PODcast #66 : Espresso Pods News

Welcome to The PODcast, PodMerchant's newsletter of espresso pod news, education, tips and deals. Back issues of The PODcast are available online.

Espresso Elucidations

Still Fresh?

A few words on Best-Before dates and freshness of espresso pods...

Long-time PodMerchant customers will remember when our Private Label pods came in a homely generic beige wrapper. When we received inventory of our new custom packaging, we phased out whatever stock we had of the old packaging, and what was left over, I took home to drink myself. I'm still drinking them and they are still tasty as ever. Our last shipment of the generic-wrapper pods was June 2009, which means the pods are around 22 months old.

Freshness preserved is one of the big strengths of ESE pods. The gas-impermeable wrapper (metalized mylar), keeps oxygen out and the inert nitrogen in. Perceived staleness in pods is probably more a matter of exposure to heat rather than time. We do our best to keep the pods cool in our air-conditioned warehouse, but we have no control over the temperatures to which the pods are exposed before or after they are in our hands.

For those who are checking the dates on the wrappers or cartons, please remember that the Italians use the date format day-month-year. So 05102011 means October 5th, 2011, not May 10th, 2011. Some roasters use month abbreviations — in Italian of course. Examples: July = LUG (Luglio), August = AGO (Agosto).

Just can't get enough information about Best-Before dates? See our PODcast Issue #34.

Coffee News

"Colombia" is now protected

The European Union has granted Protected Geographical Status (PGS) to coffee from Colombia. PGS is a legal framework for the protection of product names of regional foods. This system is similar to Appellation systems, such as the Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) used in France, or the Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) used in Italy — designations familiar to wine drinkers. For instance, you can't call sparkling wine Champagne, unless it comes from the Champagne region of France. Likewise, the term Colombian coffee is now protected.

This is causing a hitch in delivery of Colombian coffee, as the law was just passed and roasters need to figure out how to deal with it. Corsini, the roaster of Compagnia dell'Arabica pods has halted sales of their Colombia Medellin Supremo for the time being. No worry for us though, we've already got Colombian "on the water" heading to us. I expect that Corsini, and Lucaffe' as well, will have this all under control by the time we place another order.

For more information on Protected Geographical Status, please follow this link to a Wikipedia article.

♣

New Espresso Machine from illy

illy has just started offering the Mitaca POD1 Espresso Machine on their website. I assume it is made by the FrancisFrancis! factory, as illy owns that company. Unfortunately, illy has no plans of putting this machine into the retail sales channel. That's too bad, but you can buy it from their website.

PodMerchant News

Low stock — New shipment due soon!

Oh, the pain... the pain of being out of stock on some of our most popular items. Our cupboards are bare of:

• All Amigos, except for decaf
• All Compagnia dell'Arabica, except for Colombia
• Covim Orocrema and Decaf
• All Izzo, except for decaf, and
• All Lucaffe, except for Blucaffe

We expect our shipment from Italy to arrive during the first week of May, and hopefully on our shelves by Monday, May 9th. I apologize for the inconvenience of being out of stock on coffees that you want.

For drinkers of Lucaffe' Mamma Lucia or Izzo Vivi, we do have lots of stock of the PodMerchant Stout, a coffee with similarly high levels of robusta.

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PODcast Discount Coupon

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• The discount does not apply to illy Caffe' products.
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• For more information, please see our PODcast Coupon FAQ.

The subscriber version of this newsletter contains a Coupon Code for 10% your next order. Be sure to subscribe to take advantage of this discount.

Keep on brew'n...


Kevin Garrett, The PodMerchant.