We’re totally about to “nerd” out on the Olympics.

Name dropping like Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt has been going on for weeks and now we have begun arguing about which events are best.  Beach volleyball advocates have been going at it with basketball fans while the gymnastics supporters refuse to talk to the swimming/diving peeps.

We have even been arguing over which office pet would do best in the Summer Olympics.

Our excessive enthusiasm is about to work in your favor.  We are celebrating the 2012 Summer Olympics with a slew of fun stuff coming your way. 

The games run July 27th thru August 12th – everyday during the games we will be celebrating on Facebook.  Look for:

• Coupon codes like the $5 off promo in the pic above
• Free coffee and tea giveaways
• Exclusive Olympic-themed flavors
• More fun prizes and surprises!

Make sure you like us on Facebook and check our page every day so you don’t miss out.  We are even giving away prizes for answering Olympic trivia as we anxiously wait for the Opening Ceremony.

Many of our Facebook friends have been asking about the Ekobrew K-Cup reusable filter.  One of the big questions is whether or not they’re easy to clean.  The makers of Ekobrew use its ability to be quickly cleaned as one of its main selling points, but we weren’t going to simply take their word for it — We put it to the test.

The first thing we noticed is that the bottom of the Ekobrew has no cracks, crevices or smalls spaces for wet grinds to get crammed in, trapped forever.  This is very different from other brands we tested – brands that left us rinsing, re-rinsing, and rinsing some more.  After all, the little cups are too small to scrub so we had to scrape the grinds out of the cracks with a fork like some sorta early primate that just learned to use tools.

Next we filled our Ekobrew and made a quick cup of coffee on our office Keurig (yes, even we have a Keurig but if you call us out on it we will claim it’s only for research purposes).  The photo below is the Ekobrew immediately after brewing, filled with wet grinds.

Step 1 to cleaning the Ekobrew: 1 quick tap over the trash (or storage container if you reuse your spent grinds for  composting) to get the majority of the grinds out.

As you can see, there is a layer of grinds still on the bottom.  Worried?  Don’t be…

Step 2: Rinse.  I held the Ekobrew under the faucet while Marcie timed me.  I let the water fall down into the cup first, then turned it around a few times letting the water flow through the mesh on the sides and bottom of the cup.  The filter was completely clean after 25.5 seconds.

Completely clean in under 30 seconds with no scrubbing or scraping with make-shift tools necessary.  That’s not too bad, especially if you’re like me in the morning –  Before I get that first cup of coffee I make early primates look like Einstein.

I know it was long time ago , but we had a Chili cook off back in October and boy was it fun! We had a fixins’ bar with white cheddar cheese, sliced avacado, green onions, sour cream, fresh limes, Fritos and tortilla chips!

This is the chili that took the win. Mike, our flavor czar, made a General Tso’s chili, it was awesome. Sweet, spicy and just plain amazing.

Anthony  made a BBQ vegetarian chili. It had a ton of layered flavors and didn’t taste a thing like it was vegetarian.

Niki made a pumpkin chili! She used pumpkin beer, our own pumpkin spice coffee and pumpkin puree. This is one of the chili’s that was empty at the end of the contest.

Diane made a white grilled chicken chili that was really tasty…her’s went super fast.

Here is Meg’s Vegan Bulgar Wheat Chili. It was chock full of veggies and super spicy. Meg made so much chili it overflowed her crock pot!

Josh made his Dad’s famous chili. This one was emptied in no time.

David who made chili for the first time ever made a red chicken chili.

Here is Molly’s tofu chili…she was not very happy with the results…since it came out more like a soup.

Marcie made a traditional beef chili using beer, coco and Dark Costa Rican.

In August, I received a delightful email from an enthusiastic coffee loving customer. Verlyn has been our customer since 2006 and enjoys taking our single-origin coffees and creating his own blends at home. His endeavor at the time he wrote to me was developing a blend similar to our true Mocha Java coffee. To quote: (more…)