Get ready to kick-off summer with a spectacular tasting of iced beverages at the Brooklyn Expo Center as Starfish Junction Productions, producer of the popular Coffee & Tea Festival (hot edition), gets ready to refresh coffee and tea lovers with the ICED version of the Coffee & Tea Festival next month.
The Coffee & Tea Festival Iced is modeled after the successful Coffee & Tea Festival series of events which have been running annually since 2006. "The Coffee & Tea Festival has been a wonderful celebration of everything related to coffee and tea, but with approximately 85% of the tea consumed in America being iced this event is a natural expansion of what we do; it only makes sense to give consumers an event that focuses specifically on what they love and introduces them to the expansive world of iced tea and coffee,” explained event manager Kristyn Dolan.
Cold brew coffee has seen incredible growth this past year, so much so that coffee enthusiasts might even argue it is the 'summertime beverage of choice.' Research from Mintel notes that cold brew coffee sales had an estimated 115% growth from 2014-2015, reaching $7.9 million in retail sales."
Festival organizers tested the ICED concept and it received rave reviews last summer when it was held in Philadelphia. This year it is coming to Brooklyn. Like the “hot version” of the Coffee & Tea Festival, the event will feature a varied line-up of exhibitors—both local and national—providing tastings of their best products, seminars for attendees to learn more about their favorite beverages, and products available for purchase. Contests focused on coffee/tea mixology will educate and we’ll find out who makes the best coffee- and tea-infused cocktails.
Coffee Flour™ has been selected by the Global Sourcing Council (GSC) as a finalist recipient of the GSC 3S 2017 Climate Change Award for its outstanding commitment and business model for impacting climate change.
Coffee Flour is an agricultural innovation with the potential to do some really great things for the world. Each year the billions of coffee beans that eventually make their way into the Americanos, lattes, and no-foam, extra-hot, triple-shot cappuccinos of the world are harvested by milling and extracting them from the coffee plant. The surrounding fruit, is discarded. It often gets dumped into rivers or left to rot in heaps. Every year billions of pounds of coffee cherry fruit, a by­product of coffee production, are discarded or, to a lesser extent, composted into fertilizer.
For farmers and families in coffee growing countries, it will create sustainable jobs and a new revenue source for some of the poorest areas of the world. For the environment, it will remove botanical waste from streams and soil, strengthening the land and lives of the people and species there. And for the rest of us, it will add a nutritious and distinctly flavorful ingredient to the global menu.
When left to decompose in landfills, wet coffee pulp contributes to global warming by releasing significant amounts of methane into the atmosphere and threatening local water supplies.
Recent data from the USDA suggests that each pound of decomposing food in landfills emits .36 kg of CO2e. Based on the global consumption of coffee in 2015, an estimated 16 M MTs of CO2e or .2% of the world’s carbon emissions would be attributable to coffee pulp waste alone. Rather than leaving these cherries to rot in heaps, Coffee Flour converts them into a nutrient-dense and distinctly flavorful culinary ingredient that is high in fiber, protein, potassium, calcium, and iron. Coffee Flour’s business model also provides supplemental income for smallholder farmers and creates additional jobs at local coffee mills, turning what was once a pollutant into an economic boost to coffee-growing communities around the globe.
Iced tea is a form of cold tea, usually served in a glass with ice. It may or may not be sweetened. Iced tea is also a popular packaged drink. It can be mixed with flavored syrup, with common flavors including lemon, peach, raspberry, lime, passion fruit, strawberry and cherry. While most iced teas get their flavor from tea leaves (Camellia sinensis), tisanes are also sometimes served cold and referred to as iced tea.
Cookbooks dating from the early 19th century indicate Americans have been drinking iced tea since that time. However, the beverage became generally popular after Richard Blechynden of the India Tea Commission offered free sample to attendees of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.
New York City tea importer Thomas Sullivan became annoyed at the high cost of the tin boxes he used to send tea samples to customers. So in 1904 he switched to small cloth bags. One of the recipients brewed a pot of tea by simply pouring hot water over the bag — and the rest is history.
June is National Iced Tea Month.
June 10th is National Iced Tea Day.
Tea is a hydrating alternative to sugary beverages like soda and might help boost weight loss efforts, along with a healthy diet and plenty of exercise.
Recent studies on green tea shows that “routine tea consumption of an average of about two cups a day is associated with a lower percentage of body fat and weight control” than non-tea drinkers.
In 2003 Georgia state representative John Noel tried to pass a house bill making it mandatory for all restaurants to serve sweet tea.
The teaspoon was developed to easily add sugar to tall glasses full of iced tea.
Approximately 80 percent of the tea served in the United States today is iced tea.
According to the Tea Association of the USA, Americans consume well over 55 billion servings of tea (over 2.50 billion gallons) a year.
The famous long island iced tea drink doesn’t contain any tea.
The Global Tea Championship (GTC), an independent competition that evaluates and distinguishes the highest quality and best tasting specialty teas, presented four Gold, 12 Silver and 15 Bronze medals to the best, premium iced teas in various categories, just prior to the National Iced Tea Month this June. The evaluation was held May 11 – 12 in Montebello, Calif. at the Wilbur Curtis headquarters, and all of the high-quality winning teas are commercially sold around the world.
This is the first competition in which the Global Tea Championship has used the Gold, Silver and Bronze medal designations. The Championship previously used First, Second and Third-place winning classifications. The new designations are meant to further elevate the honor of being recognized by the Championship, and to better identify GTC winners on packaging/labels, thus, making it easier for companies to effectively market their awards.
The Global Tea Championship Iced Tea Class is divided into several categories, according to market application and sales channels, including: 1) Ready-to-Drink (RTD), 2) Food service (Commercial Fresh Brewed, Bag-in-Box or BIB) and 3) Instant (Soluble Powder, Liquid Concentrate). Each category is then separated into various sub-categories, to represent popular products currently being sold in the marketplace.
All Global Tea Championship winners will be featured in an October 2017 Global Tea Buyers Guide, which will be distributed digitally worldwide. And all winners will have the opportunity to showcase their winning teas at World Tea Expo 2017 in the "Winner's Tasting Circle" (if they are exhibiting or attending the show) – with a chance to win a People's Tea Choice Award.
Scott Svihula, founder of Orlando, Fla.-based Hula Consulting, an independent consultancy offering product development, sourcing and regulatory compliance, and one of the GTC evaluators, said, "We congratulate all the winners of the Global Tea Championship's Iced Tea Class, and I look forward to seeing them in the Winner's Tasting Circle at this year's World Tea Expo, where they will have a chance to win a People's Tea Choice Award, voted on by the attendees of the show. It's really difficult to earn a Global Tea Championship medal, and all those that did score an award should be very proud of their teas."
The next Global Tea Championship, the Spring Hot (Loose Leaf) Tea evaluation, will be held Sept. 16-17, 2017 in Boulder, Colorado.
They sure can pick ‘em! The folks at Men’s Journal just released their take on the best coffee roasters in America. Many of our favorites are listed here…did you find your favorites too?
Thank you Men’s Journal for putting together this blockbuster list. Click here for more info.