# agentsite-static-version=19c7518b-0e3b-4a08-b7a0-98572ce8e962
# kohanacoffee.com

> AI-optimized mirror of kohanacoffee.com containing 250 pages totalling 155,652 words of clean markdown content, structured data, and semantic HTML. Original source: https://kohanacoffee.com. Last updated: 2026-10-15T11:06:22.025Z.

Each page is available as HTML (with JSON-LD structured data) and Markdown (text-only, ideal for LLMs and RAG).

## Homepage

- [Cold Brew Coffee - Cold Brew Concentrate - Coffee Concentrate
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/site-root.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (338 words)

## Articles & Blog Posts

- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "plants"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/plants/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (356 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "business for good"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/business-for-good/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (507 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "iceland"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/iceland/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (374 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "shade grown"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/shade-grown/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (372 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "vision"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/vision/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (552 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "environment"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/environment/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (603 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "affordable"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/affordable/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (372 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "relax"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/relax/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (372 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "timeout"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/timeout/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (372 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "travel kit"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/travel-kit/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (499 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "self love"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/self-love/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (376 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "wanderlust"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/wanderlust/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (618 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "kindness"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/kindness/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (503 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "chill"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/chill/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (372 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "travel"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/travel/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (736 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "list"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/list/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (375 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "lifehacks"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/lifehacks/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (495 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "adventure"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/adventure/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (618 words)
- [blogs/in-the-news-atom.html](/content/blogs/in-the-news-atom.html) (1,236 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "dirt"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/dirt/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (374 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "nature"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/nature/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (491 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "depression"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/depression/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (374 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "budget"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/budget/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (488 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "stress"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/stress/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (490 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "summer"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/summer/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (488 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "planning"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/planning/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (502 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "iced coffee"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/iced-coffee/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (493 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "ground coffee"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/ground-coffee/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (379 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "coffee grinder"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/coffee-grinder/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (379 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "intentions"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/intentions/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (491 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "grinder"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/grinder/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (378 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "scary"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/scary/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (373 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "failing"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/failing/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (491 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "nightmare"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/nightmare/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (373 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "halloween"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/halloween/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (373 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "life hacks"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/life-hacks/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (374 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "memories"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/memories/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (743 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "cocktails"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/cocktails/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (305 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "writing"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/writing/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (372 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "imagine"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/imagine/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (494 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "positive"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/positive/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (489 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "the now"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/the-now/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (500 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "photography"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/photography/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (372 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "alone"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/alone/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (492 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "spontaneity"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/spontaneity/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (376 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "zen"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/zen/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (375 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "art"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/art/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (372 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "happiness"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/happiness/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (747 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "meditation"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/meditation/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (495 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "beach"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/beach/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (489 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "perfection"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/perfection/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (372 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "imagination"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/imagination/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (493 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "appreciation"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/appreciation/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (619 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "simple things"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/simple-things/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (742 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "day dreaming"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/day-dreaming/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (376 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "attention"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/attention/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (618 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "goals"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/goals/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (494 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "gardens"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/gardens/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (496 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "tasting"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/tasting/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (501 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "veggies"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/veggies/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (376 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "yoga"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/yoga/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (729 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "home fitness"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/home-fitness/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (613 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "genes"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/genes/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (375 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "trying"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/trying/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (376 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "breakfast"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/breakfast/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (513 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "proper brewing"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/proper-brewing/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (626 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "metabolism"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/metabolism/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (375 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "recipe"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/recipe/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (545 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "stretch goals"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/stretch-goals/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (377 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "pumpkin"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/pumpkin/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (375 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "BBQ"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/bbq/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (373 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "gym"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/gym/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (375 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "morning"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/morning/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (513 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "Dreams"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/dreams/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (739 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "recipies"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/recipies/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (659 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "recipes"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/recipes/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (740 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "success"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/success/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (742 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "aroma"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/aroma/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (378 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "yum"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/yum/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (424 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "mornins"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/mornins/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (375 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "soup"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/soup/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (375 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "learning"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/learning/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (614 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "salad"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/salad/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (376 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "focus"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/focus/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (743 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "sleep"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/sleep/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (375 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "night"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/night/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (375 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "coffee appreciation"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/coffee-appreciation/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (502 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "food"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/food/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (740 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "intention"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/intention/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (739 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "autumn"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/autumn/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (375 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "creativity"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/creativity/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (737 words)
- [In The News
 – tagged "oprah" – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/tagged/oprah/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (410 words)
- [blogs/kohana-recipes-atom.html](/content/blogs/kohana-recipes-atom.html) (705 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "healthy eating"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/healthy-eating/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (741 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "nutrition"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/nutrition/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (741 words)
- [Shipping policy
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/policies/shipping-policy/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (219 words)
- [Cold Brew Mocha Frappe
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/kohana-recipes/cold-brew-mocha-frappe/index.html): 



Ingredients:
1/4 cup Kohana Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate 
1/2 cup light canned coconut milk
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
2-3 Medjool dates
2 cups of ice



1. Blend Kohana cold brew, coconut milk, cocoa, and dates until smooth and evenly combined. Add ice and blend until completely blended and smooth.

 (48 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "exercise"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/exercise/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (618 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "fitness"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/fitness/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (745 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "brewing"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/brewing/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (738 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "science"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/science/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (738 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "unique uses"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/unique-uses/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (374 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "antioxidants"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/antioxidants/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (376 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "coffee history"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/coffee-history/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (376 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "travel mug"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/travel-mug/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (375 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "caffeine"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/caffeine/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (606 words)
- [In The News
 – tagged "creativity" – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/tagged/creativity/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (410 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "workout"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/workout/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (375 words)
- [Refund policy
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/policies/refund-policy/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (354 words)
- [In The News
 – tagged "victoria lynden" – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/tagged/victoria-lynden/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (415 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "coffee accessories"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/coffee-accessories/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (494 words)
- [In The News
 – tagged "success" – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/tagged/success/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (817 words)
- [In The News
 – tagged "entrepreneurship" – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/tagged/entrepreneurship/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (414 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "health"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/health/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (751 words)
- [In The News
 – tagged "cold brew" – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/tagged/cold-brew/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (819 words)
- [pages/kohana-nitro/index.html](/content/pages/kohana-nitro/index.html) (338 words)
- [agents-md.html](/content/agents-md.html) (719 words)
- [Rockin Like Austin | Kohana Coffee](/content/products/rockin-like-austin/index.html): Kohana Coffee's Rockin Like Austin blends beans from Indonesia, Panama and Papua New Guinea for a cup with notes of dark chocolate and apricot. Shop now. (454 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "weird"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/weird/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (372 words)
- [In The News
 – tagged "business for good" – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/tagged/business-for-good/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (413 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "coffee"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/coffee/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (744 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "facts"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/facts/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (615 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "cold brew"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/cold-brew/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (741 words)
- [Big night out? Try coffee the next day!
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/95005382-big-night-out-try-coffee-the-next-day/index.html): I’m not a big drinker—unless we’re talking coffee!—but I definitely enjoy a little wine or a pint or two of craft beer now and then, and every once in a while I’ll wake up wishing maybe I hadn’t enjoyed it quite so much.
No judgment. It’s just part of trying to stay healthy for me. I try to watch everything I put into my body but sometimes I’m looking the other way and a little overindulgence slips in when I’m not paying attention. Not the end of the world, but not great either.
But guess what? If I start those mornings-after with a little coffee, scientists say my morning jolt may help erase any damage caused by my evening buzz! They’ve discovered that people who drink a cup of coffee every day have a 22% lower risk of cirrhosis of the liver. That’s amazing because I guess cirrhosis is pretty ugly. It happens when we drink too much or overeat (not just during one night fortunately but over the years). The liver gets hard and stops working, and when that happens, we’re pretty much doomed because there’s nothing doctors can do to reverse the condition.
Except maybe drink coffee! Because the more we drink, the less our odds are of getting cirrhosis. People who have four cups a day have a 65% less chance of contracting the disease. That’s kind of incredible!
It’s not like this gives me permission to go out and go crazy all the time. Because seriously, coffee isn’t really a cure. And anyway--who really wants to torture their body like that? But it does show that coffee is more amazing than we think. It’s not just an uber delicious caffeine delivery system. It’s a pretty serious brew with all kinds of stuff hiding inside it from antioxidants to substances that help inflammation. I guess some of that is somehow good for our livers especially when we haven’t been. Which is good to know. I say make mine a large after a long night out! (612 words)
- [Whole Coffee Beans -Whole Bean Coffee -Organic Decaf Coffee
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/collections/slow-roasted-beans/products/decaf-kohana-blend/index.html): Buy organic fair trade decaffeinated whole coffee beans. Organic coffee beans. Organic ground coffee. Buy coffee online. Gourmet coffee. Learn more. (442 words)
- [Brazil Santa Rita - Kohana Coffee](/content/collections/slow-roasted-beans/products/brazil-santa-rita/index.html): Kohana Coffee's Brazil Santa Rita coffee features a beautiful round body and nice clean finish with flavors of caramel and lime zest citrus. Shop now. (554 words)
- [In The News
 – tagged "business" – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/tagged/business/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (820 words)
- [collections/concentrates/index.html](/content/collections/concentrates/index.html) (338 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "fun"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/fun/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (372 words)
- [Ethiopian Yirgacheffe | Kohana Coffee](/content/collections/slow-roasted-beans/products/ethiopian-yirgacheffe-misty-valley-12-oz/index.html): Kohana Coffee's Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee features flavor notes of coffee blossom and strawberry with lush black cherry and a creamy finish. Shop today. (463 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "beans"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/beans/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (372 words)
- [In The News
 – tagged "women owned" – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/tagged/women-owned/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (822 words)
- [In The News
 – tagged "women sourced" – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/tagged/women-sourced/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (822 words)
- [Rockin Like Austin | Kohana Coffee](/content/collections/slow-roasted-beans/products/rockin-like-austin/index.html): Kohana Coffee's Rockin Like Austin blends beans from Indonesia, Panama and Papua New Guinea for a cup with notes of dark chocolate and apricot. Shop now. (454 words)
- [Cold Brew Steak Marinade
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/kohana-recipes/cold-brew-steak-marinade/index.html): Ingredients:

1 cup strong Kohana Cold Brew Coffee
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
2 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon stone ground mustard
½ teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon onion powder

 
Directions:

Mix all ingredients in a mason jar, tighten lid and shake well. Pour over beef in a zip log bag and marinate 2-24 hours. Marinade can be kept for up to a week in the fridge or it can be frozen.
 (355 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "tips & tricks"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/tips-tricks/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (374 words)
- [Kohana Espresso | Kohana Coffee](/content/collections/slow-roasted-beans/products/espresso-blend/index.html): Kohana Coffee's Kohana Espresso is blend of Indonesian and Central American beans roasted to pull slight sugars, deep flavors and full crema. Shop now. (454 words)
- [In The News
 – tagged "gender equality" – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/tagged/gender-equality/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (544 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "records"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/records/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (372 words)
- [blogs/news/cold-brew-mint-julep/index.html](/content/blogs/news/cold-brew-mint-julep/index.html) (338 words)
- [Cold Brew Hot Toddy
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/kohana-recipes/cold-brew-hot-toddy/index.html): INGREDIENTS

1oz Kohana cold brew coffee
1oz bourbon whiskey
6oz hot water
1 tablespoon honey
Juice of ½ lemon


DIRECTIONS
Combine all the ingredients and stir well to fully melt and incorporate the honey. (307 words)
- [Island Cacao | Kohana Coffee](/content/collections/slow-roasted-beans/products/island-cacao/index.html): Kohana Coffee's Island Cacao coffee is a chocolate lover's dream, flavored with finely ground organic cacao nibs and natural dark chocolate flavor. Shop now. (459 words)
- [North Shore Blend | Kohana Coffee](/content/collections/slow-roasted-beans/products/north-shore-blend/index.html): Kohana Coffee's North Shore Blend unites Hawaiian, South American and Panamanian beans with nutty, chocolaty aromas. Shop now. (481 words)
- [In The News
 – tagged "small businesses" – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/tagged/small-businesses/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (413 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "organic"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/organic/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (372 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog
 – tagged "real cold brew"](/content/blogs/news/tagged/real-cold-brew/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (381 words)
- [In The News
 – tagged "women in coffee" – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/tagged/women-in-coffee/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (823 words)
- [In The News
 – tagged "women" – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/tagged/women/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (548 words)
- [Kohana Blend | Kohana Coffee](/content/collections/slow-roasted-beans/products/kohana-blend/index.html): Kohana Coffee's Kohana Blend is our best selling coffee, combining light, medium, and darker roasted beans to create it's unique, distinctive flavor. Shop now. (494 words)
- [In The News
 – tagged "coffee" – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/tagged/coffee/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (821 words)
- [In The News
 – tagged "leadership" – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/tagged/leadership/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (408 words)
- [Cold Brew Mocha S'mores Waffles
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/cold-brew-mocha-smores-waffles/index.html): Ingredients:
 
Waffle Batter
1 Cup sprouted grain flour (or whole wheat all-purpose or whole
wheat pastry)
2 whole wheat graham cracker sheets
1 whole wheat graham cracker sheet, broken into small pieces
1 large egg
3 ounces Kohana Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate
5 ounces milk 
2 large very ripe bananas
1 tsp vanilla
2.5 teaspoons baking powder
 
Chocolate Sauce
• 1/2 cup 55-85% chocolate
• 1.5 Tbsp Kohana Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate
 
Peanut Butter Spread
• 4 Tbsp peanut butter
• 1.5 Tbsp Kohana Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate
 
Additional
• 8 large marshmallows
 
Directions:
1. Pulse the 2 graham cracker sheets into a flour-like texture in a food processor or high quality blender before adding the bananas and pulsing until you have a smooth mixture.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk the egg, Kohana concentrate, milk and vanilla before adding the banana mixture and stirring until smooth.
3. In a large bowl, mix the flour and baking soda. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, stirring until well incorporated, but not over-mixing.
4. Turn on your waffle iron and let batter sit while it heats and you prepare the chocolate and peanut butter toppings. (465 words)
- [Cold Brew Mint Julep
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/kohana-recipes/cold-brew-mint-julep/index.html): Ingredients:

4 fresh mint leaves (add one more for garnish)
4oz water or sparkling water
2oz Kohana cold brew coffee 
1oz simple syrup
Crushed ice

 
Directions:

Muddle the mint leaves in the bottom of your glass 
Add ice
Add Kohana cold brew coffee
Add simple syrup
Mix together with water or sparkling water
 (326 words)
- [Unique Ways To Use Coffee | The Bloom
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/unique-ways-to-use-coffee/index.html): Coffee is clearly a drink about which we cannot say enough. It is our manna and our muse, a wellspring of both solace and celebration into which we dip without hesitation or regret. But let us not sell its capabilities short, for the sweet essence of the bean is more than a beverage. It’s a magician with multiple tricks up its sleeve. Here are a few of our favorites:
Fabric Dye. Light colored fabrics soaked in coffee take on a lovely aged patina. Place yours in coffee for 24 hours, rinse, and air dry. The longer it sits, the deeper the antiqued shade of tan you’ll achieve.
Wood Stain. Brew a pot of extra strong coffee. When it’s finished, dump the spent grounds back into your carafe. Let the coffee cool, then saturate any untreated wood with the results. Wait a while then wipe everything clean. As with fabric, the longer your wood soaks, the deeper the stain.
Breath Mint. If you’ve got breath issues, suck on a coffee bean. It will freshen your outflow, and you can chew it when you’re done to finish the job.
Hair Solution. Brew a pot of strong coffee, let it cool, and pour it into a bowl. Over the bowl in a sink, pour the coffee through your hair several times until your mane is saturated. Cover your head in a shower cap, wait 30 minutes, then rinse. Dark hair will get darker and attain a wonderful shine. Grey hair won’t be for awhile.
Vase Fillers. Whole coffee beans can be used as attractive natural vase fillers or in pencil holders and other containers that need some weight or stability. They have a gorgeous look and a great smell, too!
Furniture Scratch Remover. Dip a cotton swab in strong coffee or a paste of very finely ground beans. Rub the swab over the scratches in any dark wood. Let everything dry and brush off the remnants.
Scented Mood Candles. Fill a bowl with fresh roasted whole beans and place a tea light in the middle. The heat from the candle will cause the beans to emit their scent. Or buy some candle wicks from a craft store and grind some fresh coffee. Melt eight to ten tea lights in a double boiler, remove their wicks, add the coffee, stir, and pour into a small jelly jar. Tie the wick to a pencil and hang it down in the center of the candle (you may need to weight the wick’s bottom). Light the candle to add a delicious coffee scent to any room.
Air Freshener. Take an old pair of nylons, cut the legs off, insert one leg into the other, fill the toe with freshly coarse-ground coffee, cut the nylons somewhere above (exactly where will depend on how much grounds you’ve added) and tie off the nylon above the coffee. Place these around the house to absorb odors and add the aroma of your preferred beverage to every corner of your home. (773 words)
- [blogs/news-atom.html](/content/blogs/news-atom.html) (13,730 words)
- [Coffee Daily News By Roast Magazine
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/coffee-daily-news-by-roast-coffee/index.html): 
People in Coffee 2018: Building Community at Every Level
Behind all of the business news stories we publish here on Daily Coffee News, there are countless untold stories of passionate and motivated people — those keeping businesses afloat while molding the arc of progress.
This year, we wanted to shine a light on some of these individuals, giving more visibility to inspirational people in the industry, while also hopefully providing some insight into what it takes to build a career in specialty coffee.
We chatted with coffee professionals from around the world and all parts of the supply chain for our People in Coffee series in 2018. A majority of the people we interviewed voiced a growing concern over the future of our industry, mentioning the unstable coffee market and low prices. Many also put an emphasis on inclusion, representation, and empowerment as key values that should be considered at every level of the supply chain. (Read more in “What Inspired People Most About Coffee in 2018?” and “What Troubled People Most About Coffee in 2018?”)
Luckily for us, these folks ended up working in coffee in the first place. When asked what they would be doing if it weren’t for coffee, they said they might be cooking or teaching, researching bat ecology, creating boardgames, running a farm sanctuary for horses, surfing, filmmaking, working in real estate, or working as a butcher, bus driver, or bicycle mechanic.
Here are 20 of our most engaging conversations with people in coffee in 2018:

On Espresso Vivace’s 30th Anniversary, David Schomer Talks Roast, Grind and Brew
A coffee-related tectonic shift outside of Seattle in 2001 was mainly the result of efforts lead by David Schomer, co-founder of the compact, longstanding and influential Seattle coffee company Espresso Vivace, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in business this year.
Ildi Revi on the Landscape of Learning in Specialty Coffee
Ildi Revi, the director of learning at green coffee importer Ally Coffee, has shared her extensive industry knowledge with hundreds of students, while training countless others on best practices for sharing their own knowledge.
Jones Coffee Roasters Founder on 25 Years of Success: ‘You Can’t Be Everything to Everyone’
On a quest to create something new while keeping with the coffee zeitgeist of the time, Charles (Chuck) Jones founded Pasadena, California-based Jones Coffee Roasters in 1994. Starting out as a wholesale roasting operation, Jones Coffee expanded into retail with its first cafe in 2000.

Sara Morrocchi on the Impact of Market Consolidation in Specialty Coffee
The former global supply chain director for importer Sustainable Harvest before launching her consultancy, Morrocchi spoke about the impact of foreign capital investment and mergers on the coffee supply chain at Re:co Symposium in Dublin.
Roasting Guru Jen Apodaca on Competition, Representation and the Desire to Drive a Bus
Jen Apodaca of Royal Coffee has been a prominent and inspiring figure in the coffee roasting community for over a decade, challenging the status quo and organizing grassroots efforts to highlight women and other underrepresented groups throughout the industry.
Mill City’s Joe Marrocco on New Beginnings and the Power to Move Needles
Somehow, some way, some people have the ability to accomplish twice as much as everyone else in the span of a day. In the coffee world, Joe Marrocco of Mill City Roasters is one of those people.

Hidden House Founder Ben Briggs on Finding Unlikely Success in Coffee
Hidden House Coffee owner Ben Briggs dove into coffee in his early 20s, after serving a four-year stint in the Marine Corps, with a dream of owning a mom-and-pop cafe.
Undercurrent Coffee’s Diana Mnatsakanyan-Sapp Making Waves in Charlotte, NC
As the co-founder of the POUR Coffee Festival and the founder and lead organizer of the Charlotte Coffee Collective, Diana Mnatsakanyan-Sapp has been heavily steeped in coffee outside of her already busy role as director of operations for Undercurrent Coffee in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Buckman Coffee Factory’s Cassy Gleason on How Shared Facilities Strengthen Communities
Cassy Gleason, co-owner of the Buckman Coffee Factory shared roasting facility in Portland, Oregon, has seen firsthand the impact such a resource can make even on a coffee scene as robust as Portland’s.

Vava Angwenyi on Economic Empowerment and the Next Generation in Coffee
Vava Angwenyi lives in Kenya, but she works wherever coffee takes her. She is the “Chief Coffaolic” and founder of Vava Coffee, a social enterprise working to improve future prospects for local communities and the coffee industry as a whole.
Longtime Judge Nathanael May on the Future of Coffee Competitions
Nathanael May of Pacific Foods has been judging coffee competitions for more than eight years. That’s not likely to slow down as he takes on the role of Chair for the Barista Competition Working Group of the Specialty Coffee Association.
Exploring a World of Roasting with Onyx Coffee Lab’s Mark Michaelson
Mark Michaelson is the Head Coffee Roaster at Onyx Coffee Lab in Northwest Arkansas, the 2017 U.S. Roasting Champion, and a top 12 finisher at last year’s World Roasting Championship in Guangzhou, China.

Felipe Croce on Sustainability in the Coffee Sector and Specialty Coffee Culture in Brazil
Since 1850, Felipe Croce’s family has been producing coffee at Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza (FAF), an organic coffee farm located in Mococa, on the east side of the state of São Paulo in Brazil.
Not That It’s a Competition, but Black Oak’s Steve Cuevas is Winning
Over the past three years, wherever there has been a coffee competition to be found, it’s entirely possible that Steve Cuevas was there, often on the podium. The U.S. Cup Tasters Champion in 2017, among other titles, Cuevas is now the head roaster for Black Oak Coffee Roasters.
A Year After Charlottesville Chaos, Mudhouse Coffee Reflects: ‘They Didn’t Get Our Soul’
Mudhouse Coffee has three locations in and around Charlottesville, with a fourth currently in the works that co-founder, CEO and “Director of Joy” Lynelle Lawrence said will emphasize a connection to farms, farmworkers and the geography of the bean belt.

World Barista Champion Agnieszka Rojewska on Customer Service and Competition
With at least 20 coffee competitions under her belt, including a win at the London Coffee Masters event earlier this year, Poland’s Agnieszka Rojewska was an ambassador for the barista community long before winning the World Barista Championship (WBC) last month.
Kohana Founder Victoria Lynden on Entrepreneurship and Empowerment for Women in Coffee
The plan starts with the two women at the helm of Kohana Coffee, founder Victoria Lynden and vice president of operations Piper Jones, who have built the company around a mission to support other women in the production and trade of fairtrade and organic certified coffees.
BGA Council Chair Sarah Leslie is Opening a Cafe of Her Own in Wichita
This year, Sarah Leslie is making the big leap to owning her own cafe, called Leslie Coffee Co., in the Delano neighborhood of Wichita, Kansas, the hometown to which she recently returned.

Daniele Giovannucci on Sustainability Metrics and the Democratization of Data
Daniele Giovannucci, president of the nonprofit Committee on Sustainability Assessment (COSA), co-founded the global consortium with a goal to make a difference in the communities and environments that are the most threatened, but always with an sharp eye on outcomes.
Coffee Manufactory’s Stephanie Alcala on Gesha Genetics and Sustainability
It has been an eventful year for academic turned coffee professional Stephanie Alcala, who recently joined the team at San Fransisco-based roasting company Coffee Manufactory as sustainability supervisor. (1,510 words)
- [Two words: Breakfast. Salad.
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/111848646-two-words-breakfast-salad/index.html): They always said breakfast was the most important meal of the day if you want to be healthy. Then they always sat me down to a plate of food that totally wasn’t—cheese-stuffed omelets, grease-stuffed meats, butter-soaked toast, and a pile of fried potatoes the size of a Mini Cooper. You could rock that plate for sure. But I don’t think you’d win any wellness awards.
A lifetime of smoothies, steel-cut oats, yogurt bowls, and fruit plates later, I’m still looking for the better breakfast, and I think I finally found it.
Two words: Breakfast salad.
It’s a counterintuitive contradiction in mutually exclusive terms, and sounds completely loco, I know. But it looks insanely crave-able, and I think this could really be it—the one that looks good, feeds you right, and satisfies the soul doing it. The real breakfast of champions. Check it out:

1/4 cup orange juice
A glug of maple syrup
2 tsp. balsamic vinegar
Salt
A bunch of kale, chopped with ribs removed
Olive oil
4 bacon slices
1 tart apple, cored and sliced
1/4 cup grated cheddar cheese
4 eggs
Black pepper

Mix the juice, maple, balsamic and 1/2 tsp. salt. Massage the kale and toss it with the dressing.
Cook the bacon, drain and chop.
Drizzle olive oil over the kale. Add the apple and cheese. Toss and split among 4 plates. Top with chopped bacon.
Fry eggs sunny-side up, put 1 egg on each salad. Sprinkle with ground black pepper and salt.
Voila! The breakfast that may just get me out of bed and psyched about it in the morning. Because kale. And apples. Add some berries and swap in some veggie bacon (turkey bacon if your inner carnivore is howling) and low-fat cheese, and it’s healthier still.
Either way, I’m primed to cook this one. I’m not saying it’s going be my go-to on mornings when I’m rushing around like a maniac. But if I’ve got time for a sit-down, I’m sitting down to this one if only because science has finally figured out how to serve kale for breakfast, and that’s progress we shouldn’t ignore. (625 words)
- [Strange Brews | The Bloom
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/strange-brews/index.html): Humanity has been drinking coffee for at least 1,000 years. That’s a lot of time for people to have on their hands, especially in the company of caffeine. Unsurprisingly, the result has been some, shall we say, novel ways of preparing the world’s beverage of choice.
We can’t exactly call these our favorites but they definitely display the full range of coffee creativity:
Let’s start with Es Alpukat, which mixes espresso, milk, sweetened condensed milk, and… avocado? Indeed. Sometimes served over ice and/or with chocolate syrup, the result is a smoothie-like drink sold from Indonesian street carts that’s part salad, part dessert. Those who’ve had it say this culinary schizophrenia works better than you’d think.
Cà Phê Trứng contains no vegetables, but be careful what you wish for. This Vietnamese drink whips condensed milk and raw egg yolk together in a cup then fills the remainder with black coffee. The coffee sinks, the egg mixture rises, and you’re caught in the middle wishing you’d gone to Hawaii instead.
Kaffeost keeps it in the dairy case, but not in the way you’d hope. This Swedish drink pours black coffee over a delicate piece of leipäjuusto. You see it on the menu and think it sounds worth trying. Until you Google “leipäjuusto” on your smart phone and discover it’s reindeer cheese. Then, you order the tea.
When life gives you lemons, make monkey-spit coffee. That’s the philosophy of Taiwanese coffee growers fed up with rock monkeys raiding their plantations and eating their coffee cherries. The carnage leaves ruined, semi-chewed beans behind, which an enterprising farmer discovered to have a delicious vanilla-like flavor when brewed. Suddenly leipäjuusto doesn’t seem so bad.
In Melbourne, Australia the latest caffeinated sensation is Deconstructed Coffee. Served on a paddle, it’s a cup of espresso, a cup of water, and a cup of milk. Trendy, yes, and quite possibly pointless, but at least monkeys or reindeer aren’t involved.
The coffee drink called a Guillermo is a bit more put-together. Just cut a few fresh lime slices and pour espresso over it for an acid rush that probably leaves scars. An Espresso Romano is similar but uses lemon peel instead. Either way, please pass the Prilosec.
Further down this fruited continuum lies Cabernet Coffee Espresso from a company that may have had a little too much of both. Concocted by Friends Fun Wine, this canned beverage contains exactly what its name implies as does sister drink Chardonnay Coffee Cappuccino. May your own thirst never become this confused.
Saving the best for last, we come to Fiery Waterfall Coffee, the signature drink of the Lighthouse restaurant in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico. You’ll want to sit down for this one. And don asbestos. Here, a presumably carefully trained professional mixes Kahlua, coffee and (wait for it…) tequila in a glass, set the whole thing on fire, and pours the resulting burning river of WTF from one glass to another before adding cream and a cherry. 
That sound you hear is your barista running screaming from the room. (776 words)
- [Cold Brew Coffee Can -Ready to Drink Cold Brew Cans
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/collections/ready-to-drink/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffees in ready-to-drink cans provide a healthy, natural energy boost. Salted Caramel, Tahitian Vanilla, Volcanic Black. Shop now. (295 words)
- [The Macro of Microbiomes | Wake Up And Dream Blog
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/the-macro-of-microbiomes/index.html): Like everybody else, I’ve got it in my head to live forever. And just like everybody else, there’s no way I’m gonna. But that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna to try. And it starts with taking care of myself now so when my bones start to creak in a few dozen years, they’ll creak a whole lot less.
I think it’s good advice no matter where you are on life’s journey. Except that conventional health wisdom changes faster than dresses during a pre-night-out fashion crisis. One day, fats are the enemy. The next, carbs. Or not. Who knows?
Not me. But I do feel like I know at least this much: whatever we find out about living longer in the next bunch of years, I think our microbiomes are going to be a big piece of that puzzle.
Everybody has a microbiome. It’s what they call all the (usually) friendly bacteria that live inside us, mostly in our digestive tract, where they help us digest food. But that’s not all those gut bugs are doing. Apparently, they’re a key part of our immune systems and may even help prevent some seriously ugly diseases.
I just read about how one kind of microbiome bacteria actually helped mice avoid certain kinds of cancer and live four times longer. I know—crazy, right? But science is science, and this science says our microbiome probably plays a major-league role in reducing inflammation, which is a huge trigger for cancer not to mention a whole lot of other bodily bummers. (I’m looking at you, Alzheimer’s…)
You have to kind of pull at all the threads here to see the connections, but our bacteria help zap inflammation and inflammation can lead to cancer, etc. so whatever we can do to beef up our microbiome helps prevent disease. Probably in the future, we’ll all be going to bacteria clinics. But for now “health care” to me means eating probiotic foods like yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, and the rest. It’s a daily homemade yogurt smoothie from now ‘til forever. Give me 80 years and I’ll let you know how it works out. (627 words)
- [Notebook + Pen = A Lifetime Of Memories
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/notebook-pen-memories-for-a-lifetime/index.html): Goodbye to a real trash weekend here, two cloudy, rainy, chilly, please-pass-the-down-comforter days that turned Thai food take-out and Netflix into survival gear.
Sunday afternoon I was so freaking bored I actually started cleaning out my closets. At first, not much fun and Kimmie Schmidt started calling my name, but buried under the contents of my next Craig’s List ad, I found a box I’d forgotten, and the weekend got epic real fast.
It was all my old travel journals, one from every trip I took between the time we went to Utah when I was 13 and the summer before college when my BFF Jen and I took a road trip to Memphis to visit Graceland and find our inner Elvis. And I’m sorry I stopped because, man…  I turned those pages and the memories came flooding out. If I hadn’t written them down, I’d have lost most of them, but I did so I didn’t. And after reading through it all, I know won’t again ever hit the open road again without an open notebook. You shouldn’t either.
Because my travel journals are like time capsules. When I open one up, everywhere I went is waiting to be explored all over again. It’s all there and, even better, journaling helps me make sense of everything I saw and experienced. It processes my raw remembering into something bigger and more meaningful. Putting it to paper keeps it real, makes it matter, and saves it forever.
Do it. You won’t be sorry. I like to use a little notebook I can slip into a pack or a jacket, preferably one that’s clothbound with a page marker and a pocket or two for stashing souvenirs. Get some pens you love (mmmm… Gelly Rolls) and keep jotting stuff down—sights, sounds, smells, people, places, moments, impressions. Even if it’s just a line or two at the pit stop or a paragraph in the tent at the end of a seriously lit day, journaling makes sure you never forget it. Which, if you’ll remember, is why you went in the first place. (625 words)
- [Coffee is Life | Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/coffee-is-life/index.html): When it comes to healthy eating, kale gets all the press. But if the scientific buzz is right, there’s a whole lot of wellness waiting in our coffee cups, too, and while that sweet essence of sacred bean may not have the cachet of cruciferous vegetables, it still packs a serious jolt. And we’re not just talking caffeine blast either. Here are a few recent headlines that put coffee above the nutritional fold:
Coffee fights cancer. It’s packed with antioxidants called polyphenols, and consumption has been linked to less prostate, breast, colorectal, and liver cancer.
Coffee does waistlines right. Those polyphenols are also food for a species of beneficial probiotic intestinal bacteria that’s been shown to positively affect one’s leanness (or lack thereof). And coffee’s caffeine boosts our metabolic rates by as much as 11% and can increase fat-burning by up to 29%. (Not to say it’ll neutralize that breakfast pastry, but still…)
Coffee kills diabetes. And diabetes kills people so it’s nice to see us coffee drinkers reducing our risk of contracting this disease by up to two thirds.
Coffee safeguards the heart. It won’t help you get over a break-up, but drowning your sorrows in java has been shown to reduce the risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease.
Coffee loves your liver. Drink two or more cups a day and lower your cirrhosis risk by 66%.
Coffee cools-out the brain. And we don’t mean relaxation either. The caffeine in those beans appears to lower the brain inflammation that leads to things like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Bonus chill factor: it also reduces the risk of Parkinson’s disease.
Coffee lengthens lifespans. Sure, we feel like we could live forever with a latte in our hands. But behind the scenes, its caffeine is hard at work lowering inflammation. Less inflammation = longer life, which is likely why four cups a day lower one’s risk of dying by 16%.
So… coffee smoothie anyone? Okay, maybe not. But coffee doesn’t need to be whipped in a blender with yogurt to make the healthy grade. It’s longevity in a cup no matter how you pour it. (625 words)
- [The Ultimate Travel Mugs | The Bloom
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/the-ultimate-travel-mugs/index.html): Is there any more essential tool for the itinerant coffee lover than a good travel mug? We don’t think so. It’s the one thing that can make or break the coffee-on-the-go experience, and all success rides on its superpowers or horrifying lack thereof. 
Unfortunately, most travel mugs are meh at best and a cruel practical joke at worst. They leak. They lose heat. They’re hard to clean or add off tastes or won’t fit in your cupholder. Some need two hands for a sip which is really more of a dribble. Others send your precious elixir of life flying by the face-full whenever you’re brave enough to go in for a swig.
You can do better. And for the sake of your mobile coffee experience, you must. Here are five of our most very favorite travel mugs to help: 
The Zojirushi excels at coffee transport and looks good doing it: It keeps coffee piping (and we mean piping) hot or (your choice) delightfully iced for up to six hours, which is tops as far as we’ve seen; wouldn’t spill a drop in an F5 tornado let alone your bag; has a locking lid that pops open with one hand on the wheel (though you may need two hands to close it); and it doesn’t have fussy parts to clean. Better still, it comes in multiple colors for households looking to avoid morning mug wars. 
The CamelBak Forge offers similar leak-free, one-handed operation, but we like its clever design, which makes this mug virtually impossible to open accidentally and features a super convenient hook that makes it easy to clip onto a bag, carabiner, or anything else. The same hook also stops it from rolling all over your car or floor. Made military-tough for use off the beaten path, this is the one that comes camping.
The Contigo covers all the important bases with aplomb but adds a cool vacuum-seal lid with a one-finger push-button operation that automatically reseals the mug when released, something the others don’t have. Plus, this is one lid you can actually wash in the dishwasher, which wins it huge points for convenience.
The Bubba Mug won’t set any records for heat retention and we certainly won’t be fearlessly tossing this into our backpack, but what it lacks in performance, it makes up for in size. At an oversized 52 ounces, this beast of a mug can hold a whole morning's, afternoon’s, or evening’s worth of java. That makes it great for the pool, the gym, the office, and any other place where you’ll need to bring a reliable long-term supply.
The Espro wins a spot in our hall of travel mug fame for one incredible reason: it’s essentially a portable French press that actually brews your coffee on the go. Sure, you’ll sacrifice a few points for heat loss and a screw-top lid, but let’s get real—road coffee doesn’t come any fresher than this, and some days that’s a plus that’s hard to ignore. (771 words)
- [North Shore Blend | Kohana Coffee](/content/products/north-shore-blend/index.html): Kohana Coffee's North Shore Blend unites Hawaiian, South American and Panamanian beans with nutty, chocolaty aromas. Shop now. (481 words)
- [My One Person Dream Team
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/my-one-person-dream-team/index.html): Setting a vision for my life. I’ve been thinking about this, but all I come up with are questions: How does that work? What does it look like? Where do I even start?
I’m going with my dreams. They’re what we want most in the world and the things that keep us aiming true through all of life’s roadblocks and detours. They’re the roots of the meaning our lives have, and if the vision we have for those lives is to mean anything at all, I think our dreams need to be the marrow in its bones.
But it seems to me that having a dream and setting a vision for my life is not the same. My dream is the thing I want most of all. My life vision is how I get there and what it looks like when I do. It’s not my dream itself, but how that dream comes true, the route I take to find it and where those travels take me in the end.
Because a dream can come true in all kinds of ways. There’s no set path to any one destination. The metaphor of life as a road isn’t really right at all. It’s more like a maze, and we’ve all got to find the best way through it we can.
Our vision should be the light that keeps us from getting lost and makes sure we grow into the people we want to become as we choose among its twists and turns, and navigate the dark places that are waiting. It’s how we find the best way to our dream so that it looks just as we’ve always wanted it to when we finally arrive.
When we close our eyes and imagine that we’ve made it, our life vision is the thing we see. To get there, we have to start with a dream and slowly hang the details on it to complete the picture. Which brings me back to the biggest question of all…
When there’s no end to your dreams, how do you know which ones to set your sights on? (626 words)
- [You Need A Time Out
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/113010822-you-need-a-time-out/index.html): Yesterday, I took a long walk after work. For once, I had nothing to do, nowhere to be. And I desperately wanted some air after a long day stuck in an oxygen-free cubicle watching my brain melt onto my desk.  
So I just walked. No destination. No mission. Except to get some wind in my hair. I ended up in place I’d never been, on a hill I’d never seen, and in time for the sunset, too, which I watched until the moon came up and the day was gone for good.
It was amazing. I don’t just mean the sunset. I mean the chance to simply sit. And be. To let my mind go wherever it wanted for as long as it wanted to. To listen for the secret thoughts I haven’t been able to hear through all life’s clatter and static.
The last thought I had, as I picked myself up to walk home, was the biggest of all: I don’t get many (if any) chances to do that, and nobody I know does either. The whole world feels like it’s buzzing and beeping 24/7 and jammed with screaming screens that follow us everywhere, always poking and pinging and never giving us a moment to catch our breath and rediscover our hearts.
That’s trash.
As I sat with the sun, my mind meandered to an old poster my mom had over her desk. “Go placidly amid the noise and haste,” it said. “Remember what peace there may be in silence.” There’s truth in those words. We have to give our inner selves a place to stretch and wander. It’s the only way get to who we really are, someone we’ll never find in a world of distractions.
The biggest gift we can give ourselves is an empty hour and no need to fill it. Like a dog on a leash, our minds need that space to run. Our souls need that room to play. Without it, who will we be? What do we become? Just lost, I think. And that’s a fate I think we should defy. (623 words)
- [Cold Brew, Hot Tricks
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/kohana-recipes/kohana-cold-brew-hot-tricks/index.html): Cold brew coffee concentrate may be the best way to start the day (or anything else for that matter), but that doesn’t mean it’s just for breakfast. There’s a whole world of other things it can do. You just have to think outside the bottle, which is always one of our favorite things to do.
We’ve been collecting cool ideas for cold brew since we made our first batch. Here are 10 of our favorites:
Cappuccino Cubes. Take an ice cube tray and fill each space half way with cold brew coffee concentrate. Freeze solid then top off each cube with milk or half & half and freeze again. Voila! 
Fruit Juicer. Mix 4 oz. of cold brew in a glass with 2 oz. of simple syrup, 2 oz. of orange juice, and 2 1/2 oz. of blackberry, raspberry, or blueberry juice. Add ice and a slice of orange.
Coffee Tonic. Whenever you overheat, combine a 3:1 ratio of tonic water and cold brew coffee concentrate over ice.
Coffee Syrup. Add one cup of cold brew coffee concentrate to 1 1/4 cups of sugar. Stir over medium heat unto the sugar dissolves and the mixture simmers. Keep it simmering (don’t let it boil!) for 15 minutes until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. Cool to thicken and use in ice cream, drinks, and everywhere else.
Coffee Egg Cream. Give your own version of the Brooklyn classic a serious makeover by pouring about a 1/3 cup of the coffee syrup you just made into a glass. Add a half cup of milk. Stir. Top off with cold seltzer and a straw. 
Meaty Marinade. Blend 1 cup of cold brew coffee concentrate with a few tablespoons of maple syrup, some garlic, rosemary, red pepper flakes, and salt and pepper. Marinate steak or lamb for at least three hours. Cook. Repeat.
Better Brownies. Add 4 or 5 tablespoons of cold brew coffee to your favorite brownie recipe for more than one kind of extra kick. 
Latte Pop. Mix cold brew concentrate with some cream and simple syrup to taste. Freeze in popsicle molds. Chill out all summer.
Affogato. It means “drowned” in Italian, and what a way to go: Pour a shot or two of cold brew concentrate over a scoop of vanilla gelato. Add some Grand Marnier and whipped cream if you’re in the mood. (And who isn’t?)
Long Island Iced Coffee. Start your weekend by mixing 1 tablespoon each of dark rum, vodka, gin, gold tequila, and Tia Maria with 2 tablespoons of ginger beer, 2 tablespoons of lime juice and 1 tablespoon of simple syrup in a glass. Add ice and top off with cold brew coffee concentrate diluted down to regular strength and a lime wedge. Happy hour has never been happier. (737 words)
- [Ethiopian Yirgacheffe | Kohana Coffee](/content/products/ethiopian-yirgacheffe-misty-valley-12-oz/index.html): Kohana Coffee's Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee features flavor notes of coffee blossom and strawberry with lush black cherry and a creamy finish. Shop today. (463 words)
- [The Real Song Of Fire And Ice
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/114327622-the-real-song-of-fire-and-ice/index.html): It’s official: I am obsessed with Iceland. It’s my new travel dream.
It started when my friend, Elisha, mentioned that she was thinking about going. I asked her why she’d want to go to a place covered in ice and she said because it wasn’t. Turns out they’ve named everything backward. Greenland has all the ice. And Iceland? It’s green. (Who knew?)
And man is it ever all that. I went home and Googled and couldn’t get enough. Try an image search. I dare you. You’ll be packing your bags before you hit the scroll button.
Because Iceland is completely lit. Sometimes literally. It’s got 35 active volcanoes, over 100 fjords, 27 major waterfalls, 800 hot springs, 13 major glaciers and at least 40 active geysers not to mention mud pots, fumaroles, lava fields, and black sand beaches. All in a place the size of Ohio.
It’s the least populated country in Europe so there’s lots of room to wander. It’s in the 70s all summer long, and did I mention there are 21 hours of daylight at mid-season? I know… bummer—those three hours of night hardly give you any time at all to enjoy the northern lights.
I’ll aim my wheels for the Ring Road, an 800-mile stretch of highway that completely circles the country and (mostly) hugs the edge of the island. It takes you past a serious cross-section of all there is to see. I read that you can rent a camper van in Reykjavik and just go. Park anywhere, eat, sleep, get up, and do it all over again.
Sign me up already.
I can’t believe I missed it for so long. Because Iceland looks like a fever dream, a real-life fantasy adventure of fire and ice and deep green between. It’s one of those places you would never imagine could ever exist, an actual Middle Earth with everything but hobbits and dragons, and who knows, maybe it’s even got those, too. The only thing that’s for sure is that I’ll let you know when I get there. (618 words)
- [Wake Up And Dream Blog- My List of Me
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/99070150-my-list-of-me/index.html): A year or so ago I had the official worst day ever. I overslept and left my wallet at home (no double latte for me). I missed my bus and the morning staff meeting, which earned me a special one-on-one with the boss, which I had right after I found out that the writing class I wanted to take had filled up before I’d signed up. Lunch ruined a new sweater with a stain I didn’t catch, and it was downhill from there.
I was not slaying it. It was slaying me, and by the time it was over, I was pretty sure I deserved it. All I could do to sit in the dark in a funk that was even darker and contemplate my irredeemable uselessness as a human being.
Not a great place to be, and for some reason, I couldn’t snap out of it.  But somewhere on the way to permanent misery, I grabbed a notebook and just started messing around. Don’t ask me how, but somehow I ended up doodling out a list of ten things I like about myself.
Maybe I wasn’t quite as worthless as I felt. I cheered up, poured a fresh cup, and salvaged the last few hours of my dismal day.
But that list… I didn’t forget it, and the next time I found myself feeling bad about myself, I pulled it out again. It reminded me that I’m never a waste of space. I’m just someone who trips and falls sometimes like everybody else. There’s plenty about me to be proud about, and one cringe-worthy screw-up, or even a day’s worth, can’t change that.
It’s worth remembering. That’s why I still have that list and why you should have one, too. Because we all need to remind ourselves that we’re worth it, and sometimes we just have to spell it out for ourselves. A list of the ten things we like about who we are, no matter what it contains, is a short and sweet way to never let go of one of life’s most important truths: That no matter how bad it gets, life is still good. And we are, too. (635 words)
- [Working It Out
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/working-it-out/index.html): Sometimes you have to look yourself square in the eye and admit your failure. That was me in the bathroom mirror a few days ago as yet another attempt to hit the gym before work died a dishonorable death when I hit the snooze button.
You, Madison, I said to myself, simply cannot get your workout act together.
And it’s true. I can’t. Between responsibilities and temptations alike, I just am not finding the time to get (let alone stay!) in shape. A new approach is needed so I’m taking one. Instead of exercising all at once in a place I have to get to, I’m doing it here and there wherever I am.
Call it bite-sized exercise, a way to build it in throughout my day in ways like these:

If I’m walking to grab lunch or meet a friend, I make it a power walk that pushes me a little.


When I’m stumped by something and need a quick break, I do a few jumping jacks or sit-ups to get my muscles moving.


I clench hard whenever I’m online. Butt cheeks, my core, even my arms. Supermarket, bank, wherever. No one’s ever the wiser.


Never the elevator. Always the stairs!


I dance (hard!) to music when I clean. (Just need to find more time for housekeeping!)


I jog in place or when I’m on the phone. No sitting allowed.


New rule: nothing comes out of the fridge without 10 push-ups first.


I found this guide to desktop yoga poses I use at work.


I get off the bus a few stops before or after the one I’m really aiming for and walk the rest of the way.


I’ve set a phone alert to remind me to move hard for at least a minute every hour.

I’m still aiming for some gym time, but until I get there little ways like these are keeping me from turning into a complete lump of couch dough. They’re not quite the same as 30 minutes on the Stairmaster, but they’re a lot better than nothing. And at this point, that’s a win I’ll take. (624 words)
- [Coffee Goes to the Dogs
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/coffee-goes-to-the-dogs/index.html): When we count all the many ways that coffee and the people who provide it make our world a happier place, we usually get a human score. A roaster paying more to impoverished growers. A café employing ex-cons. A coffee maker making good on its promise to help kids with disabilities.
But the good that pours from our collective cup doesn’t always end up percolating down to people. Lately, our canine friends have been getting a boost from the coffee community, and that’s a great thing, too. As Albert Schweitzer said, “Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.” Agreed, and that’s why it’s so very good to see dogs finally getting more than a couple of legs up thanks to the kindness of coffee people
The Hott Spott café in Mitilíni on the Greek island of Lesbos, for example, has begun letting homeless dogs spend the night inside. Each evening when the shop closes its doors to humans, it opens them to local strays, who are invited into sleep safely (and warmly!) on its empty couches and chairs. The café, whose philosophy reflects the Greek cultural ethos that calls on all people to care for homeless animals, is part of the solution to the country’s problem of one million dogs that have no place to call home.
At Los Angeles’ Dog Café, the spin is a little different. Order a latte or an espresso, and take it to the dog lounge to enjoy in the company of shelter rescue dogs looking for forever homes. Everyone is spayed or neutered and current on vaccinations. All they need is a place to call their own and a family to match. Like speed-dating for canine companions, the no-kill café fosters these relationships by giving would-be owners and their prospective pets a place to get acquainted and some coffee to do it with. They’ll even help with the paperwork.
Grounds and Hounds, a Nashville, Tennessee-based mail-order and wholesale roaster offers such fair-trade, custom-blended coffees as Sit & Stay and Morning Walk. Every time a bag is sold, the company donates 20% of the proceeds to a no-kill rescue shelter in the buyer’s region of the country. Grounds and Hounds work with some 30 partner rescue organizations and has helped save thousands of dogs. Every 30 bags of coffee sold results in one forever-home placement, and just 15 bags will feed a dog for a month while he or she waits for someone to give them a home.
Endeavors like these are helping spread coffee’s good karma beyond the anthropological world and into the animal realm. After all, who says coffee need only be kind to people? Humanity’s intelligent and loving canine sidekicks deserve a boost, too. Thanks to the efforts of heroic coffee lovers, the most desperate among them are finally finding the hope that comes when they get it and leaving the dog’s life behind. (765 words)
- [New Buzz on Workout Boosts
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/new-buzz-on-workout-boosts/index.html): I’m an exercise purist. I won’t wear just any clothes or shoes. I pace myself like the experts say I should. And I only ever drink water before, during, and after. If I’m headed for the gym or a jog, I’ll postpone my caffeinated cup of joy until I’ve earned it.
It makes sense, right? It just can’t be healthy to get all lit up on coffee before 100 reps of anything. Or can it? Because my mind just got blown by the idea that drinking coffee before a workout may be a great idea.
Scientists gave a bunch of coffee to a bunch of test subjects and I guess sat back and waited to see if their hearts would explode during a workout. Not only did everyone’s pulse keep right on pulsing, the buzz actually helped boost everyone’s results.
I can see where caffeine makes you work out harder. That’s hardly rocket science. But caffeine also raises our dopamine levels, which amps up our sense of well being. Which means coffee also makes us enjoy working out more than we might. Those exercising coffee lovers found it easier to work out not to mention motor through the rough patches. The moral of the story seems pretty simple: drink a cup before you go, and you’ll do more and love it all the way.
Not only that but how savage is this: later in the day, people who worked out while caffeinated ate around 70 fewer calories than those who didn’t, and they were better able to keep their cravings under control.
Of course, timing is everything. (When isn’t it?) Since caffeine’s beloved effects max out 30-75 minutes after you quaff that cup, you want to pour it about an hour or so before you mount the Stairmaster give or take.
Works for me. Or at least I’ll give it a whirl and see if it does. Nothing would make me happier than skipping the tap and filling my water bottle at my neighborhood café. That’s an exercise routine I could get used to. (618 words)
- [Daily Grind: A Guide to Grounds | The Bloom
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/daily-grind-a-guide-to-grounds/index.html): A life without good coffee is hardly any life at all. Indeed, on many days, our most urgent mission is to brew the finest cup possible, and to reach this higher plane of achievement, we seek out the world’s best varieties and stock our kitchens with the perfect equipment.
Yet here’s a secret that’s often overlooked: Without the right grind, even our best and most fervent intentions won’t amount to a hill of beans. 
Grinding coffee beans is the key to releasing the essence they contain. It’s the action through which the coffee we seek becomes real and perhaps the single most important part of the brewing process. Use the incorrect grind in the coffee-making method of your choice and you’ll end up with coffee that’s all wrong.
Each brewing style requires grounds of a certain size in order to pull out the desired flavors in the time allotted for their contact with water. Use a fine grind in a longer brew cycle, for example, and you’ll pour an experience that’s overly bitter and excessively strong while a coarse grind in a short brew cycle will end in coffee that’s tragically timid and limp.
The grind is all and it all starts with the grinder itself. There are two types: burr and blade. Blade grinders are inexpensive but inconsistent. Like a miniature food processor, they’re easy to use but their spinning blades barely chop some beans while annihilating others. Burr grinders are far more reliable. They send beans between a rotating disc and a stationary surface whose “teeth” break them apart until their grounds are the chosen size and able to drop into a collection compartment below. There are two types of burr grinders: Conical and wheel. Conical grinders are less likely to clog than wheel grinders and are our top choice. With a conical burr grinder, your grounds will always be right-sized and life will always be sweet.
As to what size that should be, here’s our guide: 


Extra Coarse. Grounds are chunky and about the size of sunflower seeds. Best for cold brewing. 



Coarse. Grounds are about the size of a sesame seed. Good for percolators, French press, and other plunger pots.



Medium-Coarse. Grounds are like kosher salt or rough sand. Ideal for flat-bottomed filter automatic drip coffee makers.



Medium. - Grounds are similar to table salt. Preferred for vacuum pots, siphon brewers, manual pour-over cone filters like Chemex, and automatic coffee makers with conical filters.



Fine. Grounds are finer than sugar yet a step above powder. Best for espresso moka pots.



Extra Fine. Grounds are a powder like flour. Ideal for espresso machines and ibriks, i.e. Turkish coffee makers.

One last note: Always grind your beans just before brewing. The many complex flavor compounds they contain are surprisingly delicate, and the longer they sit broken open in the presence of oxygen, the more their aroma and other essential contributors to taste break down. At that point even the most perfect grounds won’t save you or the coffee you’re counting on to beat the daily grind.

  (784 words)
- [Thank Goodness I’m Failing
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/110056326-thank-goodness-i-m-failing/index.html): I’ve been focusing on my writing. I have it in my head to see if there’s maybe a novel in there somewhere, so my laptop and I have become one as we wait to see if anything worth anything comes out.
So far that’s mostly meant staring at a blank page. Except for those moments where I’m deleting the horrible few and far between paragraphs I actually manage to write.
It’s pretty frustrating. I’m blazing a trail straight to failure as fast as I can. But I think that’s the trick.
Last week I found a book called Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orland, at my favorite used bookstore. It’s about the challenges of creativity and how to get out of your own way so you can make it happen. It seemed like the book I should be reading, and there’s a story in it I can’t stop thinking about.
A pottery teacher told his students he was splitting their class in half. At the end of the semester, he’d grade one half on quantity—the more pots a student made, the higher his or her grade. The other half would be graded on quality and had to submit just one pot—their best and most perfect—for their final grade.
You know what? At the end of the semester, the group told to make as many pieces as they could produce the most beautiful work by far. Because they spent their time cranking out pot after pot and screwing things up all the way. The other group just focused on being perfect from the get-go and pretty much got nowhere. They didn’t make the mistakes that made the difference and showed them the way.
We shouldn’t be afraid of failing. We should be excited about it. Learning the things that only failure teaches is the only way to get somewhere good. We have to learn to stumble before we figure out how to walk, and that makes falling flat on our faces the best way to finally soar. (620 words)
- [Magical Autumn Pumpkin Soup | Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/magical-autumn-pumpkin-soup/index.html): We don’t get much in the way of fall where I hang my own board, which is okay because it means we also don’t get much in the way of winter. But I still envy the cozy vibe that crisp days and chilly nights bring in other places.
So I make soup. No, I don’t have a fire to curl up with while I sip it, but the comfort of a steaming bowl on what passes for a chilly evening in these parts is a rite of seasonal passage that, for me anyway, offers a taste of a different place and another time when we all lived a little closer to the bone.
This one is my favorite because it uses the healthy king of the autumn harvest and fills me up in every way.
Magical Autumn Pumpkin Soup
Ingredients


1 fresh pie pumpkin (5-6 lbs.). These are the small deep-orange pumpkins that generally fit in two hands held together. Two 15 oz. cans of canned pumpkin work, too, but fresh is always worth the effort!
4 oz. butter
Two sweet onions, chopped
1 T ground cinnamon
2 quarts of chicken stock
1/2 C maple syrup
1+ C of heavy cream or (for a lighter meal) yogurt

Preheat your oven to 350°. Grease a baking sheet. Cut the pumpkin in half around its “equator,” scoop out the seeds, and place each half cut-side down on the baking sheet. Add a cup of water to the pan, and bake for 45-75 minutes until tender.
Cool the pumpkin and peel its skin. Melt the butter in a soup pot, add the onions, and cook over medium heat until soft. Add the pumpkin, cinnamon, and stock, and simmer for 30 minutes with an occasional stir.
Puree the results with a food processor or one of those boat-motor immersion blenders. Cook for another five minutes. Add the maple syrup and the cream (or yogurt) and heat through.
Serve with a garnish of roasted pumpkin seeds and a dollop of cream or yogurt, and suddenly it’s fall no matter where you are. (620 words)
- [Forbes: For Kohana, The Future Of Coffee Is Female
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/for-kohana-the-future-of-coffee-is-female/index.html): In 2006, Victoria Lynden tried selling hot coffee on a summer weekend at a farmer's market in Texas. The result? Too little sales and too much sweat. She knew she needed to pivot. Inspired by memories of her mother brewing tea on the porch, Lynden decided to give slow-brewing a try. She bought some bins, filled them with coffee and water and left them out to soak. Surprisingly, it worked. Once brewed, Lynden's concoction tasted smooth, rich and refreshing over ice. 
And so, Kohana Coffee was born—just in time.
According to a survey produced by research firm Mintel in 2015, the consumption of cold brew coffee has increased by more than 75% from 2005 to 2015. Although cold brew originally got its start in the 1600s in Japan, Lynden was among the first to reintroduce cold brew to the American market ten years ago. With a combination of demand and entrepreneurial expertise (Lynden's a serial entrepreneur; her first company Alliance Abroad Group got its start in the 90s), Lynden quickly grew Kohana into an industry leader. In 2014, Inc. listed Kohana Coffee as the sixth fastest-growing food and beverage company, and in 2016, Kohana reported $12.3 million in revenue. As for their current goals, disrupting the coffee world will be next.
According to Kohana's team, the company plans to source entirely from women-owned and women-run coffee farms by 2020. This is no easy feat—the coffee industry is notoriously male-dominated, yet disproportionately powered by women laborers, which means in most cases male-run co-ops and farm owners control the purse strings, while women work the fields. As a socially responsible, woman-identifying entrepreneur, Lynden wants to change that by putting Kohana's money where its heart is. By sourcing entirely from women producers, Lynden hopes Kohana can change the face of coffee leadership and strengthen the coffee world's infrastructure for innovation.
A few weeks ago, I met with Lynden in Austin, Texas to discuss the future changes of Kohana and glean some insight from her career. We discussed the grind of entrepreneurship, the duty of social responsibility and how she has managed her own expectations and failures throughout the years. From our conversation, I pulled five key lessons. So, whether you're a side hustler, a creative entrepreneur or simply looking to make a change in your industry, I suggest you read up:
1.) Look for problems to solve, not egos to groom.
Both of Lynden's companies, Alliance Abroad Group and Kohana Coffee, began as solutions to her own problems. For example, with Alliance Abroad Group, she was looking to meet the needs of American students living and working overseas. She saw a gap in information and resources and decided to become the bridge.
 (1,599 words)
- [I'm Not The Only One
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/im-not-the-only-one/index.html): When I was a kid, more than one teacher said I was a daydreamer. They didn’t mean it as a compliment. It was their way of accusing me of lacking focus and having a wandering mind. And I did—it’s always been a little too easy for my thoughts to take off on a little meandering head trip of their own no matter what’s going on around me.
I spent years worrying about it, convinced that I was a little too spacey for my own good and that I needed to really focus on focusing or there’d be trouble. After all, they kept telling me, daydreaming is just a whole lot of inexcusable nothing that’ll get me nowhere.
Except it isn’t. At all.
We all daydream. A lot. In fact, our minds are in drift mode about 30% of the time. For about a third of every day, we check out mentally and head elsewhere. That’s a huge chunk of time, and there must be some kind of reason for it, some sort of evolutionary advantage to zoning out, right?
Message to all my old teachers: There is. People in lab coats looked into it, and it turns out that daydreaming is where a lot of the thinking we need most goes down. It’s the place creativity comes from. When we daydream, we’re not bouncing uselessly from one random idea to another. We’re making important connections between seemingly unrelated things that we would never have made consciously, and it’s in these connections that insights are born.
We can’t have this inspiration without daydreaming. Our “executive functions,” just aren’t up to the task. Only by freeing our brains and letting them run wild wherever they want can we make that quantum leaps and discover the breakthrough we need to make life grand.
It’s like we won’t find the answers we’re looking for until we actually stop looking for them and send our thoughts in a completely different and disorderly direction instead. That’s the value of daydreaming. And that’s why we should never believe them when they tell us it’s a nightmarish waste of time. (626 words)
- [Kohana Coffee BBQ Sauce | Kohana Coffee Blog](/content/blogs/news/kohana-coffee-bbq-sauce/index.html): Anybody who knows me knows I firmly believe that coffee is as essential to life as we know it as air, water, and the latest Elena Ferrante novel. It’s what my world calls a key ingredient. 
But why isn’t coffee ever an actual ingredient? You know, as in something you cook with instead of just drink, happy though those occasions always are?
I was wondering about this out loud with a friend of mine who’s sort of a chef and a bit of a foodie, and she set me straight—coffee can be used in the kitchen and not just in tiramisu either. She said it’s got a distinctive earthy flavor that works well in both sweet and savory dishes, and can be a great accent for meats of all kinds.
Live and learn, right? And I after making the barbeque sauce recipe she gave me as proof, I see her point. It really gave the turkey burgers I grilled the other night a serious jolt. Here’s the recipe:
Kohana Coffee BBQ Sauce
Ingredients

2 T. olive oil
1 3/4 cups onions, chopped
6 minced garlic cloves
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
2 T. chili powder
2 T. light molasses
2 T. chopped cilantro
1 t. ground cumin
28 oz. of canned crushed tomatoes
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup fresh Kohana coffee (the stronger the better!)

Heat oil on medium-high in a large heavy pan. Add onions and garlic, and sauté until onions are tender. Add brown sugar, chili powder, molasses, cilantro, and cumin, and stir until everything combines together into a paste. Add tomatoes and coffee, and bring to boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook (uncovered!) until the sauce starts to thicken. This takes about 1/2 an hour (stir frequently!). Voila!
This gave me about four cups, which is a lot. But it works with any meat—in the oven or on the grill. And it’s the kind of more-is-better sauce you slather on by bucketload so freeze what you don’t need and you’ll have a quick way to wake up a boring meal. (618 words)
- [Ideas We ❤️ : Serving Hope By the Cup | Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/ideas-we-serving-hope-by-the-cup/index.html): A good cup of coffee performs many essentials services for humanity. It’s a perfect wake-up call and an ideal pick-me-up, a great excuse for a get-together, and the preferred way to kill time between appointments. But if you get yours at the right place in Seattle, it’s doing a whole lot more.
Welcome to Street Bean, a coffee shop that not only serves a supremely satisfying latte but does it while helping homeless young people learn valuable job skills and make the money they need to finance a more promising future.
Opened in 2009, Street Bean is the brainchild of local non-profit agency New Horizons, which helps troubled teens and young adults move past the despairing burdens of poverty and find the stability they need to create a new life for themselves. Each Street Bean outlet is staffed by New Horizon clients who had no place else to turn, and every cup they pour serves up a solution to the problem of kids with no place to live.
In Seattle, that problem is fairly stark—some 800 young people between the ages of 12 and 26 spend their nights on the streets, where drugs and crime take a terrible toll on their physical and emotional health. Since 1978, the staff of New Horizons has provided help of all kinds to these kids, but one key part of that puzzle was always missing: jobs that would sustain the resources they need to escape the clutches of homelessness once and for all.
In 2009, that dream came true thanks to a generous landlord, who offered the organization a retail space and three months of free rent to help get things started. After some discussion about what type of business would give homeless youth the best opportunities and have the greatest chance for success, the staff of New Horizons picked coffee, which in highly-caffeinated Seattle is like betting on rain.
Thus was Street Bean born, and with it, the homeless young people of Seattle got their first serious break. Today, Street Bean helps “street-involved” teens and young adults learn how to foster positive relationships, acquire marketable skills, rediscover their own self-worth, and reclaim the hope and promise that life on the street has taken from them. It’s a program that’s working—over 80% of all Street Bean apprentices have successfully made the transition to permanent housing and gainful employment.
From one location, Street Bean has grown into two, and they’ve even started their own roasting operation, which funds one hour of job training for every bag of fresh roast sold. That roast is top shelf, too because Street Bean believes in necessary things like high-quality beans and paying fair prices directly to coffee growers so they can enjoy the good life, too.
That’s a cup of coffee that’s doing more than just brightening our day. It’s making the world in which we drink it a better place for all of us to live. (766 words)
- [The Truth About Coffee & Antioxidants | The Bloom
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/the-truth-about-coffee-antioxidants/index.html): Our quest for health takes us many places. To our yoga mats and our bicycle seats. To the hiking trail and the fitness center, a bowl of fruit or a lunchtime salad. Yet if we really want to boost our bodies, we should head for the nearest café and order a large latte.
Not to say those other things don’t matter. They do. But when it comes to self-care, the latest scientific surprise is deliciously simple: drink coffee.
Researchers who’ve picked our favorite drink apart say it’s loaded with all kinds of good things our bodies need to maintain optimal wellness and the top source of antioxidants in the human diet.
Antioxidants help our cells stay healthy. They defend us from toxins called free radicals, unstable molecules that are missing an electron. There are all kinds of free radicals. They come from things like pollution, sun exposure, and even our bodies themselves, which produce them as byproducts of metabolism. Free radical chemistry gets a little heavy, but the short version is that when these molecules are inside us (and they always are), they seek to become stable by “stealing” an electron from wherever they can. The “victims” of this theft are often the proteins and DNA our cells need to work properly. This action damages these essential elements of life and leaves them in a tough spot—they either have to steal an electron from somewhere else to repair themselves, which starts a chain reaction of harm, or they simply start to malfunction, which leads to diseases like cancer and other unfortunate things.
Antioxidants are the antidote. They’ve got an extra “spare” electron that they can donate to any nearby free radicals that need one without turning into a free radical themselves. This neutralizes toxins while sparing our cells. When we’ve got a lot of antioxidants in our bodies, we’re healthier. And when we drink coffee, we’re getting a lot of antioxidants.
While other foods have more antioxidants per serving, coffee wins the day as the world’s leading source because we consume so much more of it than most other foods. Every cup we savor contains a literal wealth of these beneficial nutrients.
They include necessities like quinines, which help maintain healthy blood sugar levels; the appropriately named cafestol, a brain-boosting anti-inflammatory; and antibacterial compounds like melanoidin and trigonelline. Coffee also contains large amounts of chlorogenic acid, hydrocinnamic acid, and other polyphenols, antioxidants known for their potency and their role in preventing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
Antioxidants are measured by something called ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) units. The USDA recommends we consume at least 3000-5000 ORAC units daily. Since coffee gives us 2,750 units for every 3.4 ounces we drink, just a cup or two a day goes a long way toward ensuring we get the minimum we need. We’re not saying forsake fruits and vegetables. By all means, bring on the blueberries and the broccoli. Then wash them down with a cup or two of health insurance. (Kohanacare, anyone?) (778 words)
- [A New (To Me) State Of Mind
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/97143878-a-new-to-me-state-of-mind/index.html):  You know that space between being awake and falling asleep? Those few minutes when you aren’t really in either place but somewhere in between? It’s a crazy time. We’re starting to dream but we’re still alert enough to know it, which makes strange things happen in our brains and lets our brains take advantage of those things in a way we can’t when we’re sleeping.
Turns out there’s a name for this. They call this mental state “hypnagogia.” (No, I don’t know how to pronounce it!) And it’s a key to creativity.
All kinds of people have used hypnagogia to boost their inspiration. Mary Shelley, for one, thought up Frankenstein hovering between sleep and waking. And lots of other artists and writers have said they’ve had great ideas in this state of mind.
I was curious about this because I took a nap last weekend that didn’t work out. I couldn’t fall all the way asleep, but even though I was half-awake the whole time it also seemed like I’d been dreaming. It was strange. So I Googled.
I guess the idea is that hypnagogia is the shortest path between our subconscious minds and our wakeful selves. The brain is slowly switching over to sleep mode, but it hasn’t switched all the switches yet, so we get this weird in-between thing. It’s basically a shortcut to our subconscious, and if we take it, we can find all kinds of useful thoughts and ideas waiting there that we can’t access when we’re wide awake. We might find a new way to solve an old problem. Or get an idea for a project. Or have a vision that inspires us to do something amazing. Almost anything can happen.
I’m going to try to be more intentional about hypnagogia and keep a notebook by my bed. I want to write down whatever comes to me between wakefulness and sleep and see what it holds. Maybe my next big step in life is waiting for me! It seems worth trying. What about you guys? Has anyone ever had anything cool happen during hypnagogia? (625 words)
- [High on Dirt
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/101761158-high-on-dirt/index.html): I don’t have the greenest thumb in the world, but I like to make things grow. So I keep lots of plants in my windows, potted herbs on the kitchen counter, and during the summer even a few larger containers outside.
With the days getting warm, it’s time to decide what to grow in those containers this year. I’m thinking about green onions. Maybe carrots. Definitely tomatoes. (Gotta have tomatoes!)
It doesn’t really matter. For me, it’s not the harvest. It’s the planting and the tending I love most—the journey not the destination and all that. I just like to get my hands in the dirt whether it’s digging a new home for a tiny seedling or pulling the weeds that want to get its way. It makes me feel complete somehow. It makes me happy.
There’s just something about working the soil and making food happen. And now I know what: I’m high on dirt!
Well, not quite. But definitely, sort of. Today, I read about a soil microbe called Mycobacterium vaccae that’s like Prozac. When we’re exposed to it, it boosts our serotonin supply, the stuff in our brains that keeps us happy. Without serotonin, we’d all be anxious and depressed.
Which is funny because I feel the same way about gardening—without it, life’s a downer. But I guess when I’m digging around in the dirt, I’m breathing in Mycobacterium vaccae, getting it on my skin, and into any little cuts or scrapes, I happen to have. And it’s making me feel alright.
No wonder people love their gardens. It’s a pantry and a pharmacy all in one! Seriously though, we could all do a lot worse than grow something good to eat and get good and dirty doing it. Bacteria or not, gardening is a kind of meditation. For me, it’s like a Zen retreat at the end of my spade.
You should try it if you haven’t. Grow a few things this summer. Get out in the sun and dig in the dirt. A bunch of crazy soil scientists swears it’ll make you smile. (620 words)
- [The Bloom | A Kohana Coffee Blog](/content/blogs/news/index.html): Kohana are the beautiful, little white flowers that bloom on the coffee plant prior to the arrival of the coffee fruit, a fitting symbol for our company. (730 words)
- [Wake Up And Dream Blog | Out Of Order
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/out-of-order/index.html): I seek an orderly life. It’s A to B to C in order to get to D for me. That’s how I roll.
But what happens when Z pops up uninvited along the way?
The other day I had it all mapped out. There was a route. There were objectives. There was a schedule, a destination, and a list of things to get done. Then Z appeared.
A flyer at the gym for a flea market, which normally I am a sucker for but not on a day when I’ve got a serious agenda. I dutifully ignore Z.
Then again at the deli. A couple chatting about the great flea market they’d just found. I head to the bike shop, but the street is closed for a water main break. There’s a sandwich board. With an arrow. This way to the flea market.
Suddenly it feels like the Universe is shouting at me. “Enough!” it yells. “Ditch the plan and go where you’re meant to already!”
I give in. I find a gorgeous table runner for a crazy price. I bump into a long lost friend. We have lunch. She works for a record company, and suddenly I’m in the second row at an Adele concert. All because I heard the Universe when it called.
Lesson learned. There are moments when our intentions are meant to be and moments when they’re not. And we live far more fully when we keep one ear to the wind and listen for the messages that tell us when to cut and run where we never thought to go.
We should always keep one eye out for paths that lie beyond those we’ve set for ourselves. We should watch for their signs and the directions they suggest. Plans are good. But it’s spontaneity and the freedom to follow it that leads us to Life’s gold. When we open ourselves to these possibilities, when we dare to disrupt our own lives and step wholeheartedly into the unknown, we invite in all the things that make for days well spent. We find the secrets we’re truly meant to seek.
The Universe really does know best. And we’ll always do better when we take its advice. (641 words)
- [Stretch Goals
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/stretch-goals/index.html): Check this out. It’s a portrait of yoga insanity my teacher shared with the class last night called the Double Buddhasana.
I know, right? I hurt myself just looking at it.
My first thought was somebody’s going to need a good orthopedic surgeon. My second was that person won’t ever be me because there’s just no way. I mean, seriously. Did you see that pose? My instructor said you actually have to have somebody help you into it. That’s how hard it is.
Then again… maybe that’s the point.
Because for me yoga is all about the challenge. It’s not supposed to be easy. It’s not a practice in complacency. It’s a place where my body and my spirit push the possibilities and look to see just how far I can take them. What are my limits? Where does the very edge of my abilities lie? If I go all the way, how far will I get?
Like life itself, success shouldn’t be measured by whether we could or couldn’t, but whether we went for it. As long as we do and give it all that we’ve got, it doesn’t matter if we don’t make the finish line. We win because we didn’t settle for the merely possible. We kept pushing until we ran headlong into the impossible.
That’s the Double Buddhasana. It’s undoable for me. But then again maybe it’s not. I won’t know until I try to get there, and that’s its true test.
Yes, I am 100% sure I am not that bendable. But on the other hand, I am also 100% sure I don’t know for certain that I can’t be, and in finding out, I’ll discover a lot more about myself than the fact itself. The point isn’t the pose. It’s the path to it and what we find along the way. It’s my willingness to give it a whirl and give it my all.
That’s all the Double Buddhasana asks. And that’s why I am going for it. I might not make it. But by daring to start, I already have. (619 words)
- [The Art of Coffee Tasting, Part Two
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/the-art-of-coffee-tasting-part-two/index.html): Last time out, we looked at how to set up a proper coffee cupping, the practice of consciously sampling the coffees we love. Now we’re ready for the fun part: actually tasting some!
Coffee has three main components: Aroma, taste, and body. In a cupping session, you’ll explore all three. There are whole guides to the process, but here are the basics:


Taste several coffees at once. The more you taste, the more comparisons you can make, and the more comparisons you make, the more apparent the differences between individual coffees become. Since it’s these differences that lead us to identify the flavor components of different coffees, you’ll need to have some variety on your tasting table.



Clear your head and cleanse your palate. Regular coffee drinking can lead us to overlook or develop “immunity” to some of its flavor subtleties. So start by removing all preconceived notions of coffee taste from your mind. Convince yourself you’ve never had it before and start as fresh as you can. Cleanse your palate with water and perhaps plain crackers, and begin!



Go black or go home. Sure, we love our cream and sugar, too. But they change coffee’s taste and hide many of the flavors you’re seeking. Black coffee, on the other hand, is pure coffee.



Start with the aroma. Bend over the cup, give it a slight stir and inhale deeply. What do you smell? What does it make you think of? What other foods or scents does it bring to mind? How does the aroma between your different coffees vary?



Take a quick first sip. What are you experiencing in terms of both initial flavor and aftertaste?



Now slurp a sip. Slurping lets you collect more coffee and spread it more evenly across the entirety of your tongue, whose different zones respond to different elements of taste like sweet, bitter, etc. Again, what does the flavor remind you of? What other foods can you taste? What do you think of its sweetness, bitterness, and acidity? How well are all the different tastes balanced? Are there any flaws?



Contemplate body. Is it thick or thin? Does it feel rich or slight in your mouth? A good coffee should have somebody too it but not so much that it sits heavy on your tongue. 



Consider aftertaste. Pleasant or harsh? Bitter or just right?



Move from coffee to coffee without long pauses. This is the best way to get some comparisons going. Don’t worry about cleansing your palate in between—coffee is about 98% water so it’s a cleanser itself! But you can always have a sip of room temperature water if you need.



Take notes. They help you focus on and remember what you’re tasting.

Last but not least, remember that to each his or her own! The coffee flavors you favor may not be the same ones your tasting friends prefer. In this test, there are no wrong answers. Enjoy! (764 words)
- [Two words: Breakfast. Salad.
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/111848710-two-words-breakfast-salad/index.html): They always said breakfast was the most important meal of the day if you want to be healthy. Then they always sat me down to a plate of food that totally wasn’t—cheese-stuffed omelets, grease-stuffed meats, butter-soaked toast, and a pile of fried potatoes the size of a Mini Cooper. You could rock that plate for sure. But I don’t think you’d win any wellness awards.
A lifetime of smoothies, steel-cut oats, yogurt bowls, and fruit plates later, I’m still looking for the better breakfast, and I think I finally found it.
Two words: Breakfast salad.
It’s a counterintuitive contradiction in mutually exclusive terms and sounds completely loco, I know. But it looks insanely crave-able, and I think this could really be it—the one that looks good, feeds you right, and satisfies the soul doing it. The real breakfast of champions. Check it out:

1/4 cup orange juice
A glug of maple syrup
2 tsp. balsamic vinegar
Salt
A bunch of kale, chopped with ribs removed
Olive oil
4 bacon slices
1 tart apple, cored and sliced
1/4 cup grated cheddar cheese
4 eggs
Black pepper

Mix the juice, maple, balsamic and 1/2 tsp. salt. Massage the kale and toss it with the dressing.
Cook the bacon, drain and chop.
Drizzle olive oil over the kale. Add the apple and cheese. Toss and split among 4 plates. Top with chopped bacon.
Fry eggs sunny-side up, put 1 egg on each salad. Sprinkle with ground black pepper and salt.
Voila! The breakfast that may just get me out of bed and psyched about it in the morning. Because kale. And apples. Add some berries and swap in some veggie bacon (turkey bacon if your inner carnivore is howling) and low-fat cheese, and it’s healthier still.
Either way, I’m primed to cook this one. I’m not saying it’s going be my go-to on mornings when I’m rushing around like a maniac. But if I’ve got time for a sit-down, I’m sitting down to this one if only because science has finally figured out how to serve kale for breakfast, and that’s progress we shouldn’t ignore. (625 words)
- [Fast Company: Do your holiday shopping at one of these 21 women-owned 
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/do-your-holiday-shopping-at-one-of-these-21-women-owned-businesses.html): 

Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday (and its counterpart Green Monday–the second Monday in December) were all dreamed up by retailers to raise the revenue quotient as they slash prices and shout about the dwindling amount of days left to shop.


But conscious consumers are looking for a better reason than discounts to support brands. Recent consumer research by Walmart found that 90% of female customers are willing to go out of their way to buy a product from a woman-owned business. The good news is that they aren’t that hard to find. Over the last decade, there was an increase of women-owned firms totaling 3.5 million, according to the most recent State of Women-Owned Businesses Report. A large majority (78%) of these new businesses are owned by women of color. As of 2016, there were an estimated 1.9 million African-American women-owned firms employing 376,500 workers and generating $51.4 billion in revenues.
Here’s a rundown of some of the founder/owners we’ve come across this year and the inspiration behind their business ideas.

COFFEE
Victoria Lynden is the founder and CEO of Kohana Coffee who was not only the first roaster to bring shelf-stable cold brew to the U.S. market, but also exclusively buys organic, fair traded beans from female growers.
 (493 words)
- [Made in the Shade | The Bloom
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/made-in-the-shade/index.html):  
There’s a lot to love about the transition from winter to spring and then spring to our beloved summer. For many of us, it’s the moment when cold and snow and worse are replaced by warmth and sun and a lot to look forward to. And one of the things we look for most are the songbirds that return to our neighborhood trees. They’ve been missed, and we wonder: Where did they go in the first place?
Would you believe coffee farms?
Over 40 species of migratory songbirds—everything from warblers and Orioles to tanagers and thrushes— love coffee as much as we do, if, that is, it’s shade-grown.
Shade-grown coffee is coffee the way coffee used to be, which is to say it’s not grown on plantations from which all native vegetation has been cleared to make way for endless neat rows of coffee trees. Instead it’s raised underneath a canopy of indigenous trees that have been allowed to remain. That’s how coffee originally came to be, and the trees it evolved under create a perfect habitat for songbirds, who flock to shade-grown farms every autumn.
In addition to supplying our coffee, these farms offer a winter sanctuary to the migratory birds that supply our summers with song. Unlike a conventional all-coffee-no-forest plantation, the trees left standing on shade-grown plots provide the vital food, water, and shelter that our migratory songbirds need in order to gain the weight required to fuel their long often difficult trek back north for breeding each spring.
Without this food and shelter, migration is much more difficult and birds become far less likely to survive the trip and successfully raise their next generation of young. It’s one of the primary reasons North American songbird populations have been declining—the warm winter habitat they depend upon has been disappearing to various kinds of development. Shade-grown coffee is playing a critical role in reversing that trend, and scientists are showing us just how important it can be.
Shade-grown farms in Guatemala, for example, have 30% more birds than traditional sun-soaked plantations. A study in Chiapas, Mexico counted 46 species of migratory songbirds on shade-grown plantations but found only 6 to 12 species on nearby unshaded operations. Shaded farms in Venezuela were found have 14 times more migratory birds than even nearby forests. 
Shade-grown gives other gifts as well. It creates habitat for large numbers of native plants, animals, and insects; reduces the need for pesticides; protects water resources; and even fights climate change by absorbing significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
That’s why we love shade-grown and use as much as we possibly can. It’s harder to find, and harvests aren’t as large so it’s a little more expensive to buy, but we think it’s more than worth it. We can’t put a price on the avian beauty that fills our North American summers. But paying a little more to fill our cups to save it is a bargain in our hands that’s worth far more than two in the bush. (778 words)
- [Whole Coffee Beans -Whole Bean Coffee -Organic Decaf Coffee
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/products/decaf-kohana-blend/index.html): Buy organic fair trade decaffeinated whole coffee beans. Organic coffee beans. Organic ground coffee. Buy coffee online. Gourmet coffee. Learn more. (442 words)
- [Daily Coffee News: Kohana Founder Victoria Lynden on Entrepreneurship 
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/daily-coffee-news-kohana-founder-victoria-lynden-on-entrepreneurship-and-empowerment-for-women-in-coffee.html): Austin, Texas-based cold brew and whole bean purveyor Kohana Coffee has the ambitious and unprecedented goal of sourcing every last one of its beans from women by 2020. This would involve not just women farmers, but women at every step of the supply chain, including in milling, processing, exporting and importing.The plan starts with the two women at the helm of Kohana, founder Victoria Lynden and vice president of operations Piper Jones, who have built the company around a mission to support other women in the production and trade of fairtrade and organic certified coffees.The company says it pays a premium to support women-led producer groups in the coffeelands, such as Las Capucas, AMPROCAL, and Manos de Mujer in Honduras. The company also recently invested in the International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA) as a “sustaining supporter” to further build such connections at origin.“We’ve long been involved with the work of the IWCA. We’re working closely in an effort to source 100 percent of our organic coffee, and soon to be all of our coffee, from women coffee farmers,” Lynden recently told Daily Coffee News. “Together, we have engineered a series of full-circle impacts that stretch from crop to cup, focusing first and foremost on our commitment to women.”While such partnerships are naturally outward facing, Lynden said they spring from the company’s internal values, such as a culture of kindness and empathy, and support for a healthy work/life balance.“People like to know they’re working for something bigger than a bottom line. Anything that carries that ideal into the larger community is great,” said Lynden of Kohana’s company culture. “Then there are the little things, like free snacks or a ping-pong table, company events, staff massages, guest speakers… you name it. Offer enough of these and you’ll create something substantial.”Lynden first conceived of the company on a trip to Hawaii with Jones, when the pair took shelter in a coffee shack after getting stuck in a torrential tropical rainstorm while riding mopeds.“The moment I stepped inside, I was hit by the incredible aroma of absolutely perfect coffee that took me right back to my childhood spent at my mother’s kitchen table,” Lynden said. “The original intention was just to bring this incredible Hawaiian coffee to my store and cafe, Cissi’s Market, in Austin so I could share it with my customers.”That initial interest soon blossomed into a full-blown obsession, and Lynden formally pursued her newfound passion for coffee with the founding of Kohana in 2008. Yet Kohana represents only a portion of Lynden’s entrepreneurial and social justice pursuits. She is also the founder and CEO of Alliance Abroad Group, a 30-year-old international cultural exchange company.Through associations with nonprofits and other actors, that company is currently assisting to build orphanages in South Africa, working with endangered species in Central America, and engaging in education and sustainable living in underprivileged communities in the U.S. and around the world.Three Questions with Victoria LyndenWhat inspires you most about coffee?Coffee is very nostalgic for me. The smell and feeling reconnects me to my mother, Cissi, who has played such an important role in my life and shaped who I am today. She was a single parent who worked many jobs in order to provide for me and my siblings. Even though it was sometimes a struggle to support her own family, she still found time to volunteer and help those in need — a value that she instilled in me at a very young age. I have vivid memories of her inviting people off the streets, some homeless and others just down on their luck, for a warm cup of coffee that always seemed to be percolating on our kitchen stove. Ever since, coffee has always represented a magical elixir that brings people together.What troubles you most about coffee?In the production of coffee, women still face many barriers in their pursuit of personal and professional success. From receiving less income and reduced access to inputs, less leadership opportunities at the cooperative level, less ownership of their own land — the list goes on. There’s a significant gender divide in the coffee industry that we are laser focused on addressing and changing at Kohana. We buy all of our coffee from female producers at a premium, so the proceeds get reinvested directly to benefit the women who cultivated and harvested it.Over the years, there has been such a high demand for coffee and as a result costs keep increasing. To make coffee production sustainable everyone is searching for a quick solution to get a profitable return. However, we must consider how we go about scaling in a way that protects the entire system in which it functions. That includes farmers, producers, landowners, consumers, and the environment. Even though the demand is growing, it’s essential that we protect the integrity and work of the people producing the beans that we all love so much.What would you be doing if it weren’t for coffee?As a serial entrepreneur, I am always looking at what is next. Ideally, I would like to find the right role to serve my passion via a commitment to public service — a role where I could utilize my own experiences as a woman and thought leader to influence change and explore the values-led and mission-based business arena, especially related to social responsibility and entrepreneurship.
Original article can be found here. (1,195 words)
- [How Not To Bail On Kale
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/97144582-how-not-to-bail-on-kale/index.html): If spring is the season of new beginnings, I’m beginning to work on mine. That mostly means getting into shape for summer, and that mostly means losing the extra bits of me that winter left behind when I wasn’t looking.
In my kitchen these days its hello kale and bye-bye Ben and Jerry. (Ours was a sweet affair, but our spooning days are done.)
I know kale is almost a food cliché these days, but it’s still a freak-of-nature food that feeds our bodies all kinds of good without extending them in any new directions. They don’t call it a superfood for nothing. But they also don’t call it a superfood because it does all that while tasting like pecan pie. It’s a little bitter, a little earthy, a little chewy, a little challenging.
No such thing as a free lunch, right? But how to make it a part of my new beginning without making me wince?
I tried kale chips. But I ate a whole pan and only got hungrier. I cooked some with tomatoes, a little onion, garlic, some beans, that kind of thing. But yuck—too slimey!
So… maybe salad?
I’ve been experimenting. And here’s what works for me: Take a big bunch of kale, remove those fiber-y ribs and rub it between your hands for a minute or two. Squeeze it, press it, massage it. Seriously—this is my kale hack! It makes it soft and sweet.
Chop it up and add some thin sliced red onion. Toast some almond slivers in a pan and toss them in. Mix in some shaved carrot (get a vegetable shaver—it’s like a peeler but the blade has tiny teeth!) and some dried cranberries. Then toss the works with olive oil and a little sea salt.
In a word: Amazing. A kale salad I’m psyched about! I actually want to eat it and that’s what gets me where I want to go—the right foods have to taste right, too, or I’ll just eat the wrong ones and turn my new beginning into the same old story. (619 words)
- [The Art of Caffeine | The Bloom
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/the-art-of-caffeine/index.html):  There are lots of reasons we prefer coffee. It’s indescribably delicious, simple to summon, and can be dressed up in all kinds of ways for an equally expansive variety of occasions. And did we mention it comes with a helpful helping of caffeine?
Because let’s be honest: We drink it for taste. We drink it for fun. We drink it to warm up or to cool down. But we also drink it to give our bodies and our brains a boost. And depending on how your day is going, this gift of caffeine may be the biggest coffee gives.
Which brings us to today’s question: how to maximize your own coffee’s caffeine content for those moments when you need it most. These tips will give you a bigger bang for your cup:


Use a light roast. Darker roasts are longer roasts, and the longer a bean roasts, the more of its caffeine is burned off by heat.



Grind fine. A finer grind means more total bean surface area for your water to work its extraction magic upon. And more extraction means more bounce in your brew. Assuming your other variables remain the same—the amount of coffee used, your brewing time, and water quantity—a finer grind will produce a more highly caffeinated cup. 




Brew stronger. All other things being equal, the greater your grounds-to-water ratio, the higher the caffeine levels in the resulting coffee. It makes sense: more coffee essence per cup means more caffeine, too. But stronger coffee isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. You’ll have to experiment to find your own limits.



Brew longer. The longer grounds are in contact with water, the more caffeine that water will be able to extract. This is why espresso, despite common perceptions, can’t compete with regular coffee when it comes to caffeine—it brews in seconds vs. minutes.



Take your temperature. Maximum caffeine production occurs between 195° and 205° That’s bringing water to a boil and then letting it sit for a few moments. The problem? Drip coffee machines usually only reach about 195° and can’t give you your money’s worth. A caffeine emergency calls for better control over your water’s temperature.



Go French. Press, that is. With a French Press you can control all of the above variables and produce a higher wattage result. The only drawback is grind. French presses like it coarse, and that’s not ideal where caffeine extraction is concerned. However, you can get away with a finer grind by using a double or triple layer screen or even filtering your coffee through a paper filter. 

These strategies will brew a bigger buzz. But there’s more to it. Next time, we’ll talk about making the most of all the caffeination you’ve just created. (729 words)
- [Whole Coffee Beans -Whole Bean Coffee -Organic Coffee
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/collections/slow-roasted-beans/index.html): Buy organic fair trade whole coffee beans. Organic coffee beans. Organic ground coffee. Buy gourmet coffee beans online. Learn more. (349 words)
- [WAKE UP AND DREAM BLOG | Intentions
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/106094406-intentions/index.html): Is it just me or is life getting out of hand? Most days, I can’t even find five minutes to focus on anything that really matters. My whole existence feels like some giant pinball machine, constantly buzzing and flashing and beeping, with me as the ball bouncing around all over the place just trying to score a few points and avoid tilting into Game Over.
Phone, friends, work, city—every 30 seconds a new distraction pulls me in a different direction, and when I add it all up at the end of the day, all the stuff I really want to do is just as undone as it was the day before.
My yoga instructor said I should set an intention. I didn’t know what she was talking about. My problem isn’t a lack of intentions. It’s a lack of making them happen.
But a (capital “I”) Intention is different, she said. It’s about getting serious about your vision for yourself and turning it into a series of deliberate acts that command your attention and hold your focus long enough to add up to something real. Intentions can be big or small. They can be a life goal (write that novel) or not (make someone smile today). All that matters is that they matter to us.
Here’s what my teacher suggested:


 Figure out you want to accomplish. Write it down. Meditate on it.


 Share your intention with someone who supports you and will hold you to it.


 Don’t let doubts—your own or anyone else’s—get in the way.


 Do one thing to further your intention.


 Commend yourself for taking that step.


 Apply the same focus to the next step you need to take your intention. Then take it.


Intentions are a way to cut through all the static in the world and keep it from keeping us down. It’s about being mindful in a way that makes sure we don’t lose sight of what we’re going for. I think that makes them a good idea. And I intend to try it. (609 words)
- [Kohana Coffee Unveils Brand New Web Platform](/content/blogs/news/kohana-coffee-unveils-brand-new-web-platform/index.html): 
The Kohana Coffee Company, the creator of the world’s only shelf-stable cold brew coffee, has launched a brand new web platform at www.kohanacoffee.com and unveiled a host of online changes that reinvent the gourmet roaster’s user experience.
The new platform serves up a unique marketing style and inviting appeal via a fresh, ultra-clean look whose light and airy feel reflects the brand’s unique Hawaiian origins. Visitors to the new site can now effortlessly explore its features, access original coffee-focused content, and enjoy a far more engaging digital encounter designed to encourage repeat visits and build strong consumer relationships. Supporting the new design and its easy navigation are enhanced site search capabilities and a new, more elegant e-commerce solution, which combines to deliver better access to Kohana products and a much more refined online ordering process.   “Our management goal for the new site was to really rebuild everything under the hood from the ground up so that our web presence performs on the same high level as our product lines and meets those same consumer expectations,” says company founder and CEO Victoria Lynden. “We took our inspiration from our coffee technologies themselves. There’s a lot going on behind our packaging that consumers never know is there. The processes that result in our products’ taste profiles are intentionally invisible. It’s the essence those technologies combine to create that leaves the impression and produces brand loyalty. You’ll never know why it tastes so good. You only know that it does. That’s the approach we took.” (528 words)
- [Grounds for Dismissal
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/grounds-for-dismissal/index.html): As coffee connoisseurs, we all know that not all beans are created equal nor are the coffees they eventually become. There are good grinds, and there are bad grinds. What’s surprising is just how ugly some can be.
Blame it on supply and demand. Global demand for coffee has roughly doubled in the last decade. We have become a coffee planet and the world’s greatest beverage is more popular than ever for reasons that need no explanation. Yet back on the plantation, harvests are getting ever tighter as climate change-spurred weather extremes make it harder for growers in many areas to produce their historically bountiful crops of beloved beans.
In Brazil and Asia, for example, recent droughts have reduced the Robusta crop, beans commonly used for instant coffee and other things best left unmentioned. We know what you’re thinking. “No problem! I don’t drink that dreck.” (We don’t either.) Yes, but… suppliers are making up the difference with Arabica beans, and that’s putting pressure on worldwide supplies of coffees we care about.
As a result of shortfalls like these, the coffee being sold today isn’t always what we think it is. It can be full of fillers from seeds and grains to corn, rice, and even junk like husks and sticks that help less-than-scrupulous dealers keep their sacks full and their prices low. Even worse (we know—what’s worse than a cup of fresh-brewed sticks?), the U.S. has low standards for acceptable levels of mold in coffee, which leaves manufacturers also free to use fungally challenged beans whenever it’s convenient.
How do they get away with these high crimes? That’s no secret. Once all these impurities are roasted and ground, they look just like the coffee they’re pretending to be.
That’s not the kind of cup we’re craving, which means the real issue is making sure we don’t bring home any of this fakery. Thankfully, a few rules go a long way toward ensuring that we always pour coffee that actually is.


Avoid the bargain bin. The idea of cheap coffee is appealing, but there’s a reason it costs less, and that’s usually some combination of poor quality beans, added fillers, and mold-infested product.



Choose a roaster you know. Those no-name brands and generic coffees have no reputation to protect. But boutique roasters and big companies alike have worked hard to establish their street cred, and they’re not going to throw all that quality control away to make a quick buck.



Go organic. Organic standards are the highest around—organic coffee has to be inspected and certified. And having third parties poke around your products is a serious impediment to cheating. 



Use whole-bean coffee. When you buy whole beans and grind them yourself, they can’t hide as many secrets. You’ll be able to tell if something’s amiss.

It may add up to a little more per cup. But as coffee lovers, who among us can possibly put a price on a perfect cup of the real thing?
Special Offer: Get 15% off your next order with coupon code WOMENSOURCED. Hurry offer expires July 31st! Shop now!
  (784 words)
- [The Truth Of About Coffee And Exercise | Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/the-truth-of-about-coffee-and-exercise/index.html): Coffee is energy and inspiration in liquid form and a potent endurance-feeding fusion of focus and stimulus that feeds our muse in many ways. That’s why we think it’s the go-to necessity for almost anything on our calendars. Still, there’s one daily activity that coffee devotees still aren’t sure should come with a cup, and we hear the question all the time:
Is it okay to mix coffee with exercise? 
Grab your travel mug. Coffee is not only an acceptable part of a daily exercise routine, it can actually help you take your body where you want it to go. Here are six ways it boosts your burn:


Coffee accelerates athletic performance. Researchers have identified a connection between drinking coffee and increased physical performance, and their studies have shown that a little caffeine before our workouts can enhance both their intensity and duration.



Coffee lessens pain. We know… no pain, no gain. But here’s the other side of that coin—by reducing pain, or at least our perception of it, coffee is actually raising our pain threshold, which means we can lift more and run farther before screaming muscles beg us to stop.



Coffee enhances circulation. Japanese scientists found that drinking a five-ounce cup of caffeinated coffee gave test subjects a fairly hefty 30% bump in blood flow through their bodies’ smaller blood vessels. That kind of lift delivers a lot more oxygen to our muscles, which fuels a harder workout. 



Coffee kills fat. When we drink it before exercise, our bodies respond to its caffeine content in two ways: First, it boosts our metabolism, which helps us use more calories. But it also makes us burn fat cells for energy instead of the glycogen stored in our muscles, which is what usually provides our workout power. That helps us reach our maximum fat-burning potential more easily.



Coffee preps us for later. Speaking of glycogen, drinking coffee after we exercise puts more of it in our muscles for next time—scientists recorded a 66% greater rise in muscle glycogen levels four hours after a big workout in people who drank a post-exercise cup or two. That’s energy our muscles are storing up for our next body pump session, and having more of it means more strength and endurance for a more productive workout when we get there.



Coffee keeps the fires going. Enjoying some caffeine before your workout will help your body continue to consume extra calories after it’s done. A study conducted in Spain found that ingesting 300 milligrams of caffeine per 150 pounds of body weight—the amount in a 12-ounce coffee—caused athletes to burn 15% more calories during the three hours following exercise.

These are all great reasons to enjoy a little coffee before we hit the gym. The secret is moderation. No one thinks it’s a good idea to load up on double espressos on the way to our workouts. But a cup savored in balanced moderation may be just what the trainer ordered. (771 words)
- [Food Network: 10 Coolest Coffee Drinks (and Where to Find Them)
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/food-network-10-coolest-coffee-drinks-and-where-to-find-them.html): 
Coffee shops and upstarts are creating a whole new slew of innovative styles that are sure to change the way you look at your morning cup of joe. From cafes dispensing on-tap nitro to online companies shipping canisters of cold brew, these caffeine purveyors are on the cutting edge.

Cold-Brew Concentrate at Kohana Coffee

It's awesome enough that you can skip the cafe crush and get a cold-brew fix at home, thanks to this line of cans (in flavors such as Island Latte, Tahitian Vanilla and Volcanic Black) and organic concentrates (choose from Original, Toasted Coconut or French Roast). But what sets Kohana Coffee apart from the pack is that it's the only such company that procures its beans exclusively from female farmers. The beans are also cultivated, processed, and exported and imported by women. What's more, Kohana is committed to further supporting its supplier-partners by providing them with coffee seedlings and microfinancing, along with leadership training opportunities. We'll raise a cup to that.
 (444 words)
- [Digging Through My Dreams
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/digging-through-my-dreams/index.html): 
A few days ago, I was thinking out loud about setting a vision for my life and how the endpoint it starts with is the ultimate dream we have for ourselves. That dream is where I want to land. My vision is how I get there and what it looks like when I finally arrive.
Simple enough, I guess. Except I’ve got dozens of dreams and not a single clue as to which one is the one.
Is it my dream to be a writer? Or my dream to be a travel guru? My dream to open a vintage clothing shop? Or my dream to have my own food truck? Could it be my dream to start an animal rescue shelter? Or is it my dream to become a professional photographer?
It’s no wonder my vision won’t come. I can’t even figure out where I want to land, yet alone what I want waiting for me when I do.
All these dreams are equally real. Each means just as much to me as any of the others. They’re children I’ve nurtured for as long as I can remember, and now Life wants me to pick out one and set the rest aside.
So here I am stuck in the middle, secretly hoping this isn’t as big a deal as I think it is. But maybe it isn’t, and maybe that’s the trick. Maybe which dream I choose doesn’t really matter as long as it’s simply one that really matters to me. Maybe it’s not about asking myself if I’d be happier as a writer or a photographer but instead about understanding that as long as whatever choice I pick springs from my deepest desires, there’s no wrong answer. It’s always a tie.
If that’s true then what I have to do is listen for signs from the universe that break that tie and point me to the dream I’m going to keep.
What do you guys think? How do you pick from among your many dreams to find the one to follow? How do you know when it’s right? (622 words)
- [Secrets Of Cold Brew Coffee
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/secrets-of-cold-brew-coffee/index.html): On the face of it, cold brewing your coffee sounds pretty easy. Grind some beans. Add some water. Wait. Strain. Drink. Simple, right?
Not quite. In practice, the creation of a delicious carafe of cold brew takes more than a little finesse, and those who take the plunge often end up with a pick-me-up that only brings them down. But your own cold brew doesn’t have to end up trading taste for trouble. You’ve got our five Kohana Golden Rules on your side:
Rule 1: No skimping. Cold brew coffee comes without coffee’s usual complement of acids and oils, which need hot water to dissolve into your java. These components desensitize your taste buds and cover up a coffee’s true flavor—you don’t taste the bean so much as you taste its bitterness. With cold brew, your coffee’s true flavors shine through, which makes good quality beans a must.
Rule 2: Get coarse. Your drip coffee may benefit from a fine grind, but use one here and you’ll end up with a fairly foul and bitter cold brew. Why? The finer the grind, the more of its contents will extract into your water and the faster they’ll do it. You want a slower, gentler process that stops before coffee’s harsher elements surface. A coarse grind gives you one.
Rule 3: Watch the Water.  There are all kinds of recipes for cold brew and a variety of different water-to-beans ratios among them. That’s confusing. And problematic—too much water lands you in bland, too little and you’re pouring an over-caffeinated batch of nuclear sludge. A general rule thumb is one gallon to one pound or fractions thereof. But we recommend exploring recipes and ratios until you find the one that works for you.
Rule 4: Set the clock. Time does the brewing here and while it’s generally on your side, you can certainly cold brew for too long or too little. You want the sweet spot where you’ve steeped long enough to extract your bean’s delicious essence but not so long that the bitter dregs get pulled out, too. 14-16 hours is a good median time, but experimentation will guide you best.
Rule 5: Dilute it right. Cold brew is really a coffee concentrate. That’s good because you used a lot of beans to make it. But bad because now you’ll have to add water, and that’s playing with flavor fire. Some simply double their cold brew with an equal quantity of water. Others use a 2:1 water-to-cold brew ratio. It’s all about how strong you like yours. Just remember: if you’re using your cold brew for iced coffee, don’t dilute it at all. Your ice cubes will take care of that when you serve it.
Now, of course, you can always have the perfect cold brew anytime by using our own cold brew concentrate- we've done the heavy lifting for you. But these pro tips from our own kitchen will help you slowly “cook” up some worthy cold brew in yours. It may take awhile to get right, but time spent in the pursuit of a perfectly balanced state—in coffee and in life—is always well spent. (798 words)
- [8 Fun Coffee Facts
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/8-fun-coffee-facts/index.html): Coffee is a superlative beverage. But it is also a beverage of superlatives though some of the ways it’s earned that honor are, shall we say, slightly out of the ordinary. Here’s a look at coffee facts you won’t find on trade association web sites:
• The worlds largest iced coffee was prepared on July 17, 2014 at Caffé Bene in Yangju, South Korea. A team of what we assume were exhausted baristas filled a cup measuring almost 11 feet tall and 8½ wide with 3,758 gallons of black Americano coffee and ice cubes. Not to be outdone, the world’s largest hot cup was poured in London on November 5, 2012 and contained 3,487 gallons. Talk about a city that never sleeps…
• Our only question is did these record-breakers use the world’s largest French press to get the job done? Made by Salzillo Tea and in Murcia, Spain that behemoth is 7½ feet in height and 2 feet in diameter and requires a piston to filter its brew.
• It’s likely the only pot missing from the world’s biggest collection of coffee pots, which is owned by one Robert Dahl of Rövershagen, Germany and contains 27,390 individual coffee pots.
• We’d like to get Robert together with Architects Louise Harpman and Scott Specht, who own the world's most extensive collection of disposable plastic coffee cup lids. Somehow, for reasons that are not entirely obvious, the couple has managed to collect 550 different lids, some of which, for reasons that are even less clear, have been displayed at the Smithsonian Institute.
• 550 lids are nothing to the 300 baristas in Carvalhal, Portugal who set the world record for espresso shots last February by making 21,000 in a single hour. We’re guessing no one told them about the world’s fastest espresso machine, which cranks out an insomnia-inducing three gallons per minute.
• If it were up to us, we’d keep that machine in the back of the Car-puccino, a 1988 Volkswagon Scirocco that, like all road warriors, is powered only by coffee. In March 2010, it traveled 209 miles on coffee granules heated in a charcoal fire to produce hydrogen that was combusted for power. The car hit 60 miles per hour and went one mile for every equivalent of 56 espressos, a record we beat last week when we drove all the way to the coast after drinking just three.
• One thing we’ll never drink is coffee from pods created by Singapore’s Medano Coffee. Made from a combination of King Jantan peaberry coffee beans from North Sumatra, Indonesia, and 22K gold dust, these are most expensive pods on Earth. Each one retails for $55.63 and (we’re guessing) includes an application for a second mortgage.
• Lastly, comes the world record for the most coffee ever consumed. We couldn’t find any details, but multiple sources report that someone somewhere once drank a buzz-busting 82 cups of coffee in a mere seven hours, and, we presume, never slept again. File that and all the rest under “Don’t Try This At Home.” (784 words)
- [Authority Magazine: “I Would Like To Start A ‘GiveGiveGet’ Movement” W
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/i-would-like-to-start-a-givegiveget-movement-with-victoria-lynden-ceo-of-kohana-coffee.html): I had the pleasure of interviewing Victoria Lynden. Victoria is the CEO of Kohana Coffee and Alliance Abroad Group. In 2014, Inc Magazine named Kohana the sixth fastest-growing food and beverage company in the US. In 2020, Kohana will be the first company to source 100% of its coffee from women growers — a mission that will boost gender equality and raise living standards for women and their families in the world’s impoverished coffee-growing regions.Thank you so much for doing this with us! What is your “backstory”?Ten years ago, I took a trip to Hawaii as a burned-out executive eager to take a few days to exhale and rejuvenate my mind. One morning I was on a moped ride around Oahu with my partner Piper, and we got stuck in a torrential tropical rainstorm. We found shelter in a beaten down coffee shack on the side of the road. The moment I stepped inside I was hit by the incredible aroma of absolutely perfect coffee that took me right back to my childhood spent at my mother’s kitchen table. That first sip did more than just warm me; it healed me, and at that moment time finally stood still. How ironic that it took a cup of coffee to finally slow me down!The original intention was just to bring this incredible Hawaiian coffee to my store and cafe, Cissi’s Market, in Austin so I could share it with my customers. The idea was somewhat of a whim because it seemed pretty low-commitment. I soon realized that it wasn’t that simple, and it turned into this whole process of coffee education, of coming to understand the art and science of it all, and that turned into a bit of an obsession. At some point, I realized I was in too deep as it had sort of accidentally grown into more than a sideline. You reach a certain point with any obsession where you stop driving it and it starts driving you — and I guess that’s how Kohana started in 2008.Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
One of the funniest stories happened at the very beginning of the Kohana journey. We started out as roasters. At the time, our sole client was Cissi’s Market which I opened in honor of my recently deceased mother. Eventually, luck gave us our big break. We moved onto the shelves of Whole Foods, and suddenly there I was in a hairnet, standing on black pavement on a 102-degree summer afternoon in Austin, offering samples of blazing hot coffee to understandably reluctant passers-by. Not exactly what one would call smart marketing!What I should be passing out, I thought, was the iced sun tea my mother used to make, a liquid gold brewed in the sun on our back step that was so smooth and refreshing you’d thought it the manna of heaven itself. But mine wasn’t a tea company. It was a coffee company. Still, you know… why let that stop me?So at the end of that rather sad, hot day, I packed up the car, went back to the warehouse, gathered a plumber’s bucket and a cheese cloth that looked rather discomfortingly like granny panties, and tried to create sun-coffee. Five-gallon buckets soon were replaced by trash cans, filled with a bone-crushing weight of wet, soggy coffee grinds that was almost impossible for mortal humans to lift. Production runs were limited to whatever brute strength we could gather among our staff on a given day to separate fresh cold-brewed coffee from old-brewed grounds.That day spent in the scorching hot parking lot began our foray into the cold-brew coffee world. Although that day seemed like a disaster at the time, I now look back on it with gratitude (and a good laugh!).What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
After our memorable day in the parking lot, we eventually figured out a sustainable system to create cold brewed coffee that tasted great, required no refrigeration, and didn’t need a team of body-builders to separate its grounds from the end result. We now have a proprietary formula, thanks to a unique water filtration system, that makes shelf-stable cold brew.I took a risk and went from roaster to cold-brewer, from bagger to bottler, despite the paradigm shift it represented, and with that our whole business model changed.Kohana has successfully cornered the market on shelf-stable coffee concentrates and organic ready-to-drink cold brew coffee. Besides these products, which are the first of its kind in the US, what really stands Kohana apart is our commitment to women. There’s a significant gender divide in the coffee industry that we are laser focused on addressing and changing at Kohana.Are you working on any new or exciting projects now?
Since we’re all about supporting women, we’re extremely proud of our efforts to source all of our cold brew coffee from female growers and farmers around the world. By 2020, Kohana will be the first company to exclusively source ALL of our coffee from women — a mission that I’m particularly proud and passionate about. Our direct-trade coffee will be produced by women growers, processed by women millers, and exported and imported by women players.When it comes to sourcing, we look for organic and fairly traded coffee sources and demand transparency from all of our partners. We also pay a premium on the front end that goes to support various women’s groups that we work with — including Las Capucas’, AMPROCAL and Manos de Mujer in Honduras. In addition to these relationships, we just announced a sustaining partnership with International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA) to help deepen our network of female-run coffee operations.What advice would you give to other CEOs or founders to help their employees to thrive?
I think it’s important to lead on values. So establishing company-wide initiatives that manifest those values externally is always a good idea. People like to know they’re working for something bigger than a bottom line. Anything that carries that ideal into the larger community is great. Another big one is to establish a management culture of kindness and empathy, one that respects a healthy world-life balance. That’s a huge differentiator. Then there are the little things like free snacks or a ping-pong table, company events, staff massages, guest speakers…you name it. Offer enough of these and you’ll create something substantial.None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I am grateful to so many people, but I have to say that my mother Cissi shaped who I am today. She was a single mother who raised me and my siblings in the outskirts of Chicago. Our upbringing was a somewhat threadbare existence — we didn’t have much and my mother worked several jobs to provide just enough to get by on. Even with our own family’s struggles, she still found time to volunteer and help those in need — a value she instilled in me at a very young age.I have vivid memories of her inviting people off the streets, some homeless and others just down on their luck, for a warm cup of coffee that always seemed to be percolating on our kitchen stove. Ever since, coffee has always represented a magical elixir that brings people together — something that had the power to help those on the edge of struggle get through another day.How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
Kohana supports sustainable practices, and we make donations to lots of organizations working on gender equity, health care, education, and housing. We just try to walk our talk at every opportunity and let our actions speak for themselves. We put a lot into our organic growing efforts and creating true sustainability on all levels. When it comes to Kohana’s future, we’re incredibly excited to be working with the IWCA to continue empowering women in the industry,The bottom line is that I want to be of service. I feel I’ve been successful if truly my legacy enables other to be of service.What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became CEO” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
1.) It can be very lonely. I found out early the importance of having healthy boundaries as the CEO. Even though I was the same age as the majority of my team, when I started in my late 20’s, I was not included in their social events as they saw me as the “boss” and did not want to cross that line into their personal lives.2.) The importance of a good contract/business attorney. Our retail partners have very complex agreements. There may be 10 documents, which each take more than a week to fill out and respond to the various requests. One sentence out of the aggregate will define terms, conditions, as well as penalties, so it is essential that an attorney understands the impact of the terms and the realities of being able to comply with them. We had an agreement where we were fined by the hour for late deliveries as well as sending the product (truckload) back to our warehouse. However, we were not able to control when their distribution center would allow the truck in to unload. Although we were on time, their distribution center could not meet our appointment time and the truck was turned away and returned, and we had to write it off to spoilage. We tried to negotiate with the retailer, but we were told that they were in compliance with the agreement. After that, we sought out an experienced attorney in our field, and he wrote in the clause that if it was not due to fault of our own, the retailer would have to pay for the goods.3.) The value of an advisory board. There is tremendous value in having informal, outside perspectives of experienced individuals with diverse backgrounds. When we were looking at expanding into a new area of our business, bringing in house retort and canning into our manufacturing facility, I believe we looked at it as more of an “opportunistic” strategy rather than understanding all of the tactical and financial requirements it would take to execute. By having more objective viewpoints, I strongly believe it allows an organization to look at implementing new lines of business through filters that are not inherently internal.4.) The challenge of raising money as a female. In 2017, Private Equity firms funded 2% of female-led companies. As the VC world is primarily male, it is very difficult to raise money. When I was looking for investors, during an 18-month period of time, there was never one individual that I met who was female. Rather, the women who were present always deferred to the males in the room even though I was the CEO and Founder.5.) Slowing down is the only way to find your passion. And finding your passion is the only way to live the life you want for not only yourself but those around you. Make moments for yourself in which you can truly breathe free and use those precious times to see what life has been trying to show you. The trip to Hawaii over ten years ago was that moment for me, and I’m so grateful to have had it as it led me to my dream that is Kohana.You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
You never know what your idea can trigger. :-) One of my mentors, Angela Jia Kim, taught me the mantra of GiveGiveGet. My movement would be to find a way to be of service daily. I often question what is the greatest way to give back, and it can be overwhelming with “the asks” from organizations, events and charitable needs. What I have found is that every day I can find simple ways to be available to those looking for help or guidance — I can help them directly or through my network of supports who are always willing to lend a hand. The willingness to give of myself ultimately comes back full circle with the others supporting my endeavors.Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
C.S. Lewis “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are now and change the ending.”Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this :-)It is very difficult to come up with just one! If I had to choose, it would be Oprah…although she probably makes everyone’s top list! Oprah is relatable as an accidental entrepreneur. To survive the vicissitudes of her life, as a black woman, and to take those challenges and be extremely successful in all of her business endeavors, is awe-inspiring. As one of the greatest philanthropists, which is truly something that I have tremendous respect and gratitude for, she truly lives her life by the GiveGiveGet mantra. She is a constant reminder to keep dreaming and most importantly, to keep giving.
Original article can be read here. (2,595 words)
- [Grounds for Change | Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/grounds-for-change/index.html): Let’s start the new year by being adults and facing a certain situation squarely: coffee making isn’t quite yet the most sustainable proposition on Earth. We may love it dearly (oh, yes) but like our favorite crazy relative, it’s got some issues. Take, for example, all those grounds.
After their sweet perfect essence is artfully extracted, there’s very nearly as much as there was, to begin with. At home, we can compost these tiny piles of sweetly roasted heaven and feed our lawns and gardens with what comes. But what if, say, you’re a big happy coffee company making cold brew by the custom kettle-load?
Proving that coffee and creativity go hand in hand, our British friends at bio-bean have come up with an impressive answer: take all those grinds and turn them into… fuel?
Indeed. They’re working with waste haulers and others to collect spent coffee grounds from cafes and manufacturers all over the United Kingdom. Once delivered to the world’s first coffee waste recycling facility, the mad geniuses at bio-bean somehow (science? alchemy? magic?) transform them into various forms of fossil fuel-free energy anyone can use.
Ground or not, this is no hill of beans either. Bio-bean is processing 50 kilotons a year—that’s one in ten cups of coffee drunk in the U.K.—into bio-pellets for heating building and bio-logs that burn longer, cleaner, and hotter than wood in fireplaces and wood stoves. Next up are bio-diesel and biochemicals. Who knows? Maybe soon our favorite beverage willpower not just our own days but the whole world, too.
At this point, all this high-energy good stuff is only available in the U.K., but that doesn’t make this anything less than a winning tale in more ways than one—coffee makers and waste collectors save money by producing and dumping less waste; and the environment gets a zero-waste, carbon-neutral energy source that reduces greenhouse gas emissions. The rest of us get a cup with cream, not guilt.
Talk about waking up and smelling the coffee. We’ll take ours by the light of the bio-bean fire, thank you. (617 words)
- [The Cold Truth About Cold Brew | Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/the-cold-truth-about-cold-brew/index.html): Cold brew is the hottest coffee in town. Nobody with their travel mug screwed on straight could possibly claim otherwise. But beyond this most basic of points, confusion abounds and misperceptions rage. Come follow the bouncing bean as we set the record straight about this coolest of coffees.
Let’s begin by obliterating the myth that just won’t die: Cold brew coffee is not iced coffee. It’s a method of preparing coffee that can then be used to make iced coffee and hot coffee, too. Not all iced coffee is made from cold brew, and not all cold brew is used to make iced coffee.
Cold brewing is both simple and not. It’s made by soaking ground beans in cold water for hours and filtering the result. That’s it. Yet variations in the amount and type of beans used, their grind, the quantity of water, and the length of time these elements spend together result (for better and sometimes worse) in a wide spectrum of different flavors, which makes cold brew part science and more than a little art.
Here’s your science: coffee’s bitter qualities come from its acidic compounds and oils. And those things need hot water to dissolve out of the bean and into your cup. Because cold brew is created with cold water, most of those acids and oils stay trapped in the grounds. Freed from that bitterness, cold brew tastes smoother, sweeter, richer, fruitier, and more chocolaty than traditional coffee, and flavor differences between different bean types become clearer.
One study found that cold brew is two-thirds less acidic than hot-brewed. Since acids also tend to numb our tongues, we end up tasting even more of cold brew’s coffee essence in their absence. Many also find that less acid means cold brew is easier on the stomach, and doesn’t need as much (if any!) cream and sugar.
Cold brew is happily concentrated. While your mileage may vary, most recipes produce roughly double-strength results. That’s why cold brew is often used for iced coffee—adding ice won’t water it down to insipidness and instead merely mellows it as you sip.
All this flavor has another advantage: Unlike hot-brewed, it won’t change over time. You’ll never get that ugly burned taste, and it won’t go stale as it cools because it was cool to begin with. You can savor it hot without bitterness and keep it in the fridge for as long as month without disappointment. That’s helpful because less acid and more flavor make cold brew ideal for baked goods, marinades, and cocktails in ways hot coffee isn’t.
On the downside, forget about that deliciously seductive hot-coffee aroma. It’s not happening. And cold brew takes a lot more beans to make than hot-brewed. Time, too, and that combination is why cold brew costs more than other coffees.
Is the trade-off worth it? That’s a question few who taste this magical balm ever ask. It’s coffee as coffee was meant to be, and that’s just the kind of cup we crave. (776 words)
- [Iced Coffee Hacks | The Bloom
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/iced-coffee-hacks/index.html): June is almost here, and with it comes summer or, as we prefer to call it, iced coffee time. With the season’s heat on the rise, we’re craving cold and seeking the kind of caffeinated cool that air conditions both body and soul. For that mission, no ordinary iced coffee will do. Instead, celebrate the arrival of summer by chilling out with our 10 favorite iced coffee hacks:


Sweeten with syrup. Sugar doesn’t disperse well in cold drinks but simple syrup mixes instantly. Make yours by heating one cup of sugar in one cup of water until fully dissolved. Keep it in the fridge and add it as needed. Try flavoring your syrup with vanilla or peppermint extract.



Chill with chocolate. We can’t believe more people don’t. Just mix one part chocolate syrup with one part water and freeze in ice cube trays for a magnificent iced mocha. You can also freeze mint in your cubes. Or use coconut milk for a tropical twist.



Double your caffeination. Freeze some regular strength coffee in ice cube trays and use these instead of water ice for a cool solution without dilution.



Salt it. Sprinkle some sea salt over your drink and give it a stir to bring out the flavors in your coffee of choice and act as a perfect foil for its natural sweetness.



Freeze before filling. Whether you take it to go in a travel mug or sip it from a tall glass, pre-freezing your serving vessels in the freezer will keep your coffee colder longer to dramatically multiply its refreshment quotient.



Whip it good. Whirl your iced coffee in a blender or smoothie maker with some whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, a little chocolate, and a few ice cubes. (You can thank us later.)



Caramelize it. Stir in a dollop (or two or three!) of caramel sauce and a little sea salt (see above) for a sweet treat that will leave everyone begging for more.



Go Vietnamese. Add a healthy dollop (or two or three!) of sweetened condensed milk to create a Vietnamese iced coffee that’s as remarkably rich as it is sensationally creamy.



Egg it on. Transform your iced coffee into a coffee egg cream by adding soda water. Chocolate syrup optional. Or not.



Skip the glass. Mix iced coffee in a bowl with a few drops of vanilla extract or some chocolate syrup, a little creamer of your choice, and simple syrup to taste. Freeze the result in ice pop molds for a portable treat that beats them all.

One last note: The best-iced coffees always begin with full-strength cold brew coffee. It’s not only unheated in the first place, it’s a smoother, sweeter, richer coffee experience that lends itself perfectly to icing, which tends to mask subtle flavor notes with cold and dilute what’s left. Cold brew is concentrated, too, so it stands up to melting cubes and keeps those flavors coming. Hot-brewed coffee simply cannot compete!

  (764 words)
- [Creating Creativity
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/creating-creativity/index.html): It’s hard to be creative. I don’t mean that some of us aren’t because absolutely all of us are. I mean it’s hard to find the time to really open up to that side of ourselves and see where imagination can take us.
For that, I need room to stretch out in a place without clocks and phones and all their demands. And most days, I just don’t have it, which is not okay with me. 
I believe we should shoot for personal creativity in little ways throughout the day as a way to build a creative life when that life doesn’t have time for it. That’s easy to say, but I found myself wondering… Is it as easy to do?
I’ve been trying to find out by consciously seeking small creative moments here, there, and everywhere in ways like these:

I sort, change, and rearrange. Might be my desk or a drawer, a tabletop or sweaters in my closet. I look for ways things could be better and adjust them.


I refuse monotony. I take new routes to the places I go. I switch up my normal routines. I look for new ways to do the usual differently.


I take photos. I watch for interesting faces and places, for things that catch my eye, and scenes that harmonize or contrast, and use my phone camera to go for an intentionally artful photo whenever I find them.


I jot. You know me—I always have a notebook ready—and I’ve been filling its pages with tiny poems, stray sentences, stray words I like. Doodles. Haiku. Whatever comes when I take just a moment to let it.


I muse. Waiting on line or riding the bus, I fill idle time with random mind-teasers. What if I was president or opened a teahouse? Why does the earth spin and the sun shine? What if they didn’t?

You’d be surprised how quickly little imagination breaks like these add up. They really can cultivate a culture of inspiration within ourselves and make for a more interesting and engaged life. And that’s exactly the kind I want to create.  (623 words)
- [WAKE UP AND DREAM BLOG | Wake Your Inner Artist
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/97347142-wake-your-inner-artist/index.html): I think inside everyone there’s a creative genius waiting to bloom. We’re all crazy good at something, even if we don’t know what that something is yet. And when we find it and feed it, we find the power that only we have to remake the world.
It can be anything—music, poetry, photography, cooking, collaging, you name it. It ‘s whatever you want it to be as long as it makes your heart sing. That’s the best thing about being creative: When it comes to letting our inner artists out, nobody owes anybody anything.
I’m still trying to figure out what makes my own fires burn. But I’m not worried. If I keep looking, I’ll find my spark. Along the way, I’m setting the stage for that creativity to make its entrance. That means… 

Making time for dreaming. The world is so loud, it can drown out our own possibilities. So I find time each week to just sit somewhere quiet and let my mind wander wherever it wants.


Taking a walk. Exercise is perf for our brains and we can double our miles by doing it in nature. A walk in the park clears out my mental cobwebs and makes me feel ready for anything.


Being positive. I’ve read that negativity inhibits creativity. It makes sense. So I try to think only good thoughts.


Filling my mind. Books and music, film and art, conversation and culture all keep the mental juices flowing for me. When I’m engaged with the world around me, it feeds my creative mojo.


It heals and energizes. I took an improv class, and it was great! I felt very creative even if comedy wasn’t ultimately my thing.


Accepting my wrong turns and giving myself permission to make them. After all, every path I take until I find the right one will be the wrong one, right?


Trying new stuff. Whatever it is—food, experiences, places, people—I won’t find my inspiration if I don’t look for it.

Seems simple, right? Because it is. Being creative isn’t complicated. We just have to feed the urge and give it room to grow. (626 words)
- [Little is Big and Small is Good
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/99066182-little-is-big-and-small-is-good/index.html): When I was a kid, my parents took me on a killer cross-country vacation, and it was one humungous major-league adventure. From Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, the whole month was packed to the roof of Mom and Dad’s minivan with big days in even bigger places.
I was about thinking about that trip yesterday because yesterday was quite possibly the most boring day in the entire history of the human race. Nothing happening was happening in my world, and everything I was doing had already been done to death. I wanted to be doing something huge—climbing a mountain, trekking a rainforest, having tea with the Dalai Lama, anything but what I was doing which was nothing much of anything except the usual, and I was totally sick of that.
But life isn’t like that, is it? It’s not an endless parade of huge, amazing events we don’t even have time to catch our breath between. My average day isn’t a Hollywood movie filled with roller-coaster thrills. It’s a series of moments so small I have to remind myself to notice them or I won’t notice them at all.
Ask me the secret to life, and that’s what I’d say. It’s about finding happiness in the little things and knowing what they add up to is worth more than all the excitement in the world. A smile from a stranger. A favor from a friend. A perfect cup of unexpected coffee. Finding a flower on the sidewalk. Meeting a puppy at the park. Discovering fresh market blackberries on winter’s coldest day.
Whenever I’m seeing and appreciating little things like these, my day is richer and I’m happier. I can look outside myself and see that no day is ever truly ordinary because each one is filled with gifts to be grateful for. Reminding myself to look for them means my days automatically fill with good things that make them worth living. Better yet, when I remember the power of small moments, I can make some for the people around me, too. And that makes small the biggest thing of all. (626 words)
- [Kohana Espresso | Kohana Coffee](/content/products/espresso-blend/index.html): Kohana Coffee's Kohana Espresso is blend of Indonesian and Central American beans roasted to pull slight sugars, deep flavors and full crema. Shop now. (454 words)
- [Yoga to the rescue!
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/102447366-yoga-to-the-rescue/index.html): My friend Tommy dropped by yesterday. If you know Tommy, you know that’s trouble because he’s always got something to say about everything and is someone (you know the type) who knows, just knows, they’re right about it all.
That makes him a lot of fun and a giant freaking pain. Usually at the same time. Yesterday, he showed up with lattes during my morning yoga, and I made the tactical mistake of finishing while he waited.
And yeah, Tommy had something to say about it, mostly that my standing there like (his words) “some weird statue made by a drunk dude” was “some serious dumb wrapped in a whole roll of stupid.”
I begged to differ, but I was wasting my breath. So when he left, I wasted no time loading up on ammo for the next time I see him. Because I know yoga is good for me, but I never really quite knew exactly how. And as sure as attempting the handstand scorpion pose makes me feel like I’ve been stung, I am not going to let Tommy win this one.
Yes—yoga does the obvious: improves flexibility, posture, muscle tone, bone health, etc. But what’s amazing is all the weird stuff it does, too. Like these five things I never would have guessed:

Yoga kicks up our immune systems and actually changes our cells so they can better fight infection and other things.
It helps us focus and improves our memories. Minute for minute, they say it boosts our brain function more than jogging.

It livens up our sex lives by speeding the release of sexual hormones, increasing blood flow to all the right areas and (listen up girls) strengthening the pelvic muscles responsible for (*ahem*) all the fun.

It gives creativity a jolt by stirring up and releasing energy to make room for the mental stillness needed to let insights and ideas come to us.
It makes you happy. Literally! Regular practice improves depression, raises serotonin levels (i.e. the happy hormone) while lowering the stress hormone cortisol.

No wonder I love it. Any questions, Tommy? (622 words)
- [Pour A Healthier Cup | The Bloom
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/pour-a-healthier-cup/index.html):  
From the recent news that coffee appears to lower the risk of liver cancer to evidence that it may protect the heart, lower inflammation, and even prevent diabetes, the drink of drinks is becoming a bona fide health food, one that’s beneficial to our bodies in all kinds of ways that matter.
That’s great news for us coffee fanatics—frankly, we’d have been happy just to find out that all those beans we’ve been brewing don’t come with any serious side effects. But discovering that coffee is actually good for us? That’s icing on the coffee cake.
And it’s a good thing, too, because the ways we all too often prepare the only beverage that matters often conspire to make the coffee we savor less than medicinal. Here’s how to pour a healthier cup:


Buy better beans. The quality of your coffee has everything to do with nutrition. “Artisan” beans (like ours!) are obtained from superior growers. They’re mold-free, fresh-roasted in small batches, and delivered to consumers quickly, all of which preserves their nutritional profile. They taste better, too, which means your coffee needs less unhealthy help.



Go organic. Conventional coffee is exposed to multiple pesticides—the typical farm applies upwards of 250 pounds of these toxic chemicals per acre, and nobody needs the residues they can leave behind in their java.



Skip the sugar. There are 16 calories in every teaspoon and refined sugar causes unhealthy blood spikes. If your coffee is too bitter without sugar, try a lighter roast (see below) or cold-brewed coffee, a brewing method that produces a much less acidic result. Can’t live without sweetening? Try stevia, a natural non-glycemic sweetener, or xylitol, a natural alcohol sugar found in fruits and vegetables. Another option is agave syrup. Though high in fructose, it rates low on the glycemic index and offers more sweet for fewer calories than sugar. 



Cut the creamer. Two tablespoons of half-and-half have about 40 calories that can add up fast. Again, if bitterness is the issue, try a lighter roast or cold-brewed. Low-fat milk is a better option as are almond, soy, or cashew milks, which add creaminess without calories. Forget non-dairy creamers—they’re just chemical concoctions that have no place in a proper cup. 



Pass it through paper. Coffee contains diterpenes, substances which aren’t good for our cholesterol. Paper filters will trap these compounds and remove them your coffee. So no matter how it’s prepared, filter yours through paper before serving.



Lighten up. The darker the roast, the more those beans have been literally burned, and the more they’re burned, the fewer healthy antioxidant polyphenols and other nutrients they contain. Lighter roasts preserve these healthy components.



Stash it don’t trash it. Store your beans, not in the fridge or freezer, (where cold will cause damaging moisture to condense on them whenever they’re exposed to air), but in an airtight, lightproof container kept in a cool dark place. Buy in small batches and use your beans quickly before age takes its toll.
 (770 words)
- [Be Smart. Eat Chocolate.
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/101009734-be-smart-eat-chocolate/index.html): You know what’s great about the world? The way it can turn around and surprise you with a little gift and a bit of a lift when you least expect it.
It’s a cold, raw, rainy day in my world, the kind that can make you feel a little low and lost. I’ve been moody and everything is irritating me, so I splurged on one of those gourmet chocolate bar things that always look way too dangerous but are always way too expensive.
I don’t even want to say how much it was. But it sure was good. Except that when it was gone, I felt sooo bad about my unbridled gluttony. I’ve been trying to lose a few pounds not pack more on in a fit of self-comfort. Then I read this: they’ve discovered that chocolate makes you smarter.
OMG! From guilt to gimme more in less than a minute. Well, okay… I still don’t feel so great about all the calories I just scarfed down, but the rest of it sounds good to me.
Apparently, scientists studied about 1,000 people and found that the ones who ate chocolate all the time did better on mental tests that checked out how well their brains work. The secret (they think) are these things called cocoa flavanols, which chocolate is loaded with and which may also help us all avoid dementia and other mental problems we can have as we get older.
There is some fine print. (Isn’t there always?) Milk chocolate and white chocolate don’t have very much of the good stuff inside. They’re pure sin so put that Snickers bar away. But dark chocolate is loaded with the flavanols you want, and the darker the better.
But no going crazy because even though switching to a chocolate-based diet would be fun and might even make me a little smarter, it for sure is going to make me a lot wider. So moderation in all things, and probably best to stick with the occasional chocolate treat rather than turn it into a lifestyle. (See? I’m smarter already!) (620 words)
- [A Shore Thing
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/108681030-a-shore-thing/index.html): So it’s May and Memorial Day is on the way and already the beach talk has started. Which is great except for the beach part because I’m not a huge beach person. I love the friends and the food, the swimming and the Frisbees, but the sand makes me crazy, the wind is worse, and that freakin’ sun is a killer. And that’s about 75% of what’s waiting on the other side of those dunes.
I am always officially on the fence about the beach trips my peeps plan. Or at least I used to be before I found my two BBFFs (best beach friends forever). Now I’ll go anytime anyone is ready because I’ve got what it takes to beat the bummers.
I will not go without my Sport-Brella. No way. No how. Because this thing is amazing. Think a giant semi-umbrella that turns into a sort-of-tent. Open it, tilt it, tie it, and in a minute or two you’re throwing all the right kinds of shade. Perfect for a sun-sensitive girl like me.
My friends call it my cabana. I call it my shore thing. I move it with the sun to keep cool. I open its windows when I need a breeze. Or I use it to block the wind altogether. Rain, too. It’s a little heavy, but it still carries over my shoulder without me feeling like a pack mule. Love. It.
That and an old twin fitted sheet gets me where I need to go. Which sounds completely stupid, I know, but don’t judge me yet. Because when I stretch that sheet out and wedge a cooler, my beach bag and whatever else I’ve got into its corners to keep it expanded, its sides stay up and turn into walls, and those walls form a sand-free oasis, a kind of magic anti-sandbox that beats what I don’t like about the beach.
I know, right? Brilliant! (Thanks for the trick, Mom!) Under my Sport-Brella, with a chair in the middle, I’ve got a budget beachfront condo. All I’m missing is a good book and a cabana boy to bring me a mojito. (628 words)
- [Night Brained, Right Brained?
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/night-brained-right-brained/index.html): I am not a morning person. I am a creature of the night. When the sun goes down I wake up. Which is great except that when the sun comes up, I just can’t and conflict ensues—between me and my alarm, me and my job, me and the world.
It’s hardly on purpose. I’m reading or writing away, deep into a Netflix run, zoned out on a new project, and suddenly it’s 3:00 am. Or worse. How’d that happen? I have no idea. But there I am. Facing another much-too-brightly lit morning coma which I’ll slog through like it was mud up to my neck. (Praise be to extra-large coffees.)
Ugh.
I’ve tried to do better, but my brain just isn’t remotely sleepy at 10:00 pm, and my best efforts to hit the bed at a civilized hour always end in failure. I still stay up. I just do it in a horizontal position. And if it’s at all possible, I’ll stay in that position until it’s nearly time for lunch.
I’ve been feeling like I should be more like everybody else, but then I saw this: People who stay up and sleep in do better creatively and function at higher levels (though maybe not in the morning!) than the rest of the world.
Night birds and early-risers are equally productive when they first wake (whenever that is), but later in the day, when early-risers’ energy and attention drop off a cliff, the night people keep on going. In effect, they get more day to enjoy, and they enjoy it with sunnier moods and less stress.
Suddenly I don’t feel so bad about all my late nights. And to me, that’s the real takeaway. It’s not that my way beats your way or you’re better than me. It’s that we should learn to be happy with ourselves whoever we are. Every way of being has its advantages, and Life is all about going with the one that works best for each of us. That’s not something to fight. It’s something to accept and honor whatever it looks like. Because it’s all good. Even in the dead of night.
  (631 words)
- [Home Body
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/98193222-home-body/index.html): Ugh to winter’s extra pounds. And to my warm-season clothes, which I pulled out from under my bed the other day, pulled on in front of the mirror, and found bulging in, well… let’s just say all the wrong places.
Not cool. But I’m going to own the weight because I sure owned the hand that held the fork that made it. Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have had that slice of double-chocolate cake at our Super Bowl party (yaaaas!). Or those coconut macaroons in January (OMG!). Or all the rest of it (I’m looking at you, corner bakery maple pecan buns). But I did, and here we are.
Sooo… I decided it’s home gym time because a real gym membership isn’t really an option until I put a few zeros behind the balance on my debit card. I wasn’t overly psyched to go the DIY route—I like those fancy fitness machines—but I need to be healthy and you gotta do what you gotta do, right? But surprise---my home gym actually works! Here’s what I did: 

I bought a pull-up bar (cheap!) for the door between my kitchen and living/dining room.


And some resistance bands I can attach to a door or use by themselves.


I found a used bike training stand on Craigslist—it raises the back wheel of my mountain bike off the floor and turns the whole thing into a stationary exercise bike I can ride while I catch up on Netflix binging.


I filled two gallon-size milk jugs with sand. (Voila—kettlebells!)


I turned my yoga mat into a sit-up station. If I can find one of those roller ab ball things on Craigslist, I’ll use that instead, but for now…

Done. It’s not perf, but it’s close enough. I can put together a nice circuit now and workout whenever even if it’s just a few chin-ups when I pass the bar in my doorway. Plus (bonus!) I spent under $100 and spared my battered credit card yet another monthly charge. All that’s left is a good workout mix (any suggestions?), and I’ll get those macaroons off and be fit by summer! (624 words)
- [Doing It Anyway
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/96861510-doing-it-anyway/index.html): So yesterday it was kind of gross outside. It was that cold and gray late winter thing with something always coming down or trying to. It wasn’t making me very happy because, well, for one thing, it’s been this way forever. And I’m super tired of being inside and bored with everything.
I wanted to lay in the green grass and feel the sun my face. But that obviously wasn’t happening so I curled up on the sofa with my new book (I just started Wreck and Order, by Hannah Tennant Moore—excellent!) and tried to read my way out of my funk.
But I wasn’t in the mood for the book, and I couldn’t get settled, and all I was doing was staring out the window at the day wishing it was different.
And then I thought, maybe it isn’t the day that needs to be different. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I should take the day I’ve got and instead of wasting it wanting it to be something it isn’t, I should make the most of whatever it’s offering.
So I went out anyway. And yeah, the wind was blowing, and it was pretty chilly. There wasn’t any sun and the grass was frozen stiff. But the air was fresh and walking felt really good. After a while I didn’t even notice the cold. I stopped for coffee and savored a scone. I explored a used bookstore that just opened in my neighborhood. I ran into a friend and helped her buy a new coat.
You know what? It was a pretty good day! Maybe not spectacular, but a lot better than the one I thought I was going to have. All because I didn’t let the day get in the way of what I wanted it to be.
I think that’s a big part of being happy. It’s not about waiting for life to come to us on its terms. It’s about going out to find what we need no matter what’s in the way. If we can do that, most of our days will be good ones, and that’s good enough for me. (627 words)
- [Embracing the Nightmare | Kohaha Coffee Blog
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/embracing-the-nightmare/index.html): I don’t have a lot of nightmares, but when I do, they’re always strange and disturbing in a way that nothing else in life ever is, a bad acid trip crossed with a Stephen King story and wrapped in fat blanket of seriously freaky ugly.
I had one last night. Nothing major. Just a bad dream that jolted me awake in the dark. And I lay there thinking: what’s the up with these things? If dreams are a way for our subconscious to process information and make connections we can’t see consciously, what are nightmares? Do they have a role to play, too, or are they just our brains choosing trick instead of treat?
Nobody really knows. Like a lot of what goes on in the dream state, nightmares are as mysterious as all the wack they throw at us.
One theory I found says they’re a way for our minds to take negative forces like fear, stress, guilt, or sadness and transform them into memories. Because memories exist in the past, they’re easier to cope with than anxieties that live in the present and project the future. In this admittedly weird way, our nightmares may actually be an emotional release that helps us move past current troubles and regain positivity. That could be why we’re more likely to remember our nightmares than we are our dreams. That recollection lets us put whatever prompted them behind us.
Nightmares may also be trying to clue us into things we should be working on. When we have a bad dream in the absence of an obvious trigger, some say it may be guiding us to a personal issue we need to stop avoiding or something that’s bothering us subconsciously and demanding attention.
Others think nightmares are a “rehearsal for adversity,” a chance for our brains to practice handling trouble in case it ever comes.
Whatever the answer, it seems we shouldn’t run from our nightmares. Better to poke around and see what they can teach us. If you ask me, ignoring the wisdom they may hold is a lot scarier than whatever terrors they use to deliver it. (628 words)
- [Victoria Lynden - Your Morning Coffee Wouldn’t Be Possible Without Wom
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/victoria-lynden-your-morning-coffee-wouldn-t-be-possible-without-women.html): 

FIRST THOUGHT: Have a Cup of Joe
Why is it that when we’re a kid, we want to stay up late, forgo our naps and party like it’s 1999? But when you’re an adult, you dream of an uninterrupted nap, followed by a full night’s sleep. Every day seems like a struggle to attain the ever-elusive energy of our youth. When my third morning alarm sounds, sometimes I immediately start fantasizing about bedtime. Of course, there are some things that’ll help you tackle the day’s tasks with gusto: Eat for energy. Chow down in the morning on low-glycemic foods whose sugars are quickly absorbed, like steel-cut oatmeal and almonds. Get up from your office chair and move around once an hour, even if it’s to grab that much-needed cup of joe.


WOMEN IN NUMBERS: 8 Percent
Folgers commercials were a real success back in the day, with their claims that coffee is the best part of waking up. The truth is, yes, coffee is the best part of waking up, and more Americans than ever are substituting their canister coffee for something more unique. In fact, 8 percent of the $18 billion coffee market consists of specialty coffee sales. There’s even an association specifically for specialty coffee. From coffee farmers to coffee roasters, quality is essential to a specialty brew.


WOMAN TO WATCH: Victoria Lynden, Founder & CEO of Kohana
Today’s Woman to Watch, Victoria Lynden, knows a thing or two about specialty brews. For years, I’d order iced coffee and be disappointed in the watered down, tepid beverage. The answer to this dilemma? Cold brew. The concentrated drink is brewed using time rather than heat, resulting in a strong cup of coffee that can be served either cold or warm. Victoria started her very own cold brew brand called Kohana, and the company is the first of its kind that will source every single one of its coffee beans from women farmers by 2020.
Why did Victoria choose a career in coffee? Well, it all started when she was on a Hawaiian vacation and sought shelter in a coffee shack from a strong storm. While in the store and smelling those aromatic coffee beans, she instantly realized people in the mainland would love the Hawaiian coffee’s unique style.
Kohana offers original and flavored cold brew, like toasted coconut and French roast. It even offers your classic roasted varieties and ready-to-drink cans with goodness like Island Latte. Slow-roasted organic and fair-trade beans not only give you a quality boost of energy; they also support women along the way. Now, about a decade after launching, Kohana plans to introduce a subscription service this fall so the coffee-obsessed can get the good stuff right to their door while simultaneously supporting female farmers. It’s a win-win.
Kohana’s mission is near and dear to Victoria’s heart because she is a self-made, openly gay woman who sees how economic growth has the ability to facilitate equal footing for all. Victoria chooses to source her beans from farmers at a premium price point to obtain that sort of equality. According to Victoria, although women may be laboring and farming 70 percent of these crops, they are often not the ones in charge of harvesting or distributing the crops.It’s important to Victoria to use her buying power to jolt gender equality in impoverished regions, which translates into women and their families having safe housing, healthcare and other basic human rights. This purposeful commitment to women is influenced in part by Victoria’s single mom, who would invite the homeless over for a warm mug of java when Victoria was younger.
As a social entrepreneur, Victoria uses her passion and beliefs to give greater opportunities for the “unsung heroines” of the coffee industry: women. That makes every sip taste a little sweeter.
Follow Victoria on Twitter @VictoriaLynden.Do you work in an industry that’s saturated with men, and need to know how to break the glass ceiling? Check out our four tips on how to strive for gender equity in a male-dominated industry by clicking here or, if you’re listening via podcast, head over to OnTheDotWoman.com!


QUITE THE QUOTE
Another socially conscious woman, Jane Goodall, once said:
 (998 words)
- [Honey Bee Latte & Maple Bourbon Aloha
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/honey-bee-latte-maple-bourbon-aloha/index.html): We're only a couple days into fall and we're already over all the pumpkin spice hype. Whatta bout you? Try brewing up these tempting autumn coffee recipes instead!
Happy sippin'!

  (306 words)
- [Coffee & Climate Change
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/coffee-climate-change/index.html): Can any of us imagine a coffee-less world?
Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement means we won’t have to imagine it at all. Left unchecked, rising global temperatures will guarantee that coffee disappears in our lifetime. 
Increasing heat will prevent coffee plants from growing in the places they call home. Extremes of drought and rain will batter those crops that struggle to remain. And the range of coffee rust fungus and pests like the coffee berry borer will explode to finish the job. It’s already happening. 
Coffee harvests are already declining. Supplies are falling. Prices are rising. We are facing a world without coffee and those who grow it face a future without hope. That’s grounds for immediate action. 
We insist on full unconditional support of the Paris Agreement. Without the changes it mandates, a terrifying tomorrow is brewing. And that’s not a fate we ever want to wake up to. 
-Team Kohana
Original letter from Coffee & Cocoa International (C&CI):
Coffee and cocoa farmers around the world, many millions of whom live in poverty, know that climate change is real and that is affecting their livelihoods. Other players in the supply chain also know that it is real and that it will affect their businesses. The International Coffee Organization, International Cocoa Organisation, the scientific community, NGOs and commodity trade associations all support action on climate change to help farmers address the challenges they face. US President-Elect Donald Trump denies the reality of climate change and says he intends to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement. Starbucks has already spoken out in an open letter to President-Elect Trump (http://www.lowcarbonusa.org/) that was signed by more than 360 companies in the US. Please make your views known to a wider audience and send us a short statement on this most important of issues. Please let us know what you think about the President-Elect’s plan and what you think might happen to coffee and cocoa farmers – and the supply chain as a whole – if he withdraws the US from the Paris Agreement and hampers attempts to tackle climate change. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.  (629 words)
- [The Zen of Coffee
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/the-zen-of-coffee/index.html): We drink the sweet essence of the sacred bean in every season and for a wealth of reasons. It is solace and sustenance, the force that renews and reinvigorates both body and mind to bring focus to our days and the moments within them. In this, there is much power and possibility, and when we take that first sip, we are inviting this energy into our lives to work its magic.
Yet for all of its many capacities to illuminate, we rarely tap into what is at once coffee’s most obvious and most overlooked potential. We don’t really consider it as a meditation tool. And we should.
While it’s easy to see how coffee’s reputation as an often high-intensity fuel source would seem to disqualify it from any role in meditation, in fact, it’s ideally suited to serve as a perfect aid. Coffee clarifies the mind and draws attention to its own essential being. Like meditation itself, it’s a pause that restores and a point in time when our attention is concentrated in a single direction on something that is both everything and nothing at all.
Coffee, too, brings ritual into our lives. We prepare our cups and the balm that fills them each in our own ways and always according to a set series of long-practiced steps that lead us to the nirvana we seek. In this, there is an ideal intentionality, an unself-conscious unconsciousness that frees us to empty our minds and wash clear the dust that gathers there.
There is a physical dimension as well. Coffee’s caffeine stimulates and concentrates our minds while the dopamine whose release it promotes leaves us feeling happy and content. Such effects serve to advance the outcomes we turn to meditation to bring.
Our enjoyment of coffee comes at regular intervals throughout each day. In a world with few things we can count on, these cherished coffee breaks are reliable anchors no storm can displace. They will always occur, and when we combine them with meditation, we are creating for ourselves a consistent set of dependable spaces that effortlessly work daily meditation into our often hectic schedules.
Combining these moments with meditation needn’t be complex or time-consuming. It’s simply about hitting life’s pause button in a mindful way for just a few minutes at a time, minutes we can and should use to restore and refresh the entirety of our beings.
Begin by feeling the warmth of your cup. Focus on its touch against your skin.
How else does the cup feel? Is it smooth or rough? Light or heavy? Large or less-so?
Take note of its rising stem. Watch the tendrils drift and play.
Savor the aroma they contain. Pull it deeply into your center with slow deliberate breaths.
Now sip and let it linger on your palate. Taste its full essence. Explore its multitude of complexities.
Let nothing else enter your mind but these sensations. Let no thoughts beyond them come.
The doorway you seek is now open. Enter. (772 words)
- [Making Salad Magic
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/making-salad-magic/index.html): The hunt for the healthiest possible me continues. And so far that quest is taking place at the salad bar. Because it’s farmer's market season, and salads are fresh. Salads are cheap. Salads are quick.
But I gotta say… eat enough of them and salads are boring. The usual lettuce-tomato-onion-carrot-cucumber routine wilts quick. And while I know it’s about the best thing I can feed my body, my other less helpful self is screaming for something—anything—to break up the monotony.
Forget dressings—that’s caloric fluff wrapped in a fat bomb. Croutons are carb cubes. And though I love those crispy little-fried onion bits, they don’t return the favor. So I’m looking for other ways to ramp up the taste quotient without ruining the health factor. Here are my best finds so far:


Fig balsamic vinegar. Death to dressings! I stick to olive oil and a fig balsamic that dips everything in heaven. It’s pricey but worth every flavor-boosting tablespoon in my salad-centric world.



Lemon juice. Fresh squeezed over a salad with a little salt and some olive oil, it makes the plate pop when I need a vinegar break.



Pumpkin seeds. Get the roasted salted variety, sprinkle liberally, and you’ll never look back.



Protein variety. Gotta have it. For me, it’s a hard-boiled egg, chickpeas, salmon (fresh or canned), black or any other kind of beans, leftover chicken, even cooked lentils or chopped nuts.



Greek olives. Two words: more, please.



 Quinoa. Four words: It rules. (Yes, really.)



Dried berries. A bite of dried cranberry or blueberry is my favorite new sweet salad surprise 



Canned artichoke hearts. Why not, right? Crack a can and my salad has something new to say.



Steamed stuff. Steam a little broccoli or asparagus, boil up a beet, roast some cauliflower, or bake a yam, and thank me later.

My last secret ingredient is simpler still: imagination. It’s the best salad ingredient of all. Think outside the bowl and don’t be afraid to add whatever inspires from cabbage and corn-from-the-cob to peas and parsnips. It’s the best way to beat the boring salad blues and keep things fresh. (623 words)
- [The Other World Cup
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/104488390-the-other-world-cup/index.html): If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my few short years of wandering the Earth, it’s that it’s a pretty weird and wonderful place with a lot of cool and crazy stuff going on. Today’s Exhibit A: the U.S. Coffee Championships.
I don’t know whether to punctuate that sentence with an OMG or a WTF, but I do know one thing: next year, I’m going because... coffee. And nothing but. For a whole weekend.
Yes, please.
I will be there for the Barista Championship, which involves “performances from professional baristas” and a competition where the best in the biz get 15 minutes to impress the judges with “a highly innovative, freestyle espresso-based beverage created by the barista for the competition.” Sign me up—I’ll help with the leftovers.
Maybe I’ll enter the U.S. Brewers Cup, a competition for manual brewing. Bring my gear of choice and try to impress by brewing my best. French press or drip? Fine grind or coarse? Decisions, decisions with the perfect cup on the line.
There’s also a Roasters Championship! I just want to know what that ballroom smells like during the roast-off. Gotta be heaven, right?
I could definitely do the Tasters Championship. They give you eight sets of three cups each and in each set, one of the cups is not like the other two, and you have to pick out the odd cup while beating the clock. How much fun would that be? I mean I drink enough of the stuff so I ought to be able to tell my Dominican from my Kona. And of course, they’ll be naming the Coffees of the Year, and who wouldn’t want to wrap their lips around a hot steaming cup of all that?
It all sounds like one big mug of highly caffeinated fun with maybe a side of the jitters. Cheap, too because I won’t need a hotel room. (Who sleeps at a coffee championship?) Talk about cool beans. :-) (599 words)
- [The Art of Iced | Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/the-art-of-iced/index.html): I know, I know… it’s fall and the traditional end of iced coffee season. But not in my world. On Planet Maddie, there’s no day that can’t be made infinitely better by a fat frosty cup of caffeinated glory and a straw, and calendar be damned, you will take that cup from me when you pry it from my equally frigid dead hands.
My only problem? Most cafes quit making the stuff this time of year, which leaves us diehards out on the cold when it comes to grabbing a cup on a whim. So we do what anybody with a self-respecting iced coffee dependency would do. We make our own. My only advice is to be ruthless about what comes next: 

Use cold brew and only cold brew. Forget hot coffee that’s been cooled. That’s the ground chuck of iced coffee and you want filet mignon.


Forget sugar. It just sand sitting in the bottom of the cup. Instead, make some simple syrup by heating one part water with one part sugar and stirring until dissolved for the instant sweetness you can fine tune to within a hair of perfect. Add a cinnamon stick, a vanilla bean or two, or a little chocolate syrup to your batch for a flavor twist.


Consider your cubes. If you use cold-brew straight up without diluting it, use regular ice cubes to reduce its strength. If you start with cold brew diluted to normal strength, use cubes made from coffee to prevent a watered down tragedy.


Think outside the cow. I myself might add a splash of full-fat coconut milk for insane texture and a little sweetness. Cashew milk is another delicious Or I might use a scoop of vanilla ice cream for a treat. Add sweetened condensed milk and I’ve got a Vietnamese iced coffee (OMG!). It all depends on your mood and/or your diet plan.

Stir. Sip. Savor. You can thank me later. (595 words)
- [Kohana Blend | Kohana Coffee](/content/products/kohana-blend/index.html): Kohana Coffee's Kohana Blend is our best selling coffee, combining light, medium, and darker roasted beans to create it's unique, distinctive flavor. Shop now. (494 words)
- [The Art of Coffee Tasting, Part One
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/the-art-of-coffee-tasting-part-one/index.html): Thankfully, coffee isn’t what it used to be. Gone are the days of horrific gas station cups filled with overheated mud so lifeless we can be forgiven for thinking it came from a pot brewed during the last World War. In their place are magnificent custom roasts carefully curated and treated like the fine wines they resemble, complete with flavor notes that speak of things like berry and nutmeg, hazelnut and hay.
For many coffee drinkers, such language is a bit of a mystery. We drink our coffee, and we love it, but rarely do we pause to tease it apart and unearth the deep well of sensory elements that combine to create the experience. And so the differences between, say, Tanzanian Peaberry and Kona Fancy remain lost to us.
Yet with just a little knowledge and a few minutes to match, we can dive into these delicious depths ourselves. When we do, whole new worlds of coffee drinking open to us, and we become connoisseurs ourselves.
The world of coffee cupping, as tasting sessions are called, is a fascinating one to explore. The Specialty Coffee Association, for example, has an entire series of tasting standards that cover everything from brewing to roasting to the size of the cupping room itself and has developed a unique flavor wheel that organizes the more than 100 separate flavor components that experts have identified in coffee. There’s even a sensory lexicon from World Coffee Research, a complete taste-aroma-texture dictionary you can download free. 
Fun to read, yes, but your own tastings needn’t be this complicated. Just a follow a few simple rules: 


Use lighter roasts. Roasting is really a gentle burning process, but too much heat can damage the delicate compounds that contain a coffee’s flavor and dull the flavor profile of the brew those beans produce. Light roasting won’t push coffee beans to their breaking point. 



Brew your batches precisely. You can choose your own specifics, but apply them consistently. Use the same grind for each coffee, the same ratio of water to grounds, and the same brewing time and/or method.



Choose that brewing method carefully. Not all are created equal! We like a French press with a coarse grind for its ability to extract more of the flavorful oils from our beans and its lack of a paper filter, which can affect taste.



Use filtered water. Minerals, chlorine, fluoride, and other things often present in our water supply can alter the taste of the coffee we brew and not for the better. Filtration will keep these interlopers out of your cup for cleaner, clearer coffee flavor.

Taste from glass or ceramic. No foam, metal, or paper, please! As is the case with the water we use, these latter materials can affect the flavor of your brew. Keep it pure!

That’s really all it takes to start tasting like a pro. Next time out, we’ll look at how to do it when you do. Stay tuned… (770 words)
- [Real Travel. Real Cheap.
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/102232326-real-travel-real-cheap/index.html): Maybe it’s the smell of spring in the air or just my winter doldrums reaching their usual April peak of screaming boredom, but it’s time for a road trip. No idea where I’m going but unless I win the lottery, I’m know how I’m getting there: as cheaply as possible!
That’s what sucks about travel. It’s so freaking expensive. I went to New York City a few months ago, and that town took a twenty out of my wallet every ten minutes. Not cool, New York. Especially for a girl on a budget.
But I love to explore new places, so I’m not going to let a little thing like cash flow get in the way. I go, but carefully:

I travel with a friend. From rooms to cab rides, there’s a ton of stuff we can split to cut costs in half. It’s safer, too



 I’m never picky about lodging. I just need a bed and a blanket for six hours a day. Whatever’s cheap works as long as it’s clean. Airport motel, AirBnB deal, somebody’s couch, hostels. Even if it’s off my beaten path, the savings are worth it.




 I keep a ledger. It’s sooo easy to blow my daily travel budget limit when I’m not paying attention so I write down every expense to make sure I do.




 I eat street food or at hole-on-the-wall takeout joints. It’s cheap and that’s where the real local color is. No drinks, please, just water. Bonus points if your lodging comes with breakfast. Load up and stuff a bagel in your bag for lunch. Grocery stores rock, too. Why pay $10 for a sandwich when I can make my own for $3?


I’m happy just being there. Real travel isn’t about dropping big bucks on five-star attractions. Park bench people-watching, hiking, window shopping and more are all free. And public transportation? That’s my code for “affordable bus tour.”
Mostly, it’s about learning to love going without and knowing that just being there is enough. When my needs are few and my demands are low, the price is right. And the right price means more time traveling and less time wishing I was.  (635 words)
- [The Magic Of Caffeine
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/the-magic-of-caffeine/index.html): As coffee devotees, we all know there’s a lot going on in our cups. There in the deepest dark, notes of chocolate and fruit, nut and spice, both bitter and sweet swirl together in a mélange of epicurean wonder so profound that no other beverage can compete. And, of course, all that flavor comes with the boost provided by our favorite fuel, the celebrated compound called caffeine.
In a word, perfect.
Caffeine gives coffee its zoom, and coffee gives it to us. Yet the question remains: Just how exactly does it work this black magic?
The story is all in our heads. And it starts with a chemical called adenosine. As our neurons send signals to one another to create thought and consciousness, adenosine is created along the way. This adenosine attaches itself to special receptors on our brain cells. As we think, more adenosine is produced and more receptors get filled.  Each time one does, its host nerve cell slows down its activity. Eventually, enough cells slow to create drowsiness, and we fall asleep.
Adenosine is the brain’s off-switch. It tells us when we’ve had enough thinking for one day and should hit the bed.
Enter caffeine, which is shaped and sized so much like adenosine that it can fit into those special adenosine receptors, too. But caffeine is an imposter. It looks like adenosine. It binds to our neurons like adenosine. But it doesn’t slow down their activity like adenosine. When it attaches to brain cells instead, real adenosine is blocked and that action keeps our nerve cells firing on all cylinders to make us feel less sleepy than we otherwise would.
It takes about four cups of coffee to block about half of the brain’s adenosine receptors, and the artificially boosted nerve activity that follows tricks the pituitary gland into thinking there’s some kind of crisis happening. It reacts by releasing adrenaline, our body’s emergency response hormone.
Now we’re not sleepy, our minds are going full tilt, and we’ve gotten a subtle rush of adrenaline. So far so good. But caffeine has another trick up its sleeve. It also stimulates the release of dopamine, the brain’s “feel good” chemical, and that elevates our mood along with the rest. This effect is what makes coffee mildly addictive and what makes us grouchy when we go decaf.
Caffeine’s adenosine mimicry has some byproducts of its own. When we drink coffee frequently, our brains develop more adenosine receptors in response, and over time, it takes more caffeine to keep us awake. When that caffeine is finally metabolized by our bodies, all the adenosine that’s just been hanging around with nowhere to go comes rushing back in to bind to all our receptors at once. What happens next is your coffee crash!
Going slow and taking it easy can prevent that crash and coffee’s other downsides, as well. As in all things, it’s just a question of moderation, which will let us have our caffeine and enjoy it, too! (771 words)
- [Getting Clear
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/getting-clear/index.html): Sit and watch a sunset long enough and you’re just asking for trouble. Which is every reason to catch as many as we can.
For me, a good sunset frees my mind to wander where it will. It’s a place where the world’s distractions fade into the twilight, and that gives me room to reflect on things I didn’t even know I was thinking about. Without moments like that, there will always be secret dreams I’ll never find and plans I won’t know enough to make.
Last night, I sat on the roof with my good friend Malbec and nothing but time. And it wasn’t long before I could hear myself again. “What’s your deal?” I wanted to know. “what’s your vision for your life?”
I had to admit that I’ve basically been going where the winds send me and not really thinking much about it until I get there. “But is this the best way to be?” I asked myself. Since there are no delusions at sunset, my answer came back pretty quickly.
Not really.
Which is about as uncool as you can get because I think we all need to set a vision for ourselves. It’s doesn’t have to read like an epic. It just needs to give us some purpose so that when we add our days together they amount to more than a spin on the dreaded Hamster Wheel of Life.
Unless we aim for something, we’re just aimless. Whether we make it or not isn’t the point. Setting a vision for yourself is about living an aspirational life and working to make it mean something. I know I want mine to. I just haven’t set my own vision yet. I’m still looking to see where I where I see myself going in this crazy world.
But that’s okay. I’ve got a few ideas, and no matter where we are in life, we’ve all still got time to set a vision. As long as we’re thinking on it, that time isn’t wasted. We just need a few good sunsets to get us there. (618 words)
- [Setting goals: One size does not fit all!
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/96331270-setting-goals-one-size-does-not-fit-all/index.html): I think a lot about goals because I think you’ve just got to have some. For me, they’re a way to keep going when things aren’t going really well, and they help me focus on getting somewhere when life is pulling me in so many different directions that I don’t feel like I’m ever going to get anywhere at all.
If I have something to aim for, I won’t get distracted from what’s important and don’t end up just spinning my wheels through another day.
A couple of years ago, I made my first-ever goal list. Walk the Camino de Santiago. Open a yoga studio. Get backstage at Coachella. There were like 10 or 12 things on the list, and I stuck it on my fridge with my big “M” magnet so I’d see it every day.
And every day I did, and every day I felt a little more disappointed in myself. Because I wasn’t any closer to Coachella or Spain, or anything else. It was pretty depressing. What was supposed to be fun and motivational turned into a weight that wasn’t lifting me up but was dragging me down.
Then one day I finally saw my list for what it really was—stuff I was only ever going do once in a long while—if I’m lucky. I hadn’t made a list of goals. I’d made a bucket list, and there’s a big difference.
Now I have a new list on my fridge. But these goals I can meet without maxing out my credit card or quitting my job. Read a chapter in a good book. Spend time with a friend. Walk half an hour a day. Help someone who needs it. Stuff I can actually do. Stuff that adds up every day to accomplishing something real. It’s about keeping it simple and realizing that I don’t need to shoot for the moon to have a great life. I just need to fill my days with good things. That’s the real goal. And having a list that fits who I really am and what I can actually do makes sure I meet it. (630 words)
- [Cold Brew Food Recipes
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/pages/cold-brew-recipes-download/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (253 words)
- [3 Ways to Strive For Gender Equity in a Male-dominated Industry
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/3-ways-to-strive-for-gender-equity-in-a-male-dominated-industry.html): 

Since founding Kohana Coffee, I’ve learned that women entrepreneurs asking for money often get turned down. That’s no surprise—the deck has historically been stacked against us. But I was surprised to learn that it’s not because we ask for too much. Women typically are turned down for funding because they’ve asked for too little.The people we’re pitching often don’t think we’ve requested enough to get the job done. Why do we underbid ourselves? As women, we’re trained from a young age to only ever ask for what we need to get by on rather than ask for what we need to succeed. We shouldn’t be afraid to ask for everything we want, to dream big and suggest an amount to match. It’s that kind of audacity that gets attention—and the check.


1. If you want to help others, understand who you're helping. So many companies are launching social good campaigns and/or charitable initiatives as a marketing tactic vs. a platform for measured and impactful change. At Kohana, we are extremely passionate about supporting women in coffee growing regions around the world. But in order to really support them, we need to get to know them, meet with them, hear their stories and daily struggles, and understand what they need to succeed. I did this, and came to the realization that these women are JUST LIKE ME.When we can see one another as the same, we find the human commonality of our condition. We find the simple solutions that have the biggest impact. We put faces and names on statistics, and as a result, we feel closer as a human family with the power to make a profound difference in the world.


2. Demonstrate by example. Building on advice #2, it’s completely possible for a for-profit enterprise to do maximum good for all of their stakeholders. By treating our supply partners as equal businesswomen, Kohana’s new sourcing project seeks to create a working business exchange that enhances our own financial bottom line, generates profitability throughout our supply chain, and generates dramatic forward momentum in the gender equality movement. It’s business—and sensible business strategy—as a force for good. It’s my hope that others will see the boost to the bottom line and replicate our business model.


3. Take the time to understand the greater impact of your business actions. Measure what matters is a mantra at business school. And in order to strive for gender equality in coffee (or any industry!), it's crucial that we step back and measure how that will positively impact the entire system in which it functions. The imbalance of gender rights can be considered as much a threat to the sustainability of quality coffee as global warming, access to water, plant disease, or an aging farmer. By investing in gender equity, we can see significant improvements in crop productivity and quality as well as marked social impact. When we engage the full capacities of both men and women in the coffee supply chain, the resilience of all stakeholders, including communities, crops and businesses, will be strengthened. Making sure women have equal access to training as men, consulting with women of farming communities to see what aspects of training they’re most interested in, and pinpointing what factors prevent them from accessing not just training but credit and leadership positions, are essential measures that will positively affect society as a whole and for generations to come.
 (849 words)
- [In The News
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/in-the-news/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (818 words)
- [Island Cacao | Kohana Coffee](/content/products/island-cacao/index.html): Kohana Coffee's Island Cacao coffee is a chocolate lover's dream, flavored with finely ground organic cacao nibs and natural dark chocolate flavor. Shop now. (459 words)
- [Brewing A Fairer World | The Bloom
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/brewing-a-fairer-world/index.html): Here at Kohana, you don’t have to go far to find someone who can testify to how hard it can be for women in the world of coffee. Just find our founder, Victoria, who can attest to the challenges women face—from the plantation to the executive suite—in our favorite industry.
The issue is especially acute in the third world, where the women who grow and harvest much of the coffee we love face more than their fair share of burdens. In addition to a daily struggle to maintain hope in the face of endemic poverty and difficult working conditions, they must continually fight culturally entrenched gender biases and the terrible inequality they create.
It’s not easy, but the International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA) is working to change that and more by building bridges between coffee drinkers and the women who make sure our cups are always full.
It started in 2003 when founders Karen Cebreros and Kimberly Easson visited Nicaragua and Costa Rica on a trip to explore the issues women confront in the coffee-growing centers of the world and forge friendships that could help address their needs and boost their fortunes. The trip was a success, and once back home, the pair found their message and their mission attracting the kind of attention that made the creation of an organization a foregone conclusion.
Today, IWCA has 19 chapters around the world, all working together to raise awareness of the issues facing women in the coffee industry, advocate on their behalf, and work to improve their lives and communities.
To that necessary end, the IWCA provides scholarships to children in coffee regions, health screenings for women growers and their families, workshops to teach them additional marketable skills, training sessions on everything from negotiating better prices for their to boosting crop yields, and badly needed help preventing coffee rust, a common disease that can ruin the coffee trees they rely upon for their survival.
The good people at the IWCA are also helping women-run coffee farms catch up to their competition by supplying the equipment that is so vital to success in today’s high-tech coffee industry. That includes essential machinery like coffee pulpers, washing stations, hulling machines, and other tools that are almost always financially out of reach for impoverished growers trying to eke out a living on the industry’s margins.
It’s important work guided by a belief we share—that women coffee growers and handlers deserve equality and respect, and that we can all play a role in helping them achieve it while creating better, healthier, and more hopeful futures for themselves and families.
Because there’s more work hiding in that cup of coffee we just savored than most of us can imagine, and much of it is performed by women we’re all unknowingly counting on. The IWCA simply wants to make sure that these women and their families get a fair shake. And that’s a goal we should all work to advance whenever we can.
  (768 words)
- [Wholesale Inquiry
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/pages/wholesale-inquiry/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (216 words)
- [PageFly Collection
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/collections/pagefly-collection/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (271 words)
- [Be Independent. Be Your Own Barista!
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/pages/be-independent/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (256 words)
- [Cold Comfort: Is Cold Brew Coffee Healthier Than Hot?
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/cold-comfort-is-cold-brew-coffee-healthier-than-hot.html): Some 450 million cups of coffee are consumed every day in the U.S, and it’s no mystery why—coffee is delicious and nutritious, and the mental and physical lift it delivers fuels active days and energized nights.
That boost is born, of course, of caffeine, but when it comes to this magical molecule, not all coffees are created equal. 
The caffeinated king of all coffees is cold brew. Brewed with time, not heat, cold brew coffee is made by steeping maximum amounts of coffee in minimum quantities of cool water for as much as 24 hours. The result is a dense coffee concentrate jam-packed with caffeine that can be diluted to any strength without sacrificing the rich flavor coffee drinkers crave.
That control is important because caffeine affects everyone differently. At least six separate genes determine how our individual metabolisms handle it. Some of us can consume an entire carafe and fall asleep on the couch. For others, a single cup triggers the jittery restlessness, heart palpitations, anxiety, sweating, and nausea that are common symptoms of too much caffeine.
Cold brew has other unique benefits, too. Because it’s produced without heat, few of coffee’s usual bitter acids are extracted from the beans. That makes cold brew not only smoother and more delectable to drink, but far easier on our stomachs and our health. Our bodies prefer an alkaline not acidic state, and cold-brew won’t disrupt this delicate pH balance. This notable lack of bitterness also means less sugar and cream are needed to create the ideal cup, a boon to our waistlines and blood sugar alike.
You can make cold brew even healthier still by choosing a coffee like Kohana Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate. Made from carefully curated beans sourced exclusively from individual women-owned farms, it’s meticulously slow-roasted then brewed in small batches that perfectly capture the peak flavor profile this process produces. Every hand-crafted bottle has been nurtured by artisans who understand the rewards only fresh just-harvested beans and creative coddling can bring.
Better still, Kohana Cold Brew is 100% organic. Unlike conventional coffee, which is typically soaked in upwards of 250 pounds of toxins per acre, Kohana Cold Brew is free of these poisons. That’s far better for you and the world, too. Add in cold brew’s other incredible gifts, and you’ll find a magnificent moment to savor in every single sip.
Special Offer: Get 15% off your next order with coupon code WOMENSOURCED. Hurry offer expires July 10th! Shop now! (690 words)
- [Cold Brew Coffees -Cold Brew Concentrate -Coffee Concentrate
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/collections/cold-brew-concentrate/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate. French Roast, French Vanilla, House Blend, Toasted Coconut. Vegan, Kosher. Buy now. (322 words)
- [Brazil Santa Rita - Kohana Coffee](/content/products/brazil-santa-rita/index.html): Kohana Coffee's Brazil Santa Rita coffee features a beautiful round body and nice clean finish with flavors of caramel and lime zest citrus. Shop now. (554 words)
- [10 Things You Never Knew About Coffee
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/10-things-you-never-knew-about-coffee/index.html): Coffee is always finding new ways to amaze us. These surprises might arrive in a bean we’ve never tasted or that moment when we realize all that blossoms into being when we combine the simplicity of beans with the element of water. Yet coffee hides other secrets, too, and these revelations may surprise you even more: 

The magic of coffee is believed to have been discovered in 9th century Ethiopia when herders saw their goats experience a burst of activity after eating coffee berries. They took the berries to a local holy man, who turned them into a drink that kept him awake, and coffee was born. 


The word coffee comes from qahhwat al-bun, which is Arabic for “wine of the bean.” Turkish tongues turned this into kahve. From here, the Dutch modified kahve into koffie and the Italians created the term caffe. Italians also named espresso, which translates as  (779 words)
- [Kohana Recipes
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/kohana-recipes/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (520 words)
- [My One True Travel Love
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/blogs/news/98194822-my-one-true-travel-love/index.html): Everybody has one. Mine is a homemade survival kit—a small pouch stuffed with things I know someday some way I’m going to find myself desperately wishing I had when I’m stuck somewhere without a net. Slipped into my daypack, it’s my favorite won’t-leave-home-without-it road trip essential.
I see things like this sold for crazy prices considering how little is actually inside. That’s what sold me on making my own—not very psyched to drop $30 on $10 worth of stuff. That’s good taco money. So handmade it is. Here’s what’s inside:

A few safety pins
A couple of feet of duct tape wrapped around a mini-pen
A small length of nylon cord
A needle and thread
A small stain-remover stick
One of those dental floss pick things
My Swiss army knife (hello, corkscrew!)
An emery board
Breath drops
A packet of Tylenol
A packet of Alka Seltzer
A packet of Emergen-C
Iodine tablets (Montezuma will get no revenge on me)
A couple of adhesive bandages
A small energy bar
Lip balm with sunscreen
A tampon
A few wet-naps
Earplugs
Tweezers
A plastic trash bag folded tight and wrapped with a couple of spare hair bands (think emergency raincoat)
A bandana
A super tiny bottle of hand sanitizer

That sounds like a lot, I know, but most of these things are super small (seek travel sizes!), and they’ll fit into a pouch or a zip-lock bag you can just about hold in the palm of your hand. I used an old makeup bag I had lying around, but any container works.
I carry my kit everywhere. It’s an insurance policy for those unexpected moments every good adventure always has. Add in a flashlight, GPS unit, map, and communication station (i.e. my iPhone), and there’s nothing the road can throw at me I won’t be ready to handle except maybe a scary breakfast buffet. What about everybody else? What would you put in your survival kit? What am I missing from mine? (603 words)
- [Privacy Policy
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/pages/privacy-policy/index.html): PRIVACY STATEMENT----SECTION 1 - WHAT DO WE DO WITH YOUR INFORMATION?When you purchase something from our store, as part of the buying and selling process, we collect the personal information you give us such as your name, address and email address.When you browse our store, we also automatically receive your computer’ (1,421 words)
- [Kohanacoffee.com Accessibility and Equitable Use Statement
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/pages/kohanacoffee-com-accessibility-and-equitable-use-statement.html): We are committed to providing equitable access and mindful of accessibility standards, user feedback, and support and accommodations for persons with disabilities. We advocate for equitable experiences in light of universal design to make www.kohanacoffee.com more welcoming, accessible, and usable for all visitors and  (1,342 words)

## About Pages

- [Contact
 – Kohana Coffee](/content/pages/contact/index.html): Kohana Cold Brew Coffee, Cold Brew Concentrate, Coffee Concentrate, Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee Cans, Slow Roasted Coffee Beans. Buy now. (234 words)

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