The Pacific Ocean Is Polluted With Coffee 294
An anonymous reader writes in with this excerpt from Inhabitat:"People aren't the only ones getting a jolt from caffeine these days; in a new study published in Marine Pollution Bulletin, scientists found elevated concentrations of caffeine in the Pacific Ocean in areas off the coast of Oregon. With all those coffee drinkers in the Pacific Northwest, it should be no surprise that human waste containing caffeine would ultimately make its way through municipal water systems and out to sea – but how will the presence of caffeine in our oceans affect human health and natural ecosystems?"
Bet Ya (Score:3)
if you check closelyy enough,most other waterways are,too
Re:Bet Ya (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bet Ya (Score:4, Funny)
Good for them I say.
Re:Bet Ya (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bet Ya (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine now, how nervous are these sharks with lasers.
Stop it. Now.
Re:How come the water don't smell like coffee? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How come the water don't smell like coffee? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How come the water don't smell like coffee? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How come the water don't smell like coffee? (Score:4, Informative)
Headache/bad headache != migraine headache. I wish people would really stop saying they get migraine headaches all the time. A migraine head ache is one that is at least 3 days long. Unless your headache was at least that long, it was not a migraine. Also usually migraine sufferers have other issues like not seeing too well, super sensitivity to light, sound, or smell. Could be taste but I never met anyone who had that. They also can vomit or have diarrhea or both at the same time from a migraine. I watched a family member have migraines for years. The many trips to the hospital, and that little pill that messed her up as much as the migraine. When you have a headache where the world is vibrating due to your eye sight being affected from the headache for 3-4 weeks, we'll talk. The one day migraine is BS. That is a headache, not a migraine headache.
Caffeine increases the blood flow. Increase blood flow helps with regular headaches. Not migraines. The doctors had me pumped full of caffeine during one test. I was talking 2-3 times as fast. That tape was funny. Did nothing for the headache I had at the time. For other headaches, caffeine works well. Why do you think Excedrin works well for regular headaches.
Another observation: If you actually do get migraines often, see if something near the head or neck is out of alignment or pinched. Most of the heavy migraine sufferers I know had a pinched nerve, out of alignment neck or jaw. Getting those fixed helped slow the frequency of migraines dramatically. Mine issue was my jaw. A tooth came in that hit my lower jaw. That made my jaw not line up correctly. It was off by just a little. Had the tooth taken out. Now I have a few headaches a year instead of a few weeks of no headaches a year.
Re:How come the water don't smell like coffee? (Score:4, Interesting)
Green tea has less caffeine than black tea, but arguably is much healthier (http://nutritionfacts.org/video/coffee-vs-tea/). Green tea is less processed than black tea, but white tea which is even less processed has less caffeine and may have the most health promoting properties. I've swapped out my daily pot of joe with a daily pot of green/white mix and do feel a lot better! Even with a few chocolate espresso beans now and then, no insomnia :)
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I've seen news of reports on studies lately that show coffee is good for you. [harvard.edu] Is the green tea thing simply Asian folklore, or have there been scientific studies? The video you linked is suspect; it's a VIDEO. Do you have a link for those of us who can actually read, preferably from an .edu domain rather than a .org?
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Type of Size* Caffeine**
Black tea 8 oz. (240 mL) 14-61 mg
Black tea, decaffeinated 8 oz. (240 mL) 0-12 mg
Green tea 8 oz. (240 mL) 24-40 mg
AriZona Iced Tea, lemon-flavored 8 oz. (240 mL) 11 mg
Generic brewed Coffee 8 oz. (240 mL) 95-200 mg
Espresso, restaurant-style 1 oz. (30 mL) 40-75 mg
Monster 8 oz. (240 mL) 80 mg
5-Hour Energy 2 oz. (60 mL) 207 mg
Caffeine content for coffee, tea, soda and more [mayoclinic.com]
Caffeine is a delicate organic compound, the more you heat the
Re:How come the water don't smell like coffee? (Score:5, Interesting)
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They say tea contains caffeine and yet I can drink one before bed and not feel any effects of insomnia. The reverse is true if i drink coffee. Are there different types of caffeine or is there a lower concentration in tea?
Depends on the tea. Some can have higher concentrations, some lower - in the same way that concentration in coffee will vary based on the bean, how it's ground, etc.
Personally - after chugging far too many 2 liter bottles of 'dew in my youth - I find that none of the above particularly effects me. I can drink tea/coffee/jolt/whatever and go to sleep afterwards.
Maybe I should switch to cocaine.
Caffeinated Fish (Score:2)
The fishies will be swimming stupidly faster with more energy!
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"School of fish" is no longer just a collective noun.
Re:Caffeinated Fish (Score:5, Funny)
So that's why the dolphins are talking so fast. I can't even understand them.
Maybe the caffeine is getting some extra kick from some Japanese cesium.
So long, and thanks for (Score:2)
all the Caffeinated Fish!
polluted is a bad word (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you think we caffeine drinkers should call ourselves?
Re:polluted is a bad word (Score:4, Insightful)
Junkies.
Mmmmmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Caffeinated sushi. *drool*
Re:Mmmmmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Baconated grapefruit?
"Admiral" Crunch?
Amounts (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Amounts (Score:5, Insightful)
In the ocean, they found 44.7 ng/L. "Caffeine concentrations in rivers and estuaries draining to the coast measured up to 152.2 ng/L." For those who like their numbers in ppm, I believe that's .0447 ppm and .1522 ppm, respectively. Sometimes I fail at math, though.
Serious question: Caffeine is a naturally occurring substance... were they expecting 0g / L?
What is the natural amount of ocean water caffeine; otherwise it is hard to judge the extent of the impact.
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The water coming out of the rivers is significantly higher in caffeine levels though, which would indicate that something on the land is adding caffeine to the ocean. This study didn't estimate the amount that was coming from various sources, that requires further study.
Re:Amounts (Score:5, Informative)
The paper lists the North Sea as having between 2 and 16 ng/L. Mediterranean was below 5, Hawaii below 10. Guanabara Bay (Rio) was between 137 and 147. Halifax, Pictou, and Cocagne watersheds (Canada) was between 0 and 1400. Jamaica Bay, NY ranged from 0 - 5000 ng/L. So this is actually pretty low compared to what has been measured in other places, but obviously higher than than plain, untouched seawater.
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The paper lists the North Sea as having between 2 and 16 ng/L.
Really? Are you sure? Because the abstract reports 8.5 ng/L as the lowest concentration they can detect.
Re:Amounts (Score:5, Informative)
Hey, I'm just quoting the paper. These amounts are referenced from other papers, which may have been using different techniques for measuring the concentrations.
Here's the North Sea one: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021967301005295 [sciencedirect.com]
Here's the Mediterranean: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es020125z [acs.org]
Here's Hawaii: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X10001839 [sciencedirect.com]
Re:Amounts (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, there were 2 North Sea references from the same research group, that was the earlier one, here is the later one:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969702000645 [sciencedirect.com]
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Caffeine concentrations in nanopure water (blank) were 2.5 ng/L (SD = 2.0 ng/L). The reporting limit for caffeine was adjusted to account for blank detection. The adjusted reporting limit was determined by adding three times the standard deviation to the mean blank caffeine concentration (8.5 ng/L)[...]Coastal ocean samples from Coos Bay/North Bend and Astoria/Warrenton, two of the most populated areas on the Oregon Coast, both had caffeine concentrations below the reporting limit.
So they did find ocean water with a concentration below the limit of detection.
Re:Amounts (Score:4, Insightful)
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Article says it's 2 ng/L in the North Sea. Where is the North Sea? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea [wikipedia.org]
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So in fact the summary is completely nonsensical?
How could this happen on /. of all places?
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This is one of those times where you fail.
1 liter has a mass of 10^3 g .0000447 ppm
1ng = 10^-9 g
Therefore 44.7ng/L has a concentration of 44.7 * 10^-9 / 10^3
= 44.7 * 10^-6 / 10^6
=
Similarly, 152.2 ng/L is equivalent to .0001522 ppm.
Re:Amounts (Score:5, Informative)
By comparison, an average cup of coffee contains roughly 100mg, or a concentration of 400,000,000 ng/L.
Re:Amounts (Score:5, Funny)
Please reframe your numbers using some useful metric - something like Filet-O-Fish/day.
Re:Amounts (Score:5, Funny)
That would be equivalent to 0.00277 fully-loaded 747s per Olympic swimming pool.
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Topical too, especially if the SAMs on the highrise blocks miss.
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Of course the idea is that most of this actually doesn't get pissed away... Otherwise we wouldn't have a reason to drink it in the first place.
Good to know though, my daily dose of painkillers brings me to three average cups of coffee, in addition to the zero I usually drink. The next time my doctor asks me if I drink coffee I'll have to consider my answer.
Which is also a good reminder that coffee is far from the only source of caffeine these days. Energy drinks, tea, painkillers, hell some kids even eat ca
Re:Amounts (Score:4, Insightful)
Fish are much more sensitive to some things (Score:5, Informative)
There are chemicals that can kill fish at 3 parts per billion. There are other things like salt that don't bother them as much, but it's really variable.
However, as other people have pointed out, there are lots of other chemicals getting dumped into the water system, including things like cocaine and prozac that have been processed through humans first. With caffeine, humans metabolize it so you wouldn't get much left, but there's all the caffeine in coffee grounds and waste coffee and soda.
And it is Portland.
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There are chemicals that can kill fish at 3 parts per billion.
OK, some people have corrected my math, the correct number is 152 parts per trillion at the maximum measured, so those fish are safe.
Re:Amounts (Score:5, Interesting)
One hundred parts per trillion is rather difficult to measure, but these folks have found a way to do it.
The question is: will a concentration that low have any effect on sea life?
I'm still confused (Score:2)
How many libraries of congress is that, exactly?
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Dunno; how much coffee do they usually drink in the LoC?
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Depends on how early in the day they run out of whiskey.
Re:Sixty million tons of caffeine (Score:5, Insightful)
First, you're off by a factor of thousand, so it'd really be sixty thousand tons, not sixty million tons.
Second -- this was the higherst concentration they found, in one small area of the ocean -- they are *not* saying the entire ocean has that much coffeine in it, indeed they sampled other places and found nothing (i.e. the concentration was below their limit of detection)
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It is actually 44.7 and 152 ppt (parts per trillion), or 0.0000447 and 0.000152 ppm.
These days you can detect absurdly small traces of things, so you can find anything in anything.
I really wonder how accurate is the result - ppm and ppb I can accept, but ppt ?
How in the world can you calibrate the tool in the first place?
I have a hard time believing (Score:5, Insightful)
that human coffe/tea consumption and pee will have an effect on the world's oceans.
Other human activities, yes, definitely. But not this.
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Exactly.
A liter of espresso may contain as much as 2254 milligrams of caffeine. But when filtered through a human gut 5 to 10 milligrams/liter in urine is the usual norm for a three cup a day coffee drinker.
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Except its not just the human gut filtered coffee being dumped. Its also the used coffee grounds.
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A liter of espresso may contain as much as 2254 milligrams of caffeine. But when filtered through a human gut 5 to 10 milligrams/liter in urine is the usual norm for a three cup a day coffee drinker.
And do you filter your left-over coffee grounds through your gut, too?
Re:I have a hard time believing (Score:5, Funny)
You mean, you don't?
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that human coffe/tea consumption and pee will have an effect on the world's oceans.
Other human activities, yes, definitely. But not this.
It's a positive affect. Caffeine addiction with fish comes in handy. Just pour a shot of expresso in the water and it's like chumming for sharks. I've heard just waving a Starbucks label over the water will make the fish go bananas. I'd be careful about making them go cold turkey. The fish could get pretty surly.
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As long as they don't get ill-tempered everything should be ok.
Re:I have a hard time believing (Score:5, Funny)
that human coffe/tea consumption and pee will have an effect on the world's oceans.
Q: Why did the hipster burn his lips drinking his coffee/tea?
A: He wanted to drink it before it was cool...
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Synthetic Drugs? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Birth control hormones
Influence on fishes has already been measured. http://articles.nydailynews.com/2009-09-15/news/17931386_1_river-basins-intersex-fish-male-fish [nydailynews.com]
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From what I've heard this (birth control hormones getting into nature) has already been linked to declining fertility rates in the civilized world. Note that this is hearsay, it might just be a "theory" so far, but I've heard of it from several sources so... It might be something to worry about.
If you value your fertility, that is. Some of us are more than happy never to add people to this clusterfuck we call earth. :)
Metabolites and half lifes (Score:5, Informative)
Wiki says [wikipedia.org]
Caffeine is metabolized in the liver by the cytochrome P450 oxidase enzyme system (to be specific, the 1A2 isozyme) into three metabolic dimethylxanthines. Further, In healthy adults, caffeine's half-life has been measured with a range of results. Some measures get 4.9 hours, and others are at around 6 hours.
Therefore, it seems unlikely that the source of caffeine in the ocean is from human waste, since the time spent in the gut exceeds the half-life of caffeine, and when metabolized, its no longer caffeine. There is of course still some small remaining un-metabolized caffeine in urine. A liter of espresso may contain as much as 2254 milligrams of caffeine. But when filtered through a human gut 5 to 10 milligrams/liter in urine is unusual, and 15mg/l gets you bounced from most sports programs as a sign of abuse.
It seems far more likely that the coffee poured out by restaurants, offices, and households, and the disposed of grounds being used for compost and gardening are a larger source than what comes out in the urine stream. Also the water Decaffeination processes is the source of the excess caffeine in city sewage, even though caffeine thus recovered can be marketed into the soft drink business, not all small operations bother with that.
Quoting the first linked source:
Caffeine occurrence and concentrations in seawater did not correspond with pollution threats from population density and point and non-point sources, but did correspond with storm event occurrence.
So it seems to me that the caffeine is just as likely entirely natural, perhaps produced in very low quantities by some naturally occurring plants in the predominantly coniferous temperate rain forests of the area, rather than by any human activity or byproduct. Such a low production would leach out into streams and rivers during storms, but not from municipal sewers, and hence would not correspond to population density.
Re:Metabolites and half lifes (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, wiki only says the bit about:
Caffeine is metabolized in the liver by the cytochrome P450 oxidase enzyme system (to be specific, the 1A2 isozyme) into three metabolic dimethylxanthines. Further, In healthy adults, caffeine's half-life has been measured with a range of results. Some measures get 4.9 hours, and others are at around 6 hours
The rest was my posting error.
What plants. (Score:2)
Apparently, according to different sources 50-100 plants produce caffeine in varying amounts, which makes sense as caffeine is an effective herbicide if you aren't trying to ward off primates with an inflated sense of self-importance.
Narrowing to California, the first species I found that California clearly has was the leaves and flowers of orange trees, though the only exact number I could find was "caffeine is found at concentration levels of 11-17. 5 milligrams per liter, mostly
Re: (Score:2)
Holly grows in the wild in Washington State, and I suspect, Oregon. But it is never plentiful or concentrated. I rather suspect it's some unassuming ground plant that nobody pays any attention to.
Re:Metabolites and half lifes (Score:4, Informative)
Er you missed the part where caffeine is hydrosoluble. Since Wikipedia is no substitute for say, pharmacology classes in medical school, most of your assertions are irrelevant. While caffeine is metabolized by the liver like almost everything else: all small, hydrosoluble molecules are filtered out at the glomerulus and form part of the ultrafiltrate. Water soluble molecules are then not re-absorbed. Therefore while caffeine is metabolized in the liver, it and its metabolites are excreted via the urine. How much caffeine is metabolized and how much is excreted "as is" depends very much on dose, the patient's ability to metabolize it, and any exogenous factors (medication, etc) that could affect the rate at which the liver can break it down.
The liver takes time to metabolize things and like any enzyme dependent process, it can be saturated. The filtration from the kidney however is a physical process. So long as blood flows through it that has caffeine in it, some of that caffeine is going to get filtered out. And because the kidney is pretty good at keeping water-soluble molecules out (you know, things like urea), once it's filtered it stays filtered. Lipid soluble molecules can always find a way to sneak back in on their own, but the other stuff (like say, glucose) ain't getting back in unless there's an active transport system to pull it back in.
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ALL glucose is filtered out by the kidneys. 100% of it. It is then reabsorbed via active transport (actually sodium-glucose cotransport). The reason diabetics urinate glucose is because their blood glucose levels are so high, leading to such a high concentration of glucose in urine, that this saturates the active transport mechanisms. That is why you automatically know that a patient with any glucose in the urine at all has at LEAST a 180mg/dL blood glucose level, as that's the saturation point of the enzym
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Just to be completely pedantic (and to emphasize that we're not as all knowing on biochem as we ofttimes pretend to be), pregnant women can spill glucose without having elevated serum levels. Don't recall the mechanism.
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I'm really wondering which of those words you think was numbers.
WE'RE VERY AWAKE DOWN HERE GUYS! VERY!!! (Score:5, Funny)
*TWITCH!*TWITCH*
I'd like to swim upstream and spawn, but the last time I tried it, I wound up in Lake Erie! Eww! And MAN is the wind cold at supersonic speeds!
It took me almost a week to swim home! It would have happened faster, but I ran out of caffeine two-days from home. Hawaii was nice though.
Now where was I?
Oh yeah.
WE'RE VERY AWAKE DOWN HERE GUYS!
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WE'RE VERY AWAKE DOWN HERE GUYS!
Just watch out for the sharks with frickin' lasers ON FRICKIN' CAFFEINE!!!
This made me laugh (Score:2)
I could only read it and helplessly chuckle to myself thinking "Why, of course it is!".
Uh (Score:2)
It won't. Poison is all about the dosage. There's a LOT of water, and not much caffeine compared to that much water. Also, caffeine only works because it interfaces with specific receptors in our brains. It probably affects other mammals, but is not going to affect random fish or other aquatic life.
BS (Score:5, Interesting)
Not buying it.
An 8 oz cup of coffee is 236.5 ml and has 49mg of caffeine. Assume the entire thing was thrown away undrunk at all. The population of portland is about 600k. If we assume that everyone in portland throws away one full cup of coffee every day for 100 years and that every drop ends up in the ocean, that's 21.9b cups of coffee or approx 1 billion grams of caffeine.
100 years is plenty of time to diffuse. Its also plenty of times for caffeine to break down but less assume this were magic caffeine and so lasted the 100 years perfectly intact. Since they say the pacific ocean lets say none of it leaves the pacific for the other oceans. The pacific ocean is 7.721473366 × 10^21 liters. So cross multiplying (7.721473366 × 10^21× ) x (.049 g) / (.2365 l) us that that we are 1.6x10^20 grams so your billion grams falls 1.6x10^11 short. OK well lets assume that in addition to not breaking down it also doesn't diffuse. The Pacific is 361.1m kilometers in area. So lets assume that all the coffee hangs out for the entire century in the 2 kilometers nearest Portland, we still are short by 3 full orders of magnitude.
There is no way a bunch of 600k humans use enough coffee for the ocean to notice.
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while i agree with your calculations i have to say tea would be better for Portland it being the home of stash tea, and tazo. If your going to name a Pacific Northwest city known for coffee it should have been Seattle they are the home of Starbucks, Seatles Best, and Tully's coffee.
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Bear in mind that this is "in waters off Oregon". That does NOT mean that the caffeine level measured there is representative of a uniform distribution throughout the entire ocean volume. While there is diffusion, it's not that fast. What's being seen is localized concentrations of caffeine, and that's a marker for other kinds of pollutants which are associated with it....pesticides, drug residues, etc. It's entirely plausible that you'd see such measurements in estuaries, river mouths and locations near po
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Where do you think they threw the grounds?
Either A) a compost heap or B) a landfill, neither one of which should see anything going into the ocean unless something's gone very wrong with the whole process. Assuming you dump your coffee grounds into a garbage disposal or flush them down your toilet or whatever asinine thing that still shouldn't lead to much of anything making it into the ocean unless we're dumping raw sewage into the Pacific now...
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During brewing most of the caffeine is extracted. The strongest grounds are 150mg of caffeine per tbsp. Generally it is 1 tbsp per 8 oz of water. But again I'll be generous and assume they all use the strongest grounds and 2x as much grounds as they should. OK that gets them up to 6x my numbers. Now what?
Great! Now the sharks really won't ever sleep. (Score:3)
Oblig. (Score:2)
Unlikely (Score:2)
TFA goes on to note that high levels of caffeine have been detected in Boston Harbor, but they're not suggesting any link between the levels and the tea party.The whole article is dubious, given that it consists of four whopping paragraphs and two stoc
ah, now I get it (Score:2)
obligatory (Score:2)
sharks with frickin' lasers...after a quad-shot of espresso
Surely the elevated levels of caffeine (Score:2)
This is merely viral marketing (Score:2)
Re:Starbucks (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Starbucks (Score:5, Funny)
I know it has a few health benefits, but it's just too bitter.
One benefit is making you think "bitter" is tasty. The second, and more important one, is the prevention of lack-of-coffee headaches.
Re:Starbucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation:
I know I'll probably get modded troll for this but good luck separating [people I'm the opposite of, and hold distain for] in [state below the states being written about] from [place I heard is attached to the object in the issue].
Personally I've never [insert way of using the object in question]. I know it has [something obvious about nearly everything], but [insert something only vaguely related to the object in question].
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If it's too bitter, then you really haven't had decent coffee yet. You can make strong, flavorful coffee without it having to be bitter. If the coffee you're drinking is bitter, there's a good chance that the preparation methods are at fault, since the bitter flavors tend to get extracted from the grounds as a result of over-extraction (the good flavors are extracted first, with the bitter ones coming later).
For instance, if it's being made in a percolator or a standard drip coffee maker, you need to find s
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Coffee should ONLY be brewed in clean, ceramic crucibles.
Anything else will dissolve in the face of properly brewed coffee.
That's where you get all the bitter stuff, bits of spoon, filter, carafe....
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Poor trolling or advanced irony ... I'm not sure ???
Seattle has a good reputation for coffee - right up there with cities like Rome, Vienna, Buenos Aires and my home town of Melbourne.
We closed 16 of our Starbucks that couldn't turn a profit and you'd have to be insane to drink coffee from McDonalds, DD or 7-11 given the other choices. I'd assume the same in Seattle and Pacific NW in general.
So trolling Starbucks or being ironic about the others ... not sure !
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>We closed 16 of our Starbucks that couldn't turn a profit and you'd have to be insane to drink coffee from McDonalds, DD or 7-11 given the other choices.
Insane? Or maybe just not care about having a "premium coffee experience". A lot of people are happy with the coffee at say McDonalds... it's fast, hot, and quite a bit cheaper than coffee from a coffee house. Is it gourmet? No... Is it good? To them it is.
It's just like how many people like Coors Light... they sell a ton of it! Now I personally p
Re:Now I know why ..... (Score:4, Funny)
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