Seattle's Best 6th Avenue Bistro

Review of 6th Avenue Bistro by Seattle's Best

When you smell the ground beans of 6th Avenue Bistro, you immediately notice a rich, smoky aroma. This is a dark roast coffee with a lot of depth to the flavor.


When you first taste this brew, you notice that it hits the entire tongue with a very smooth, rich flavor. Despite its depth, it is not overpowering. It pairs very well with good milk chocolate as well as breakfast foods such as quiche. So it doesn't matter whether you are serving it with a desert or a meal, this coffee will not disappoint.

I don't normally enjoy coffee when it is cold, but I have taken it in my mug on fishing trips and 6th Avenue is still tasty when it is being drank by a cold Colorado lake.

I am especially impressed by the fact that the rich flavor lingers on the tongue for a while, allowing you to savor the smoky flavor of its dark roast. Most coffees that linger this long on the tongue seem bitter to me - but not this brew!

I have tasted this coffee several times as an Americano. If you like smooth, rich, dark roast coffee, this is an ideal choice. I personally recommend this coffee for those who want an exceptional cup to start their morning.

Thanks for reading, and may your next cup be the best!

Gevalia Mocca Java

Mocca Java by Gevalia

Visit the Gevalia Shop

This coffee is a special blend consisting of “Moka” Harar beans from Ethiopia and aged Sumatra beans. The blending of the two makes for a very unique coffee. Like a lot of people out there, I assumed that the title Mocca Java meant that it was a flavored coffee, containing a chocolate flavoring. I was wrong.

I brewed this up as an Americano. The aroma of the brewed beans produced a nice aroma that didn’t make my house smell like the local coffee shop. Because of this, I wondered whether the coffee would be lacking in flavor. I just had to taste it and see what the folks at Gevalia had provided in this roast.

The first taste of this coffee has a hint of a chocolate flavor to it, perhaps this is due to the Moka beans. All I know is that this is what I tasted. It is a very pleasant surprise, indeed.

The coffee hits the back of the tongue with a pleasant bitterness. When tasted without any sweetener, it is very bright and gets your attention. I added a small amount of sweetener and was pleased with the light chocolate flavor I found.

The mouth feel of this coffee is pleasant, and it lingers on the tongue just briefly – just long enough for you to appreciate its flavor. This seems to be very typical of Gevalia’s coffees. I found myself looking forward to the next sip of this blend – it is that good.

I think this coffee is really great for people like myself, who find that the moca that they pick up at their local Starbucks or Seattle’s Best shop is just a little too rich with chocolate flavor. This blend gives you a natural chocolate flavor that comes from the beans themselves.

This has to be one of the best offerings I have ever tasted from Gevalia. The flavor was so good that I have got to order some more.

Thanks for reading, and as always, may your next cup be the best!

Peet's Coffee - Major Dickason's Blend

Review of Major Dickason's Blend

First impressions are important. When I first smelled of the ground coffee, I thought to myself, “this is really rich stuff.” The aroma of the ground beans has a depth that is hard to describe…it is just that rich in aroma.

This is a nice, full bodied coffee with a very smooth mouth feel, suitable for all day sipping. Major Dickason's Blend® has some earthy undertones which become even more apparent as the coffee cools down a bit. The flavor is very active on the back of the tongue at the first part of a sip, then it moves to the front of the tongue. This is, by my personal standards, a medium roast that has some of the depth of a dark roast.

I decided to try this brew with some dark chocolate. Peet’s Coffee has a real winner here – the coffee really enhances the chocolate’s flavor. It is good with milk chocolate, don’t get me wrong, but this coffee is meant to go with dark chocolate.

Since I bought 12 ounces of this blend, I will definitely enjoy it for a several days – no problem! If you have guests coming over that aren’t into dark roast coffee, but you still want to give them a nice rich cup, this is the one to brew.

Thanks for reading, and may your next cup be the best!

Coffee and Health Problems Part 2

Coffee and Risk of Heart Disease – Is That Cup of Dark Roast Coffee Bad For You?

In this two-part blog I have been discussing some recent information about coffee and health. Part 1 focused on the correlation between coffee and stroke, in Part 2, we will focus on heart health and other health related concerns.

The information below is a summary of multiple articles on the subject of heart disease, other health issues, and coffee consumption. It is up to each person that reads this to do his/her own research on the subject. In addition, this is not meant to replace a consultation with your health care provider. This article is for informational purposes only.

While some studies have shown that coffee and tea are bad for your health, more information surfaces that indicates that coffee and tea, in moderation are actually good for most of us. Some studies do indicate there may be a correlation between coffee and heart disease.

In one recent Dutch study, it was determined that moderate consumption of tea or coffee reduces the risk of heart disease.

This study of 37,514 men and women was conducted over a period of 12 years. It appears that those who drank between 2 and 4 cups of coffee per day had a 20% lower risk of heart disease than those who drank less than 2 cups of coffee a day and those who drank over 4 cups a day. Moderation appears to be the key element here.

Those who drank over 6 cups of black tea per day had a 36% lower risk of getting heart disease and a 45% lower risk of death from heart disease.

In a study from 2002, a group of about 3,000 subjects with no history of cardiovascular disease were tested for compounds that either promote or are markers of inflammation. The subjects were asked to fill out questionnaires about the quantity of their coffee intake. When compared to individuals that drank no coffee, those that drank about a cup a day had higher levels of the compounds in their bodies.

So it appears that there are two distinct camps on the subject of heart disease – those who think coffee is bad and those who think that, in moderation, a cup or two of java is a good thing. More studies should help to clear the air on this one.

Some studies say that coffee seems to help reduce the liklihood of gall bladder problems and there are studies that say it may help reduce the liklihood of the onset of type 2 diabetes.

Although there are no clear-cut answers, it appears that coffee does have an effect on our health. It does appear that caffeinated coffee may have some benefits when drank in moderation. But this is almost always true with anything – a little of something can be good and a lot can be bad.

Maybe that 4th cup of java isn’t really so bad...

May your next cup be your best!

Coffee and Health Problems

Coffee and Risk of Stroke – Is That Cup of Dark Roast Coffee Bad For You?

In this two-part blog I will discuss some recent information about coffee and health. Part 1 will focus on the correlation between coffee and stroke, while Part 2 will focus on heart health and other health related concerns.

The information below is a summary of multiple articles on the subject of stroke and coffee consumption. It is up to each person that reads this to do his/her own research on the subject. In addition, this is not meant to replace a consultation with your health care provider. This article is for informational purposes only.

Coffee may not be quite as bad for you as most people think. In one study, it was found that regular coffee drinking appears to reduce the risk of stroke. The study consisted of 23,000 men and women who were followed 12 years. The study concluded that stroke risk was inversely proportional to their coffee consumption. in this study people who reported any intake coffee were at 27% lower risk of stroke than those who had said they never drank coffee.

The results of a 24 year study reported in the February 2009 issue of the journal Circulation said that drinking caffeinated coffee diminishes the risk of stroke for women. The study followed a group of 83,000 female nurses. Among those who were non-smokers, those who drank 4 or more cups of coffee apparently lowered the risk of stroke by 43% compared to those who drank no coffee. An important point in this is that coffee lessened the stroke risk over time. Other important factors to consider whenever you are doing stroke prevention are to maintain a healthy diet, exercise daily, control your weight and don’t smoke. High blood pressure and high cholesterol are usually the start of stroke problems and should be controlled.

There are also studies that say that coffee can increase the risk of stroke. In one study, researchers said the stroke risk increases in the hour after drinking a cup of coffee and that the risk decreases within two hours after consumption.
Among people who reported drinking one cup of coffee a day or less, stroke risk doubled in the hour after they consumed a cup of coffee. Coffee has been documented to have negative physiologic effects, such as increased systolic and diastolic blood pressure. In addition, some studies have proven that caffeinated coffee increases stiffness in the arteries. The findings in this study don't seem to have any application to those who drank more than one cup of coffee per day. Those who drink coffee more frequently apparently developed a tolerance to the short-term effects of caffeine.

So there are those that say coffee increases the risk of stroke and those who say it lowers the risk. Time and more studies will tell the tale.

In my next blog post I will cover the effects of coffee and heart disease along with other ailments. Thank you for coming by, and as always, may your next cup be your best!