use by their kids, and see tough
enforcement as protecting their family, with the costs borne by others
who in part they see as deserving the harsh treatment. (Vice Squad
concurs with Courtwright's characterization, and would like to take
this point up in the not-too-distant future.)

Courtwright seems much more comfortable with harm reduction measures,
and rightly notes the significant role of the AIDS pandemic in pushing
the harm reduction agenda. He also seems comfortable with the position
of drug war "owls" (i.e., neither hawks nor doves) who believe in
types of convergence such that laws governing currently illicit drugs
be liberalized while stricter controls are put on alcohol and tobacco.
(By and large, Vice Squad supports stricter alcohol controls (though
in some areas this might just mean higher taxes.))

Well, this post has already become too long. I'll close by recommending
Forces of Habit to all of those interested in the historical
development of today's drug situation. It's a very valuable contribution.

I just found a review on-line from Jonathan Caulkins, a Rand-affiliated drug
policy expert. Haven't read it yet to see if he and I are in agreement, but
the loyal Vice Squad reader can judge for him or herself here. As
Forces of Habit was published in 2001 -- Vice Squad never claimed to be
up-to-the-minute -- no doubt there are many other reviews floating
about.

Labels: alcohol, cocaine, coffee, drugs, harm reduction, opium, taxes, tobacco