Monthly Archives: July 2018

6 Current Cold Beverage Trends in America

by • Beverages, Coffee, Hot Beverage, Tea • Tags: , , , , , , • 0 Comments

This is the time of year when a lot of us limit hot coffee consumption to just one or two cups in the morning. Whether it’s a physical thing or something mental, we tend to prefer cold drinks during the summer. That means this is also the time of year when a little observation is all it takes to identify the hottest trends in cold beverages.

This summer season is no exception. Take a step back and look around. You will see more people consuming cold beverages instead of hot coffee. Here are six that are trendy right now:

1-2. Cold Brew Coffee and Tea

Cold brew coffee has been around for decades. However, it didn’t become popular in America until just a few years ago. It is now one of the most preferred cold beverages among coffee and tea drinkers. Cold brew coffee offers all the flavor of its hot cousin but with less bitterness. Some people have described it as naturally sweeter than hot coffee.

Not to be outdone, tea drinkers have their own cold brew concoction. Cold brew tea is made the same way cold brew coffee is. You take your tea leaves (or tea bags as the case may be) and steep them in cold or room temperature water for up to 12 hours. Then serve it with ice and just a touch of lemon for some extra zing.

3-4. Seltzer and Flavored Seltzer

Whether you call it fizzy water, carbonated water, or seltzer, it’s all the same. The point is that seltzer is one of the hottest trends in cold beverages right now. People who love water because it is sugar, salt, and calorie-free also love seltzer because of the extra punch carbonation adds.

Flavored seltzer is also popular. And why not? If you can add a touch of fruit flavor to carbonated water without overloading it with sugar and calories, you make a great product even better.

5. Vat-Pasteurized Milk

Milk is making a comeback thanks to a new vat pasteurization process that replaces heat pasteurization and homogenization. Vat-pasteurized milk is more flavorful, according to those who love it. It is also heavy on the cream. That’s why you’re supposed to shake vat pasteurized milk aggressively before you actually drink it.

6. Cold Pressed Juices

Finally, cold pressed juices are a big hit among fruit and vegetable lovers. Cold pressed juices have been around for decades, but they started gaining traction about five years ago. What’s the appeal? Flavor.

Cold pressing extracts the most fruit or vegetable juice without the added debris created by single auger and centrifugal juicing. Furthermore, cold pressed juices can be safely refrigerated for 5 to 7 days without the need for flavor-killing pasteurization or high-pressure processing.

This is the time of year when a cold drink can be even more refreshing than a cup of hot coffee. What’s your favorite cold beverage? Perhaps we carry it here at Galaxie Coffee.

What Is the Allure of Single Origin Coffee?

by • Beverages, Coffee, Hot Beverage • Tags: , , • 0 Comments

As a beverage to be savored with the same discriminating taste as a fine wine, coffee has undergone quite a maturation since the 1980s. We are now in what many experts term the third wave of coffee production. And with that third wave has come a few big things, not the least of which is single origin coffee.

What is single origin coffee? More importantly, what is its allure? To better understand the single origin coffee phenomenon, we can approach coffee in the same way an experienced wine taster approaches a new vintage. There are a lot of similarities.

Single Vineyard vs. Single Origin

Winemakers have long used terms like ‘single vineyard’ to designate unique vintages considered a step above average. Those terms are very specific. The single vineyard designation indicates that a wine was made using the grapes of either a single vineyard or, in some cases, a single portion of one vineyard.

This creates a unique wine inasmuch as it boasts the features of that particular geographic area. Experienced wine tasters say they can taste the difference in single vineyard wines from multiple wineries even within a close proximity of one another. That is the same idea behind a single origin coffee, though the definition of ‘single origin’ is a lot more fluid.

Our industry generally accepts single origin coffee as coffee that is specific to a single geographic region. How big that region is depends on who you are talking to. It could be a multi-farm region, a single farm, or just one cultivated lot on a farm.

Regardless of how large the region is, here’s the point: the coffee beans from that region are the only ones used to create a single origin product. Growers and roasters are not mixing beans from multiple regions and countries to create a more generic blend.

Why People Love Single Origin

You might have a good idea of why people love single origin coffee now that you know what it is. Indeed, single origin coffee is considered among coffee connoisseurs as being the absolute best you can get. Why? Because each roast is absolutely unique. A coffee made with beans from a single farm on one side of a Colombian mountain will taste different from another product that comes from the other side of the mountain.

You and I may not have pallets discerning enough to tell the difference between one single origin coffee and another. But those who do say single origin is tops. They can taste complex flavor profiles that reveal the soil the coffee was grown in, the general weather conditions during the growing season, and more. It is really quite fascinating.

We do not consider ourselves single origin coffee experts here at Galaxie Coffee. But we are experts in office coffee service. If your office doesn’t have a professional coffee service, you’re missing out on something great. Give us a call to learn more about how our coffee service can benefit your company.