Biodiesel From Coffee Grounds

We often use Vournas Coffee Trading for a green coffee source because they carry some of the regional coffees we use in our espresso. I was on their website to see if they had a certain coffee I was looking for and I discovered their news section. They had some interesting information that I had never heard before in my seven years in the industry. Here is an article on making biodiesel from spent coffee grounds I found intriguing:

Would you believe it if I told you that researchers reported today that waste coffee grounds can provide a cheap, abundant, and environmentally friendly source of biodiesel fuel for powering our cars and trucks? It is true. In a new study released today, researchers reported that spent coffee grounds contain between 11 to 20 percent oil by weight, which is about as much as traditional biodiesel sources such as palm and soybean oils.

They postulate that the spent coffee grounds could potentially add 340,000,000 gallons of biodiesel to the world's fuel supply. The scientists collected spent grounds from a multinational coffeehouse chain and separated the oil. They then utilized an inexpensive process to convert 100% of the oil into biodiesel. The resulting fuel actually smells like coffee and has an advantage over traditional bio-fuels in that it is is more stable due to its high antioxidant content. And, solids left over from the conversion process can actually be converted into ethanol!

Who knew that coffee could be so good for the environment and taste so wonderful. Encouraging news for our world.

Coffee Fest Seattle

Corey was at Coffee Fest Seattle last weekend (September 12-14) and he said it was interesting to see it from a consumers point of view. Previously he had been there as a vendor with another company. He felt it was really sparse this year and some booths shouldn't have even been allowed to display like the ones selling jewelry. Really?! Jewelry!? What does that have to do with coffee? I find it amazing what the independent coffee house will get distracted with. So many are trying so hard to generate income they forget what they are there for in the first place, coffee. Many independent owners get so distracted with other things like smoothies, blended drinks, and god forbid a lunch menu that they throw the one thing by the wayside that got them there in the first place the coffee! I've had far too many horrible espresso drinks with a decent sandwich to count, people shouldn't come to your coffee house for lunch, they should come for the espresso.

That's what we're trying to help the independent owner with, getting their customer to come to them because they have great espresso ... 9 bar espresso! We realize it's more than a great espresso roast it has a lot to do with properly trained baristas and great customer service but we want to help them with that too.

So here we are just beginning the exciting part of the journey we have our toll free number now and I have a landing page set up for our website. Corey is at the roasting facility right now, he's actually waiting on UPS to deliver our one pound retail bags so he can bag what he roasted yesterday. We're still trying to figure out the label sizes, we really should have gotten these ordered Monday but that's the way it usually goes when your a small business owner trying to take care of everything yourselves. That's all I got for now. I'll be back to give you an update on how the launch of our retail packaging goes with our wholesale clients.