Greening Up My Act

The Joy of Coffee: Will It Be Around in 50 Years?

• Kat Cox & Tiffany Verbeck • Episode 81

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People around the world are obsessed with coffee. But with climate change threatening coffee-growing ecosystems, will mushroom coffee soon be our only option? Pour yourself a cup of Joe and settle in for a cozy chat about why we love coffee, why it's (probably) good for us, and how to choose your brew a little more sustainably. 

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Tiffany (00:02)
Hi. How's it going? We caught up a little bit before we recorded.

Kat (00:02)
Hi, Tiffany. All right, how are you?

Sorry, everyone. We keep our huge private discussions for so sometimes we go on for 20 minutes. This was only about five minutes of pre show banter. So.

Tiffany (00:19)
Yeah, I mostly I just had a child home today and I'm tired because of it.

Kat (00:23)
Yeah, I'm sure. Speaking of tired.

Tiffany (00:29)
Mmm, good segue.

Kat (00:31)
What we're talking about tonight is coffee. This is not an iced coffee. This is a coffee with tonic. 

Tiffany (00:36)
Alright. Yeah, you got to jingle it so listeners can hear. ASMR.

Kat (00:43)
Mm-hmm.

The ice. Yeah, it's iced coffee season. We'll go into some recipes perhaps later in the show, but my intro goes like this. If you're like 73 % of Americans, you have at least one cup of coffee every day.

Tiffany (01:01)
Whoa, that's more than I thought.

Kat (01:02)
Yeah, half of us buy a cup from a coffee shop at least once a week, but about two thirds of us make it at home most of the time. a lot of, I think 93 % of Americans have at least one cup of coffee a week. So it's pretty big business. It's pretty big part of our lives. That adds up to about $110 billion spent on coffee in the U S alone every year.

Tiffany (01:10)
Yeah, wow.

Kat (01:29)
Yeah, so what's so great about coffee? And because this is greening up my act, how is climate change going to affect your morning cup of Joe?

Tiffany (01:39)
I've been dreading this. I've heard about it a little bit and I never wanted to look into it because I don't want to know!

Kat (01:42)
Well... Yeah...

I'm just going to preface this by saying that because this is a season about joy, I didn't dwell on it too much. So we're going to talk about the joy of coffee today. So pour yourself a cup and let's get to it. 

Welcome to Greening up my Act.

Tiffany (01:52)
Okay, good. Good, good, Awesome.

All right. I was just thinking, well, when I said dang, my God, I'm in the era of like being policed by my four year old over what words that I use.

Kat (02:26)
Oh, yep. I love to drop F bombs.

Tiffany (02:31)
Yeah, well, so for a minute there, we still were kind of like in our transition where she wasn't repeating us too much. But then she started saying the F word all the time. Not all the time, but she said it like enough that I was like, my God. 

Kat (02:44)
Yeah, enough. More than once for the mouth of a three year old is kind of too much. Yeah. I got in trouble for a while for I, cause I, you know, I'm a adult woman in America and I say, my God. And the nephew started saying, my God. Yeah.

Tiffany (02:58)
Yeah, for some reason it doesn't offend me at all when it comes from an adult. But when it comes from a kid, it just feels kind of like bad. Yeah.

Kat (03:09)
It's just, it's, it's, if they say it sucks or, know, yeah, you're like the most of the reason we are speechless places. Children weren't because like the words are bad, but because it just, it's like, that's an adult word, sweetheart.

Tiffany (03:20)
Yeah, it just feels too like too much Yeah, and so yeah, it's a pretty much everything I say if it sounds like if I sayscrappy. She's like don't say crappy and I'm like I didn't say crappy or even if I do... Like dang - don't say dang. I'm like I just have to have a teacher like we have different rules at school than at home.

Kat (03:49)
Yes. You've got to learn to code switch, sweetheart.

Tiffany (03:53)
She's like, don't say bummer. I'm like, bummer is okay.

Kat (03:54)
Bummer's okay, it's probably because it says bum in it maybe? And bum.

Tiffany (04:00)
Maybe, or maybe it's just like the way kids were using it, like, bummer. I don't know. I don't know.

Kat (04:05)
Yeah, I mean anything can be a curse word like fickle biscuits, know, like, go shut the front door, you know, like, don't say that. Yeah.

Tiffany (04:13)
But yeah, every five seconds. Don't say that! Don't say that! I'm like, my god. I'm being policed anyway.

Kat (04:18)
No.

Well, at least she's not telling you how much coffee you're allowed to drink. Wait till she's a teenager and she tells you all of your habits.

Tiffany (04:24)
I do remember telling my mom stuff like that and my dad telling them how to live their lives. Gross. Can't wait.

Kat (04:35)
Of course, because you know everything when you're 16. 13. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. It's coming back. Well, I'll just go through my sources real quick. And again, because coffee is such a beloved thing, you could probably, I could have Googled for days and days and days. I try to keep this pretty light, because I really like this to be more about our personal feelings on coffee, because it's the joy of coffee, right?

Tiffany (04:41)

Yeah.

Kat (05:01)
So, Drive Research had some coffee statistics, like those ones that I rattled off at the start had something called daily coffee news, ⁓ on the economic impact of coffee. That's where I got that number about how much we spend. Johns Hopkins medicine on how much coffee is right for you. Clive coffee had a quick article on how climate change is affecting coffee. PBS had stuff on the history of coffee and then food and wine on the price of coffee. So.

Tiffany (05:19)
Mmm.

Alright, very cool.

Kat (05:31)
Do you drink coffee? Like how much do you drink coffee? Okay, well, okay.

Tiffany (05:33)
Yes, I drink too much probably. I love coffee.

I would say at least, I would say between three and four cups of coffee a day. Yeah.

Kat (05:46)
Okay, that's pretty standard apparently like most people limit their intake to between one and five cups a day.

Tiffany (05:56)
Okay. That's pretty broad range. Because after like three or four, four especially, I'm like, I'm losing it a little bit.

Kat (06:05)
It gives me like, aura, like we were talking about migraines before we got on here. Like if I have too much caffeine, I get like spots in my eyes and I'm like, I'm going to have a migraine. it's like, no, it's just caffeine apparently can induce that to some, some sense, but yeah, they like, do you drink it in the morning or yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Tiffany (06:13)
Interesting, okay.

Yes, it's like the first thing I have when I wake up because it just, it's partially because it's a habit and partially because I love it. I love the taste.

Kat (06:31)
Yeah, that's apparently that's most people say they drink coffee because they like the taste. Um, which becomes more interesting when you realize that, uh, 77 % of people use some kind of creamer in their coffee. Yeah. Most people don't drink it black. Um, so it's like, do you like the taste of coffee? Do you like the taste of coffee mate?

Tiffany (06:41)
Mm-hmm.

That's interesting. That is interesting. Yeah.

Yeah, or sugar. I'm curious how many people use sugar in it because

Kat (07:05)
About a

third of people put a sweetener in it.

Tiffany (07:08)
that's actually less than I thought. Hmm.

Kat (07:10)
Yeah, but

I think like coffee mate or like so the majority of I should probably just read this whole thing on like the statistics of coffee like a majority of people who put creamer in their coffee use one of those fake creamers like coffee mate Yeah, yeah so I was surprised about that because it's like like 40 percent of people use half and half after that. That's the next highest Yeah

Tiffany (07:26)
like the caramel vanilla. Yeah. Okay.

Huh. Whoa.

Kat (07:39)
⁓ Or look, maybe it was 40. I don't remember. It's more people use like a coffee creamer like coffee mate and then half and half and then like 2 % milk and then it goes down from there to like almond milk and oat milk. Although those are getting much more popular. So ⁓ some people use light cream. I know my parents always used cream. There's something about fat in coffee, you know, helps you maintain the caffeine because

Tiffany (07:51)
Huh.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kat (08:08)
You don't digest it. It's the same with alcohol. You're supposed to have something fatty before you drink because then you digest it more slowly. Yeah, so that's butter coffee.

Tiffany (08:14)
Uh-huh. That makes sense. Yeah, I was reading, yeah,

butter coffee. I was reading ⁓ that if you have oat milk in your coffee, it's actually potentially spiking. Yeah, and like messing with your blood sugar and stuff, so.

Kat (08:31)
Your glucose, yep. More than milk. Yeah. It does,

especially if you're drinking like a heavy milk drink, like a latte, oat milk has more sugar, basically, easily digestible sugar than lactose sugar. So glucose, glucose is, a, yeah, to, to steady it out. Yeah. So it's not necessarily like.

Tiffany (08:50)
Right. And no fat either.

Kat (08:59)
the health choice a lot of people think it is. and also, mean, we've talked about, you know, any giant scale farming, but the amount of water and stuff it takes to make almond milk and oat milk is kind of ecologically disastrous. So.

Tiffany (09:01)
Yeah, it's interesting.

I know.

Yeah, I was at home, I had switched to oat milk for like six months, ⁓ even though I knew all of that, because my cholesterol was like a little bit high and I was drinking like three.

Kat (09:24)
Yeah.

Tiffany (09:33)
three to four like latte, like homemade lattes a day. And I was like, that's a shitload of milk and whole milk because we keep whole milk because of Charlie. And it's also delicious. But yeah, I was like, maybe I should not drink that much whole milk. But I kind of stopped. ⁓ I actually totally stopped after I read that thing about the blood sugar, because it did kind of make me feel weird. It made me feel like,

Kat (09:36)
wow, okay, yeah.

Cause it's for the kids. Yep. Yeah. I mean, it does taste better. Yeah.

E

Yeah, like you have, you crash.

Tiffany (10:02)
Yeah, exactly. So

Kat (10:02)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tiffany (10:04)
I don't know. We'll see. We'll see how my cholesterol is next time.

Kat (10:07)
I mean, I don't know how much milk is too, like if you're, if you don't have lactose intolerance problems, like, you know, we could go on about the ethics of drinking dairy milk and things like that, inter we, we do need to have an episode on that. apparently whole, I mean, I drink whole milk lattes or 2 % here, I think at home is what I have. The foam is so much better. Like you can't get a good foam with like a fake milk.

Tiffany (10:13)
Yeah.

Oh God, I know. Oh yeah. We should talk. Yeah, we should talk about that. Yeah.

Yeah. I know. No.

Kat (10:36)
Yeah, I tried coconut milk for a while, but a lot of those like fat free half and half, you know, or the coconut milk creamers or whatever, they just add like high fructose corn syrup to thicken it. So it's, it might not have fat in it, which you actually want fat, you know, when it comes down to it, ⁓ to digest the caffeine more slowly, but, ⁓ it just, it's just a spike of sugar. So that.

Tiffany (10:39)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ew.

Yeah.

Yeah,

yes, oat milk has, like you can't even really taste it, but it does have a significant, significantly more sugar than like regular milk. That was one reason why Joe never caught on. He was like, he looked at it he's like, this is so much sugar. I was like, it's healthy.

Kat (11:21)
Yeah. It's natural

sugar. Yeah, right. Yeah. Apparently. So according to the statistics, people who do put sweetener in their coffee put like on average three sugar packets. So three teaspoons per cup or three, I guess, is it a tablespoon and a sugar packet? I think it might be, ⁓ you know, and some people use agave or honey, but yeah, people

Tiffany (11:38)
per cup. my God.

Wow.

Kat (11:50)
in America really like their drinks sweet. Yeah.

Tiffany (11:52)
That is not that surprising. I've

never been able to do, I mean, once in a while, like sugar, yeah, like sugar and coffee usually makes me feel like I'm losing my mind.

Kat (11:59)
Yeah, like as a treat. my gosh.

Yeah, I'll do a little bit just to take the acidity out. Well, except in lattes, because milk is naturally sweet, I don't use sugar in the latte. But like if I'm just getting a cup of coffee at a diner or something, I definitely have to have cream.

Tiffany (12:08)
Yeah.

Right.

Yes, because it's diner coffee and diner coffee is like so fantastically terrible. It's so comforting, but. huh, totally. Yeah, I used to work at a like a specialty coffee shop in DC and.

Kat (12:24)
yeah, you've, you're just, it's there to hold the cup and keep your hands warm, basically. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I was going

to say, how long did you work in coffee shops?

Tiffany (12:39)
Yeah, I was there for like a year and a half, I think, but it was when it was in 2012, 2011, 2012. So that was when specialty coffee was exploding in popularity. And so I was there like at exactly the right time where I learned so much. I went to ⁓ coffee, ⁓ poor competitions. like latte art competitions. I never tried it.

Kat (12:51)
Yep.

⁓ wow.

Tiffany (13:06)
All my friends tried to get me to try it, but I was like, I'm too nervous. But it was probably like 50 to 60 people in this room, just like coffee people. There's just such a culture. It's amazing how much of a culture there is. I have friends who have made their living. That's their life is like coffee. Yeah.

Kat (13:19)
Yeah. Yes. it's, yeah.

Yeah, barista life is coffee.

so something like 80, more than 80 % of Americans say they are obsessed with coffee. So yeah, it is like totally ingrained in our culture. know, you know, I was thinking about like in the nineties coffee culture, it wasn't specialty coffee in the way that Starbucks kind of made. Well, okay. So Starbucks came around in like the 1970s. So.

Tiffany (13:34)
Interesting, okay.

Mm-hmm.

Kat (13:55)
But like the, mean, cafe culture in the nineties was like, you'd go see a band at a coffee shop, you know? And it was kind of, yeah, or like you think about like the show Friends. They all went to Central Perk, you know, everybody has their coffee. And it kind of moved from being like, you know, you'd get a cup of coffee at a diner to you go specifically to a coffee shop to get coffee. And it was this hip thing. I remember like when I was in high school, there was the coffee shop.

Tiffany (14:01)
Yeah, have like a cup of hot coffee. Yeah.

⁓ huh.

Right. Mm-hmm.

Kat (14:24)
the flying star, you know, and they had food, but you went there for coffee. You know, that was what they sold. And like in the 2000s, early 2000s, when I was in college, I worked in a coffee shop in DC. Yeah. And it was, yeah. ⁓ it was the college. The it's still there. Yeah. Uncommon grounds. Yeah. We had uncommon grounds. And then we had a second shop called more uncommon grounds.

Tiffany (14:35)
funny, which one? I don't know if it's still there but...

on campus. cool. Nice. ⁓

Okay.

Kat (14:48)
So

you had UG and you had mug and then we opened one in the library when I was a senior that we called the midnight mug. yeah.

Tiffany (14:55)
That's awesome.

Yeah, mine isn't there anymore.

Kat (14:58)
⁓ you see that's big. out of business. mean, coffee.

Tiffany (15:01)
Yeah, it's well

actually it is it's just the location I was in isn't much is sad. It's called filter. If anybody's in DC, check it out. It's really good.

Kat (15:08)
Yeah. Okay.

I worked for one in New- I love like the names of coffee shops. I worked at one in New Jersey called The Fine Grind. The owner was an idiot. She was so awful. I worked there for a while. And then I worked in an office building. This was after I graduated from college. I worked in an office building in a little kiosk as the sole barista. Yeah.

Tiffany (15:14)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

my gosh.

That's wild.

Kat (15:34)
Yeah, so like I had work at like from we opened at like 8 a.m. I had worked from like 8 a.m. to 930 and then nothing until like 2 p.m. You know, because that's when people drink their coffee, you know, they have the afternoon crash. So they go get a coffee and yeah, I I typically drink like one cup of coffee a day in the morning. ⁓ And it's usually a latte now. ⁓ When I would work in offices, I would have.

Tiffany (15:43)
Wow.

Okay.

Kat (16:04)
depending, like office coffee can be so bad. It can be so awful, but it definitely, you know, stems the board, you know, helps you with your boredom. You'd like go get a cup of coffee. And so like the 2pm, 3pm tea time or whatever, and you go get, ⁓ but I, I have, I'm really sensitive to caffeine. So this, this little espresso number that I made myself tonight is probably going to keep me up. People say, you know,

Tiffany (16:08)
I know.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Kat (16:32)
The amount of caffeine, especially in espresso, is a single shot of espresso is not going to like affect you that much, but I'm really sensitive to caffeine, so this probably will.

Tiffany (16:41)
Yeah,

I was surprised when you said you were drinking coffee this late.

Kat (16:45)
Well, I had to for tonight's ⁓

Tiffany (16:47)
I know, I love

it. I should have made myself some.

Kat (16:50)
Well, yeah, but yeah, I, you know, I'd also the other thing with coffee for me is that, ⁓ I did a lot of ibuprofen in my thirties. And so like the stomach problems that I get, I have to kind of watch out. So I, I will enjoy decaf. ⁓ I love decaf. ⁓ I know a lot of people think that that's a sacrilege, but, ⁓

Tiffany (17:05)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

We had a decaf espresso at our coffee shop and it was actually really tasty.

Kat (17:22)
Yeah,

I Starbucks doesn't make decaf. Like if I want to decaf iced coffee, they have to do decaf iced Americano because they don't have an iced decaf, which is like, okay. Not that I recommend shopping at Starbucks, which apparently is another thing. Like 48 % of Americans say Starbucks is their favorite brand and 45 % say Duncan is their favorite brand. And then the rest of us. Yeah.

Tiffany (17:30)
Okay, yeah.

Hmm.

Oh, 3 % are like, local.

Kat (17:51)
Yeah.

Tiffany (17:52)
Oh, that's interesting.

Kat (17:54)
Yeah, Starbucks has a major hold on ⁓ market share in the US for coffee, which

Tiffany (18:01)
Although that's pretty close actually, 45 and 48.

Kat (18:05)
Something like that. might be look up the numbers yourselves and the link and notes and but it's it's a large Not a majority but like a plurality I think you call it when it's you know more than others and then you know the major brands that people know like Folgers or what they make at home and you know, Know my I remember my parents had like max like bulk canisters of like Maxwell house Yeah, yeah

Tiffany (18:09)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

can't do that anymore.

Mm-hmm. Yes, the blue one. Mm-hmm.

Kat (18:34)
⁓ and that's what we drank when I was until I was in high school, I think, ⁓ which I think was a money saving technique for them. Sure. Certainly. ⁓ and then, but yeah, my parents, we always had like local, there's a local coffee roaster in Albuquerque that my dad still gets his coffee from Moon's coffee and tea. And it was owned by this little Korean lady named Moon. And you know, she would go to.

Tiffany (18:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

nice. That's awesome.

Kat (19:01)
travel around the world and find the tea and the coffee and get it imported and roasted. And now it's owned by somebody else, but it's still Moons coffee and tea. Yeah. I order from there all the time still. So, yeah. Yeah. So that's like the joy of coffee, I guess. ⁓ but I mean, what, what we love about coffee, right? Again, you were saying that ritual, right? There's something about grinding the beans for me, steaming the milk and pouring it. can't do design. So.

Tiffany (19:07)
That's amazing. Very cool. nice. That's awesome.

Yeah. Yes.

Kat (19:30)
You were in the coffee jam when the design thing, the design thing wasn't big in the early 2000s. It was just like, get your coffee. You know, there was something about kind of the prestige of having like a Starbucks logo cup, you know? Like if you're carrying around, yeah, there's something about like the branding of the cup you're carrying is, yeah, yeah. yeah.

Tiffany (19:32)
yeah, we talked about this, yeah.

Yeah.

Yes, 100%.

yeah, they knew what they were doing, and they still do. Let's be honest.

Kat (20:00)
I mean, I still have like this weird nostalgia for the Starbucks red cups at Christmas. Like it's like, yeah, we're going to get a Starbucks and we're going to, you know, wander the mall for, you know, a Starbucks, a single Starbucks. Yeah.

Tiffany (20:07)
Mm-hmm.

A Starbucks, yeah.

Yeah, it's funny because I grew up in a very rural area. I mean, I was like 40 minutes away from Bloomington, which is where Indiana University is. So it's like I was around culture, but my family didn't hang out there and we didn't have a Starbucks near us until way later.

I think they didn't open one in the town next to my mom until like five years ago or something. And so for me, I didn't get introduced to Starbucks until college. And I even still was so cheap and so poor that I was like, it just felt like so unachievable or like out of reach for me. And I also didn't really drink coffee in college.

Kat (21:03)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I,

yeah, I mean, I worked when I worked at the coffee shop. I, yeah, I didn't make like a morning until like, yeah, the end of college for me. I didn't have like a coffee pot in my dorm room or something, you know.

Tiffany (21:10)
Until later. Yeah.

Uh huh.

Yeah. And it's funny, actually, I was thinking about this. say like coffee culture, like cafe culture is so big here, but in Italy, I started drinking coffee in Italy because you can just get an espresso and it's like, suck it down. But cafes are not a thing. Like you might go, no, you go, you get your coffee, you leave, you know, like you get your espresso. Yes. Yeah.

Kat (21:31)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Not like that.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a, there's a counter you drink it and you give the cut back. Yeah.

Tiffany (21:48)
And there was one, I studied in Bologna, and there was one that was around the corner that catered to Americans, and so I could walk there. And I was so obsessed with that place, but it was the only one in the entire city. Well, I can't remember the name of it now, but it's probably not even still there. Maybe it is, but it was so cute. ⁓ But yeah, it's weird that Italy is so known for its coffee culture, but they don't sit down with it.

Kat (21:52)
Mm.

It's yeah, it's like in Paris even they sit, you know, you have an afternoon coffee maybe and you sit and you.

Tiffany (22:18)
Right. Yeah. And

there's like lots of seating in cafes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I don't know why. I don't know how that developed differently, but it just did.

Kat (22:23)
Yeah, and you and you're outside and you're people watching or you're with your friends and you're chit chatting. Yeah.

Yeah. I, yeah, it's, it's interesting because you think all of Europe is the same. It is not, you ⁓ I, yeah. Well, and I also noticed like when I was in college and I went to London for the first time, like you couldn't get a coffee in, in, you know, and that was the thing my college boyfriend said he studied abroad in like Galway in Ireland and you, you could not get coffee. Yeah. It was like the coffee in Ireland is so bad. ⁓

Tiffany (22:38)
No, yeah. And maybe it's changing, but...

huh. Zalti. Okay.

Kat (23:03)
And he was like obsessed with coffee. And, and now it's like, there's a, there's a coffee roaster on every corner, know, excuse me. that's, that's Starbucks influence. have like a global, you know, and,

Tiffany (23:09)
Right.

Yes.

Yeah, they definitely started it.

Kat (23:19)
Yeah. And now it's common, you know, you there's a coffee shop everywhere and it, that to go order kind of thing is that so American, right? Like get your coffee and go, or the drive through, you know, ⁓ that's so like antithetical to kind of the European experience, you know, ⁓

Tiffany (23:23)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes.

Yes, yes.

Well, not the go part in Italy at least, but you will go inside. Uh huh. Yep.

Kat (23:45)
Well, but you sit there, you go inside, you talk to the barista, you drink it,

you know. Yes. Yeah. You don't spill it all over yourself in your car as you're driving past, you know, like.

Tiffany (23:52)
read your paper or whatever.

Yeah,

your drive-throughs are insane if you really think about it, but.

Kat (24:02)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And Americans really love flavored lattes. the, and Starbucks really pushed that. That's like you were saying that specialty coffee. It's not like coffee purists. It's like vanilla latte, you know, that frappuccino. Yeah. We had a drink that was, we finally got blenders at our coffee shop and the vanilla frappe, you know, which is like

Tiffany (24:09)
Yes.

or frappuccinos.

Kat (24:32)
two shots of espresso, five pumps of vanilla, bunch of ice and milk. You know, we called it the evil empire. was, ⁓ cause we, you know, we're a small coffee shop, student owned student run and Starbucks is the evil empire. boy, but you know, without Starbucks, you don't have coffee culture like that in New Mexico, in, in the United States. So yeah. Yeah.

Tiffany (24:43)
you

Uh-huh.

That's awesome.

No, I know. It's true. It's very true. Yeah,

ours was so bougie. And I mean it in the best way that we didn't have any kind of like flavored syrups. We all we had was honey. No, actually, we didn't have honey. We had agave. I don't know if we had honey. We had I don't think we did. We had agave. We had ⁓ chocolate that was like special chocolate, like very expensive, special fudge, whatever. And

Kat (25:20)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. We had Ghirardelli syrup.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Tiffany (25:26)
Cause we did mochas, but that was it.

And then we did, ⁓ shoot, I wish I even remembered the name. It was like a very expensive brown sugar. Very expensive and like very good, but we would make our own chai tea with that. So like we actually made chai out of the lot, out of the like tea leaves. ⁓ and it caught, it smelled so good. I you would add the brown sugar to it and then you add like.

Kat (25:38)
⁓

⁓ Yeah.

Yeah, yes. I love chai.

Tiffany (25:55)
make a lot of them. It's so good. But yeah, we were like so so snooty that we were like, people would come in and ask for a pump of vanilla and we're like, we don't have vanilla.

Kat (25:56)
the milk, yeah.

Vanilla, yeah.

Oh, and the other thing I love

when real coffee people, when you like, um, I'll take a caramel macchiato and like, well, a macchiato is just espresso with a dollop of foam. So you want me to put caramel on top of that? And they're like, ah, and it's like, no, you want a caramel latte? Yeah. Okay.

Tiffany (26:15)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah. And to be fair, we were actually very nice to our customers. Yeah. Some places aren't, to be fair. Yeah. But we were like, made it a point to be like, this is what a makiado is. Like, are you sure that's what you want? And then people would be like, shit, no, that's not what I want.

Kat (26:27)
Yeah. ⁓ yeah. You have to be nice to the customers. I mean, the student... no, I know. It's kind of their brand. Yeah.

Yeah. ⁓ yeah,

we always got like a thrill out of telling people like, you know, this, this, know the Starbucks is, and also like the terminology for their cups is like short, which nobody buys a short, tall grande, which just means big, right. And then Venti, which means 20, it's 20 ounces. So, you know, we'd be like small, medium and large, you know, or I think we use tall still cause tall is like,

Tiffany (26:45)
Yeah, yeah.

Right.

Yeah, Venti. Yeah. And I think there's a Trenta. huh.

Kat (27:11)
yeah, there's a Trento. I think there's a Quaranta too. Like I think they'll do, especially for their like iced coolers or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a big gulp. Get a big gulp. Which go for it. You know, not gonna, not gonna yuck anyone's yum, but, it do not think for a second that an, an iced chiller from Starbucks has less sugar in it than a giant Coke.

Tiffany (27:14)
God.

Jesus Christ, it's like a gallon you might as well just buy a gallon Right, yeah

Kat (27:41)
from your local 7-Eleven, it is as much sugar. yeah, you know, I think we need to take a break. That was quite a long, I know. Yeah, okay. We'll take a break and then I'll come back with some of the health benefits of coffee for you.

Tiffany (27:41)
Yeah, totally. Yeah.

I know, was like, we're already 27 minutes in, I feel like we've just been chatting about coffee, but that's good.

Okay,

so we.

Kat (28:14)
Welcome back. So this is something I had included in my what is so great about coffee section, but it's coffee is actually good for your health. you know, I didn't go deep into these studies. A lot of it is just it suggests that. So I don't know if it's just because we love coffee so much that we're looking for what's good about it, you know. ⁓ But there are some indications.

Tiffany (28:15)
I'm back.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kat (28:43)
according to Johns Hopkins that coffee can increase your lifespan possibly ⁓ because they don't know the exact mechanism, but coffee drinkers are less likely to die of coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, or kidney disease. But I don't know. I don't know how you isolate that. You know, if 73 % of Americans drink coffee, how do you, you know, what's the correlation there?

Tiffany (28:48)
Okay.

Okay.

Right. Yeah.

Kat (29:10)
But they say that there's, their study suggests it might help you process glucose better. Again, because people who drink coffee are less likely to get type two diabetes. It can apparently ward off heart failure, ⁓ makes you less likely to develop Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's. It has a protective effect on your liver. It strengthens DNA and decreases breakage. Specifically, this was dark roast coffee, which I found interesting. I know I-

Tiffany (29:20)
Interesting.

wow.

Kat (29:40)
probably should have like read all of these studies. ⁓ It lowers your risk of colon cancer by 26%. That even includes decaf coffee and it lowers your risk of stroke.

Tiffany (29:48)
Probably because

it helps with the bowel movements. Helps keep you regular.

Kat (29:52)
Yeah. Yeah. It has some effect on.

Yeah. So there are, and again, it might just be because so many people drink it that it's like, we're just looking for the benefits of coffee, but it appears to do a lot of good things for your health. ⁓ although it does also have side effects. you know, any, any caffeine consumption comes with a, you know, drink at your own risk. Like for instance, increased heart rate.

Tiffany (30:06)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Kat (30:22)
raise blood pressure, anxiety, and insomnia, or common side effects of too much coffee.

Tiffany (30:27)
anxiety for sure.

Kat (30:29)
Yeah.

I'm like, what is it like all over Twitter or Instagram or whatever people are like, yeah, I feel really anxious about the world and I haven't slept in three days. I'm sure this cup of coffee will help, ⁓ but also again, the acidity and coffee can really screw up your stomach. Like me, if you take ibuprofen like candy, ⁓ watch out because coffee can really do a number on you. ⁓ yeah.

Tiffany (30:41)
Totally.

Mmm.

Okay, I don't do that, but hey.

Kat (30:57)
And also these effects might be ruined by these health benefits might be ruined by how much sugar and cream we're putting into our coffee. So you got to watch out for that, ⁓ as well. But you should probably limit your consumption to three to five cups a day. So 400 milligrams of caffeine. Yeah. I, I mean, I think less than 3 % drink more than six cups of coffee a day. I know my, my college boyfriend's mother drank like

Tiffany (31:05)
Right. Yeah.

That seems totally reasonable.

Yeah.

Kat (31:25)
nonstop coffee all the time. I sometimes like it takes me two hours to finish a cup of coffee. I'm just a slow drinker. ⁓ when it comes to coffee, like it will get cold. My dad bought me like a, a USB thing that plugs into your computer to like warm your, keep your coffee warm. And I'm like, I won't drink it. Like I need it to cool off. Like I can't drink super hot coffee. Yeah. I like lukewarm coffee. ⁓

Tiffany (31:33)
Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah,

that is funny. I don't drink hot coffee at all anymore. have to. Yeah, always. And I think it's just like a habit now, but yeah, I don't ever have an interest in warm coffee. It just sounds so gross to me, even in the winter. It's weird. It's really, it's really weird. Yeah.

Kat (31:57)
Mm-mm. Just cold iced coffee. Mm-hmm.

Interesting. I have kind

of the opposite thing where I only ever want hot lattes. Like, I'll drink an iced coffee ⁓ if it's hot out, but like I've gone the opposite. Like I used to drink iced coffee all the time and now I've like flipped and now I only drink hot coffee. Yeah.

Tiffany (32:20)
Okay.

interesting. I

love an ice latte.

Kat (32:35)
I think it's my vendetta against ice watering things down, I think is my problem. Yeah. But you got to drink it faster. ⁓ Okay. I was going to go to a quick history of coffee. So because it's been around so long, nobody really knows where it came from. It definitely originated in Africa, Ethiopia. The story is that in like the 10th century, an Ethiopian goat herd named Kaldi.

Tiffany (32:38)
Yeah, it does. 100%. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Kat (33:03)
saw that his goats were frolicking after they ate the cherry. So the coffee grows like cherries on a bush. And so he's like, huh, maybe I'll try it. And he did it. And then he was like, zap. I think this probably, it was probably rumored to be an aphrodisiac because that's most, you know, most of these things that affect you are like kind of.

Tiffany (33:07)
⁓ interesting. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kat (33:33)
They make you frolic. know, this is, yeah, from the, it's from a PBS article. So they toned it down quite a bit, I think, but apparently, um, some monks observed his behavior and were like, Oh, we should get that too. so the monks.

Tiffany (33:34)
Look at those frolicking goats.

Okay.

Okay. Remind me

to tell you something about goats at the end. Yeah.

Kat (33:52)
Okay.

So coffee was originally eaten kind of, ⁓ they would mix the fruit in with fat and make kind of a snack bar out of it. So like a candy bar. ⁓ At some point also in history, people would ferment the fruit to make a kind of coffee wine. In the 13th century in Arabia, people started

Tiffany (34:07)
Hmm. Okay.

Hmm.

Kat (34:22)
roasting it and making the brew from it instead of eating it from the beans. So coffee as we know it is the seed inside the cherry fruit, right? And it's two beans, you know, and you take that out and you roast it and grind it, add hot water and drink the brew. so apparently it was really popular in the Muslim community because of the extended length of prayer sessions. So people would

Tiffany (34:40)
Hmm.

⁓

Kat (34:51)
use it to stay awake during all the long prayers they were doing. Yeah. And then, ⁓ a pilgrim from India, you know, brought it from Mecca to Europe, ⁓ in the 1600s and the Dutch got into it and they started, you know, this was during Dutch colonization. So they started taking over plantations and growing coffee. I, the way it came to America, could you know, do you know why it came to America?

Tiffany (34:55)
That makes sense.

No, on the bottom is someone's shoe. No, I'm just kidding.

Kat (35:23)
No, I

mean, it was around from Europe. Obviously, you know, people brought it. Settlers brought it from the 1600 colonizers brought it from the 1600s, but it became an American patriotic thing to drink coffee after the Boston Tea Party. Yes, like screw those English overlords. We're not drinking your tea or drinking your coffee. I think a lot of people still feel that way today, like English tea. Yeah.

Tiffany (35:31)
Mm-hmm.

⁓ that makes so much sense.

Right.

Yeah, they totally do.

They totally do. That's so interesting.

Kat (35:53)
So after 1773, that's when coffee.

Tiffany (35:55)
I wonder if that's

why tea drinkers are treated so weirdly. There's some ingrained yes. ⁓ huh. Yeah. Wow. That's crazy.

Kat (35:58)
Probably. Yeah, they're kind of seen as effeminate. yeah, yeah, like weak or proper. Yeah, it's definitely a holdover from American patriotism.

Yeah. So yeah, and again, like I said earlier, specialty coffee kind of came out in the 1960s, probably post World War II, know, GIs kind of brought back espresso drinking, which again, when

GIs were in Europe, but they didn't want espresso. They wanted Americano, which is just watered down espresso, you know, or they would serve them coffee with a lemon peel. And now people think that that's like the right way to drink. God, nobody, it's to hide bad quality espresso or to deal with the fact that you have baby taste buds and you can't handle like a real coffee. So no, they'll have like a lemon. It's, you're supposed to like.

Tiffany (36:33)
Mm-hmm.

With a lemon, put like lemon in it?

⁓

Kat (36:53)
take the lemon

peel and rub it around the rim. It's just to distract from the taste of the coffee because

Tiffany (36:57)
I've only

ever seen that on like alcohol beverages, but maybe it's similar. No.

Kat (37:00)
Yeah, well, I mean, that's, have you ever had espresso with tonic? It does.

The, the bitter, the acidity and bitterness kind of offset each other. I read also somewhere quickly, somebody claims that the citric acid in lemon and the caffeine in coffee are an analgesic. So they work against headaches. But I was like, I need more science on that.

Tiffany (37:09)
interesting.

Huh. Yeah,

yeah. Interesting.

Kat (37:24)
But yeah, so that's kind of a brief history of coffee. I always think of. Yeah. it's been around a long time. kind of like cacao. mean, similar to cacao. They, it has kind of a similar history, but again, it is indigenous to Africa and then grown in Arabia and then, ⁓ colonizers brought it to Brazil.

Tiffany (37:28)
That's really interesting.

Yeah. ⁓

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and I was gonna say, and it's so funny because Ethiopian coffee is very different than like Brazilian coffee or Peruvian coffee. And I guess it's the altitude, I guess it's just the climate, all the things, but okay.

Kat (37:48)
Jamaica.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Well, yeah, that's what I was going to get into next is how,

how coffee grows. So the thing about coffee is that there is a coffee belt and this is two lines, you know, a certain distance from the equator where coffee can be grown because it basically, the temperature has to be steady between 60 to 75 degrees and it needs 60 inches of rainfall a year.

Tiffany (38:06)
Okay.

⁓

Okay.

Kat (38:31)
So it's basically kind of the Northern tip of Mexico down to the Southern tip of Brazil in our hemisphere. And then in the Eastern hemisphere, it's kind of like most of Africa, the Southeast Asian, like the archipelago of like Java, know, ⁓ Sumatra, India can grow some, the South Pacific, Hawaii, obviously the Caribbean, and then parts of Australia.

Tiffany (38:52)
Mm-hmm.

Kat (39:00)
can cultivate coffee.

Tiffany (39:02)
I've never heard of Australian coffee before. Papa New Guinea. That's a popular one. Yeah.

Kat (39:04)
I know I don't, yeah, Papua New Guinea is right there, right? And

yeah. coffee grows apparently best between 2000 and 6,000 feet of elevation. So it's kind of like cultivating wine grapes in that way that it's like, it's, there's specific regions where it grows best. And again, the terroir, right? The soil, ⁓ the air quality, the rain, the temperatures will all change what, how the

Tiffany (39:13)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Kat (39:33)
how the coffee tastes and that's why you have very different

Tiffany (39:34)
Yeah.

Yeah, because like Papua New Guinea tastes like chocolate and then Ethiopia tastes like lemon. So it's so different.

Kat (39:39)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they're very

different. My dad always, he's like, I cannot drink South American coffee. just doesn't like Central American or South American coffee. Yeah. He's like, I like, my favorite is a dark roast Oaxaca that Moons does. I like, I like Mexican beans. ⁓

Tiffany (39:48)
⁓ that's unusual, actually. Huh.

Okay.

Huh. Yeah, most people are like, Peruvian coffee is like sort of your classic like coffee taste, but that's interesting.

Kat (40:07)
Yeah. Yeah.

He says it tastes too green to him. My dad has a very interesting palette. Yeah. and yeah, the way it's roasted also affects it. So, ⁓ green beans, when they come out of the plant and they're dried, they, they aren't brown. They're like green. And when you roast them, actually removes caffeine. So darker roasts have less caffeine. But again,

Tiffany (40:13)
Interesting. Huh.

Yep.

Okay.

Okay, interesting.

Kat (40:37)
This

depends on, there's like 150 varietals of coffee. So.

Tiffany (40:40)
Okay.

Yeah, because people say like, give me some strong dark coffee, but actually they're probably getting less. That's so funny. Uh-huh.

Kat (40:46)
It's actually got less caffeine. Yeah. Yeah. It just tastes more bitter.

Right. A dark roast. I like a dark roast. Personally, I like French roast. That's like my favorite or espresso. You know, I like it dark. really?

Tiffany (40:57)
I absolutely despise French roast. I will go,

yeah, for me the lighter the better, but yeah, that's just me. I guess, yeah, maybe that is why I'm like, give it to me.

Kat (41:02)
Okay.

You like the caffeine?

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, and you can go crazy with, you know, there's civet cat coffee, which is the coffee that's been eaten by a civet cat and then crapped out and they get the beans from the crap.

Tiffany (41:14)
Yeah.

Yes,

and I've heard that that is like a total scam, but because it's so expensive and it's just so ridiculous, but hey to each their own.

Kat (41:25)
yeah. Yeah. There's, and there's super expensive coffee out there in the world. ⁓

but yeah, I, know, that's a little extreme for me. mean, I'm, I'm not a full, I will not turn down a cup of Folgers if somebody offers it to me, but I would prefer. Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. I've, I've made definitely.

Tiffany (41:44)
Yeah, same. I'll have some instant, like, yeah.

Kat (41:52)
Did you ever make Dalgona coffee during the pandemic that was like it took off?

Tiffany (41:59)
my god, that brings back memories.

Kat (41:59)
I just,

I had bought like a huge, they only had the huge Taster's Choice Instant Coffee. And so I had bought a huge thing of it. I probably used this much of it. And I got it out the other day. was like, I haven't made a Delcona coffee. like, well, I got it out and it was so covered in mold, everything. Cause it was a five year old thing of Instant Coffee. And I was like, yeah.

Tiffany (42:06)
huh.

Right.

⁓ no!

Yeah, they actually expire within like six months. didn't realize

that until... Yes, because what was it? It was like some sort of like whipped cream situation.

Kat (42:27)
So what

you do is you take the instant coffee, take like two tablespoons of instant coffee, two tablespoons of sugar, and then two tablespoons of boiling hot water and you whip it. And it turns into this foam and then you put it on ice, know, ⁓ pour milk, put it on there and then like stir it in with your spoon. It's super fun.

Tiffany (42:30)
huh.

huh. Okay. ⁓ huh. Yep. Yep. huh.

I completely,

I did make that for a while because we weren't going anywhere. And I guess, did we maybe run out of coffee? I don't know why, but we'd had instant. Yeah, I think so. God, those were dark days.

Kat (42:55)
It was just something fun to do. Yeah. It was like, there is something. Yeah. Again, ⁓ those were,

tell me about it. But there's something about having like a fancy coffee. makes you feel like this. This is my fancy summer coffee. put like maraschino cherries in it and I'm like,

Tiffany (43:06)
Yeah.

Yes, there you go. Uh huh.

Kat (43:13)
In my pretty glass and you

know, so yeah, ⁓ coffee's like wine. It's different for every person and everybody has their favorite and their preferences. But now we're going to get to the last part of this, which is how climate change affects coffee. Okay. So because coffee needs such a specific climate to grow in climate change clearly has a huge impact on it. ⁓ there's less rainfall now in a lot of places and higher temperatures around the world.

Tiffany (43:22)
Mm-hmm. Yes, totally.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Kat (43:42)
especially in equatorial regions. If there isn't less rainfall, it's just more, less predictable growing seasons. ⁓ Something that's interesting about coffee is apparently it's always fertile, like, or always in its reproductive stage. you can, a coffee plant will have flowers, green fruit and ripe fruit on it all the time. So it's not, I guess because, you know, equatorial regions don't have like a winter.

Tiffany (43:45)
Mmm.

Okay.

Kat (44:10)
Right. It's a steady temperature all the time. So, ⁓ they, there's, but, but you can't predict harvesting and stuff if the weather's inconsistent. Cause that's, know, water levels and, and, so increased heat means that some new areas for coffee growth have opened up. Like apparently now coffee can grow above 6,000 feet because those regions are getting warm enough.

Tiffany (44:10)
Yeah.

Right.

Ugh, God.

Kat (44:39)
But deforestation is a huge deal. Obviously, if you're going to open a coffee plantation or farm, you're probably going to take out some of the equatorial rainforest or mountain vegetation. Also factory farming of any kind ruins water systems. Excuse me. And I've got tonic, tonic and coffee burps. and also of course there's, ⁓ forced labor practices in a lot of these regions. These are not known for being historically.

Tiffany (44:42)
Mm-hmm.

You

Yeah.

Kat (45:09)
⁓ you know, well-served regions when it comes to the local population. So, there's a lot wrong with coffee production. There's also something called leaf rust, which is a parasite that eats coffee plant leaves and kills it because it can't, you know, photosynthesize if it doesn't have leaves.

Tiffany (45:14)
Yeah.

⁓

I wonder if it's the same as what's on my Azaleas. It's called Rust. It turns them red? I don't know.

Kat (45:35)
I didn't read too much about this. Apparently leaf rust, might be a similar kind of parasite, but it killed off nearly every coffee plant in the world in the 1800s. And there was another outbreak of it in 2012. ⁓ So.

Tiffany (45:37)
Yeah.

Yeah.

damn.

wow.

Copper fungicide worked well for me, but anyway.

Kat (45:54)
Okay, good.

Well, let's see, then you have the issue of pesticides on.

Tiffany (45:59)
It's actually not really a pesticide. It's like got copper in it. I don't know. But then you're like mining copper. I don't know. Yes. Yeah. Right. huh.

Kat (46:02)
Okay. But I mean, for large scale farming operations to control things like that, that's another issue with factory farming,

right? So the biggest impact that we likely will see, well, and we already have, it's harder to get coffee now, it's harder to grow it. And so it's more expensive. So in January of this year, it

Tiffany (46:25)
Yeah.

Kat (46:29)
the coffee prices rose to the highest level it's ever been in the US, which was $3.48 a pound wholesale basically, which doesn't seem like much, but then when you go to markup, that gets pretty high.

Tiffany (46:33)
Whoa.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Kat (46:46)
That's 79 % increase year over year. Now climate change isn't the only culprit. Of course, there are also random tariffs and, ⁓ economic pressures, geopolitical issues. ⁓ these are all problems that the world is facing right now. So coffee, we don't see it getting any easier. Now I didn't get into, ⁓

Tiffany (46:49)
man.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kat (47:13)
doomsday scenarios about like all coffee is going to vanish in the next. It's probably not soon. It's possible in the next few decades that if things don't change. Well, but the thing is, again, because it's such a fricking popular thing, American scientists are going to find a way to grow coffee somehow. ⁓

Tiffany (47:16)
Okay, good.

Mm-hmm.

god damn, that feels soon.

Yeah.

Kat (47:42)
The fear is more that they will do it at the expense of, you know, the world itself. So that's a consideration. ⁓ It might give you pause with your morning cup of joe. ⁓ Also, obviously transporting coffee is a huge part of its climate impact because you can't, you got to transport the coffee from Equatorial Guinea to ⁓

Tiffany (47:49)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kat (48:12)
you know, Paris. So that's, that takes boats and planes and you know, lot of things. So just what you can do about coffee. Okay. When I kind of Googled like, is there a sustainable way to drink coffee? At least one article on Medium came up that was like, everyone should stop drinking coffee if you care about the environment, which I was like, okay, that's not sustainable for most people to do.

Tiffany (48:18)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Kat (48:40)
⁓ and it probably, if you're going to give up coffee, you're going to turn to another caffeine source with similarly suspect production issues and even, yes, more dubious health claims like energy drinks, right? ⁓ yeah, some people. Okay. But you can reduce your coffee consumption's impact on the environment in other incremental ways, which is what we recommend is mindfulness, you know, find the thing that works for you.

Tiffany (48:47)
Right. Yeah, and it might be like Coke.

Yeah, Coca Cola and I cooking, but yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kat (49:11)
So number one, drink less coffee. Cut it down to a cup or two a day. Again, espresso uses less coffee than brewing a whole pot. I didn't even get into the environmental impact of Keurig. Apparently Keurig pod coffee is like the most popular way people make coffee at home.

Tiffany (49:13)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

⁓ god, that doesn't surprise me, but that disappoints me.

Kat (49:36)
Yeah,

I don't like it. I hate pod coffee and not just because those little plastic pods are not recyclable y'all. They have to go to the landfill and the coffee's not great in them either. I get the joy of having an individual serving of coffee, which is why I like espresso because it's not a whole pot. know.

Tiffany (49:39)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm... No...

Yeah.

Kat (50:00)
You can buy reusable pods to use in those machines. Yeah. ⁓ I haven't either. ⁓ but that's a mess, you know, which is one of the reasons people like the pods is cause you can just toss them. so don't, don't use pod coffee, ⁓ would be my recommendation. ⁓

Tiffany (50:00)
Yeah. Yeah, actually you can. Yeah. I've never tried it, but.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

You can also put your coffee grounds in your compost, which I don't do and I should. How do you store them? Yeah.

Kat (50:23)
Yes, the compost. we do. My compost. The grounds.

I just knock them off into the combine. We have a little compost trash can on my on my counter.

Tiffany (50:36)
Okay, I don't have

that, but I could figure it out.

Kat (50:39)
Yeah, cause you know, in, ⁓ in the coffee shop, had that metal bar over the trash can that you would, man, I miss it because our, our compost bin, which Sean hates to death is like the whole it's plastic and the whole side of it is all busted up from hitting the espresso thing on it. I could probably like use a spoon to knock the beans, but I'm not that kind of girl. I'm a knock the espresso out in one go. ⁓

Tiffany (50:44)
Yes, that thing was great, yeah.

huh. huh.

Yeah, same.

Kat (51:07)
So we just put it in that compost and then I take the compost out like every couple days.

Tiffany (51:10)
Okay, yeah, I only

have like a, it's actually like an old protein, protein container. It's like huge that Joe didn't need anymore. That's what I used to store my compost in, but.

Kat (51:16)
Yep. Jar. Yeah.

My sister uses old takeout containers and because then you can put a lid on them and then you take it out to the compost and come rinse it off and use it again. Yeah.

Tiffany (51:25)
yeah. huh.

Yep. Yeah, it's the

same idea. I keep mine in the freezer now because it gets so smelly and I'm lazy.

Kat (51:35)
Yeah, Sean. Yeah, Sean always,

I mean, yeah, if you're not taking it out every day, I think that's the thing about the small takeout containers is that they're small enough that they fill up so quickly that and also her compost is like walk out the back door and dump it. So I mean, mine is a bin out front, so it's not that far. And I actually remember I got the little plastic trash can because I was going to use those compostable trash bags and I was going to be all cool about it. And then those, those were a disaster. So they're so bad.

Tiffany (51:40)
Yeah.

Right.

Okay, yeah. Yeah.

Oh, funny. Yeah, those are the worst. I had one

for fricking Ruby and it literally, was in her, well, thank God we didn't even use it, but it was in the side of the bag, like her treat bag for, I don't know, six months or something, but it turned into dust. Like just absolute like fish flakes, fish food. And I'm just like, Oh my God, what is this? Oh, it's her bag. Well, can't use that one.

Kat (52:08)
It leaks. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nope. Compostable bags are not great. So yeah, I've, I don't know how long since Sean has moved in if this compost bin is long for this world. We'll see. But yeah. ⁓ also try to buy from small producers and roasters, including fair trade certified and sustainable farms. This is a whole headache of stuff to wade through to figure it out.

Tiffany (52:29)
Yeah. No.

Yeah, that's funny.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, Fairtrade

is so, yeah, there is like a label, right? But even Fairtrade is like people criticize it.

Kat (52:58)
Yeah. I mean, Starbucks has

certain brands of Fairtrade. You know, it's kind of like organic. It's like, it's a bandaid.

Tiffany (53:06)
Yeah.

Kat (53:09)
If you can find small producers, mean, again, the problem is that this is going to cost you a ton of money. ⁓ If you're buying from a coffee shop, skip Starbucks and try a local place. So Starbucks, it's kind of like the Nike of, obviously it's the Nike of brands, right? Of coffee brands. They're too big not to be caught up in scandals. And one of the scandals recently was

Tiffany (53:19)
Mm-hmm.

Kat (53:36)
The Guardian outed them for using farms in Brazil that use forced labor to produce their coffee beans. So, I mean, again, because like Brazilian beans are going to be different from Ethiopian beans are going to be different from Sumatran beans. There are, I didn't dig deep into like, is there one overarching coffee farm?

owning, you know, farm brand, owning all of these different farms. I don't think so. I think it's, you know, local subsidiary, local large groups that handle the farming and different types of Starbucks coffee are sourced from different farms. So yeah, again, they do have their fair trade certified ones. It's like, why aren't all the coffee beans fair trade certified? You know, it's a complex process, but local purchasing, local roasting.

Tiffany (54:06)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kat (54:33)
You have a much better chance of fair trade policies in itself rather than large corporate conglomerates doing the inhumane work of trying to buy the cheapest coffee bean. So, excuse me. Yeah, it's, it's worth it to.

Tiffany (54:50)
Yeah, totally. I also

heard recently that Starbucks, I didn't read into it, but that they are trying to like...

pound down their union. Like their unions trying for stuff and they're like, no.

Kat (55:03)
Yeah,

there's a lot of union busting going on at Starbucks. It's I don't like Starbucks. I will just say that I don't like their coffee. I, if somebody's like, Hey, do want to get a co can I get you a coffee? And they're going to Starbucks. will let them buy me a Starbucks coffee. I'm not going to like, you know, if somebody for Christmas can't think of anything to get me and they just get me a Starbucks coffee card, I'm going to, I'm not going to like slap it out of their hand, you know, like I

Tiffany (55:08)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ha ha ha.

Kat (55:32)
just personally choose not to go there. And ⁓ that's been true for most of my life. ⁓ So, you know, I'm not addicted to coffee enough that I'm like in a pinch. Like, yeah, if I really need a latte, I'll go to Starbucks. yeah, usually I avoid it at all costs, so.

Tiffany (55:34)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

I wish I was that way. I was actually, I'm going to talk about this. I can just talk about it now, but I sort of talking because I'm talking about buying local next week. So Starbucks is like my, my one sort of like Amazon, whatever target, whatever Starbucks is hard because their cold brew is.

Kat (56:01)
next week.

weakness. Yeah.

Tiffany (56:16)
so good and it's like magic and I don't I haven't been able to recreate it at home we have tried everything we've even tried getting stupid Starbucks beans which I realize is not helpful but like I don't know how they do it and we're still working on it but it's like it's so good and I don't have anything local around me that is it has even decent cold brew because I love a cold brew

Kat (56:24)
well

Even close. Yeah.

Tiffany (56:45)
⁓ everything around me is like water down ice. It's not cold brew. It's like iced with extra ice. And I'm like, this is so watery and disgusting. So we're, we're in like kind of a, we're in a cold brew desert. Yeah.

Kat (56:49)
It's iced coffee.

Yeah.

I should maybe let's a dilemma. Yeah, that's fair.

We'll talk a little. Let's talk a little bit about cold brew. So for those of you who just kind of order the coffee and don't know iced coffee is when you brew coffee, American style, which is when you put the hot water over the grounds and make a big pot of it. And then you cool it off or pour it directly over ice. My grandpa, when I was like in middle school, I went and stayed with my grandparents for summer and we went.

Tiffany (57:04)
Okay.

Kat (57:24)
to IHOP and my grandpa, it was like he was blowing the waitress's minds. He was like, can I have a cup of coffee and two cups, two glasses of ice? And they'd be like, what? And then he would get the cup of coffee and pour it over the ice and then pour it over the other ice and he'd have an iced coffee. But yes, that waters it down. Yes, my grand, my grandfather invented iced coffee in the 1990s. Yeah. But if you, I mean, we, when we would make it in our coffee shop in

Tiffany (57:41)
Wow, that's so funny. huh. Yeah, I was going to say that he's ahead of his time for sure.

Kat (57:54)
⁓ DC, it would, we would brew the coffee and then put that pot of coffee in the freezer to cool it off, to make ice coffee. Like it, that is not so cold brew. way cold brew works is you have to have a different grind on the beans. That's one aspect of it. and probably a different kind of beans than just normal coffee beans. Yeah. Yeah. You just.

Tiffany (58:01)
⁓ interesting.

Mm-hmm.

We used espresso beans in ours and it was so freaking good.

Kat (58:23)
grind the coffee, pour water on it and store it in the fridge. And then basically like shake it when you remember it and you let it sit there for like three days. And then you strain the brew off of the beans and it's much more concentrated than a brewed regular brewed coffee. And you're supposed to use a little bit of it and dilute it, which a lot of people don't realize when you buy those like jugs of cold brew from the grocery store.

Tiffany (58:52)
Mm-hmm.

Kat (58:53)
You're supposed to use an ounce of it and then dilute it with water or milk. So if you are drinking straight cold brew, but it depends on the brand. Some of them are pre diluted.

Tiffany (58:56)
Yeah, depends on how it's made

too, because at Filter we would just drink it over ice and it was so good. But then when we make it at home, it's just too freaking strong. And sometimes Starbucks even, have to add water. Because you can tell that the recipe kind of changes. So yeah, it just depends on intense it is. Sometimes it's too much, so I add some water.

Kat (59:09)
Yeah, you have to delete it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I didn't look this up to verify it, but my understanding is that the way Swiss water decaffeination works, okay, is that

They soak coffee beans in water, right? And the thing is that water can absorb a certain amount of flavor from coffee, but it has an unlimited capacity to soak up caffeine. So what they will do is soak a batch of beans in water. Yeah, don't, yeah, whole beans.

Tiffany (59:42)
Mm-hmm.

whole beans I'm Interesting.

Kat (1:00:08)
Toss those beans, put a new batch of beans in, and it'll soak up the caffeine, but not the flavor, because it's gotten to the capacity for how much. that batch of water that originally soaked up that, so, and that's how they, that's Swiss water process for decaffeination, from my understanding of it. I'm sure someone's gonna be like, but that's why cold brew is so much stronger, is because

Tiffany (1:00:23)
Whoa.

That is so interesting.

Kat (1:00:37)
Water has an almost unlimited capacity to soak up caffeine. So you're sitting coffee, you know, coffee grounds and water for three days. It's gonna be pretty intense. all that caffeine is going to be in that water. So yeah.

Tiffany (1:00:40)
Ha.

that all that capping's out for sure. That's so interesting. Yeah,

yeah, it'll give you a massive kick.

Kat (1:01:00)
I,

if I can't drink cold brew, I will just, it doesn't make me anxious. Like sometimes if you drink certain coffees give you like the jitters. I will, if I drink a 12 ounce cold brew, I will just be lying awake at night like mellow. But I'm like, why am I not asleep? I don't get heart palpitations. I'm just like, just not going to sleep.

Tiffany (1:01:03)
I'm not surprised if it's, if you're sensitive.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah

You're right,

it does do that. Yeah, I don't have the sleeping problem so much, ⁓ no, it's not like a crazy jittery. Yeah, that's interesting. That's funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so funny.

Kat (1:01:29)
Yeah.

Right, you're just awake. So, but that's that's cold brew. Okay.

I knew this was gonna be a long episode. The other thing that has come about is mushroom coffee.

Tiffany (1:01:46)
I know.

I know I thought, blech, okay.

Kat (1:01:54)
So they make a lot of claims about mushroom coffee. There's a couple different brands of it. It's a new fad. I haven't tried it. I don't know how it tastes. Well, with coffee flavoring, I guess they add caffeine to it because I don't think mushrooms are naturally caffeinated. ⁓ Apparently, people who make it claims it supports more sustainable agriculture, which is like almost everybody in the world is like, we just grew mushrooms and ate mushrooms instead of meat.

Tiffany (1:02:00)
Mmm. Like mushrooms.

⁓ I didn't think about that, yeah.

Kat (1:02:25)
better off as a species, which, you know, might be true on some level. I don't think we're quite ready for that. But again, coffee is a monoculture, which is a problem that we've discussed. ⁓ Mushrooms promote biodiversity, small scale farming, ethical practices, etc. Also, mushroom coffee has less caffeine and less acidity, and they claim it has increased antioxidants. I don't think anybody's done like

Tiffany (1:02:38)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Right.

Kat (1:02:54)
serious studies on this. couldn't find real scientific papers on this just from a... It's also much more expensive. Because of all those reasons. It's small scale. It's so... If you wanna be... I feel maybe we should do whole episode on mushroom coffee and give it a granola rating. Because I'm pretty skeptical about it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. We'll give it a whirl. Then we can do some real research on it. But that's, I mean, if...

Tiffany (1:02:57)
huh. Marketing. Okay.

Yeah.

⁓ that would be fun. I want to try it too.

All right, we have

two ideas. What was the other one? We got to figure it next season. Yeah.

Kat (1:03:24)
Write it down!

Somebody remind us, we'll listen to this later.

So I don't think we're going to be forced into drinking mushroom coffee anytime soon. I do think coffee is going to become more of a luxury item, which could lead to rioting in the United States. ⁓ A large Aventi latte at Starbucks is already like $7, which is insane to me. ⁓ I don't know how much more money Starbucks can squeeze out of the American population.

Tiffany (1:03:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Kat (1:03:58)
⁓ so we'll see. ⁓ but people love their coffee and I love coffee. And in spite of stomach ulcers and increasing prices I am having and it, well, yeah, tonight's going to be a fun one.

Tiffany (1:04:10)
and insomnia.

⁓

man. Yeah.

Kat (1:04:18)
And it'll wear off I'll be fine, but

⁓ I don't think most of us are willing to give it up anytime soon. So just As we always say be mindful and make the choices that you can make ⁓ For your lifestyle and your conscience All right, so there's the joy of coffee I Love it. I only had like three pages of research usually our 45 minute episodes are like six pages and this went on for like

Tiffany (1:04:24)
Right.

Mm-hmm. I like it. Very good. Yay! That was quite joyful.

Yes.

Kat (1:04:47)
20 minutes longer than we normally go. I know. Maybe it's the espresso. my God, I love coffee. Yeah. So I could talk about coffee a lot. Yeah. Awesome. All right. I know that's the thing, especially if you've worked in a coffee shop, you learn all this stuff and

Tiffany (1:04:48)
I am so not surprised. Maybe. Yeah, we're both like, and then this and then that and then this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's fun. I forgot how much I know. I'm like, yeah, I do know like some things. Yeah. Uh-huh.

Kat (1:05:09)
some of it's probably apocryphal, but it's in there. That's what I believe. So yeah. All right.

Tiffany (1:05:11)
Yeah. huh. Yes, totally. Cool.

Kat (1:05:17)
So next week, the joy of

Tiffany (1:05:19)
Yeah.

Kat (1:05:19)
buying local. Tell us more, Tiffany.

Tiffany (1:05:22)
Yeah, so we're going to talk about, yeah, I wanted to get into like

you know, like shopping small, but I want it to be more than shopping because yeah, cause I was like, I'm to say buying local instead of shopping local because it doesn't, you don't have to go buy shit necessarily. You can, but you can also buy experiences and such. So yeah, I'm going to talk about a bunch of my like very joyful local experiences that I've had recently. Yeah. It's going to be cool. All right. Where can people find us?

Kat (1:05:35)
I think that's fair.

Right.

⁓ excellent.

I can't wait. Awesome.

Well, we are on Instagram at Greening Up My Act. are on Patreon at Greening Up My Act. $5 a month, less than your daily latte or once a week latte. Yes. Especially if you're shopping at Starbucks. But yeah, come find us, say hello, let us know about your favorite coffee drink, favorite coffee recipes. Awesome. We'll see you next week.

Tiffany (1:06:08)
There you go. Significantly less.

Yeah.

Yes, please. All right, cool.

All right. Have a good one. Bye.

Kat (1:06:23)
YouTube, bye!


People on this episode

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Kat Cox

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Tiffany Verbeck

Co-host