Christmas Carols: The Good, The Bad, and the Festive

Christmas Carols: The Good, The Bad, and the Festive

An Unfiltered History of Vietnamese Coffee

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5 Cool Cafés Worth a Try in Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai, one of Thailand’s most fascinating cities, is home to a vibrant specialty-coffee scene, with many cafés and roasteriess often offering locally grown coffee. BY TANYA NANETTI SENIOR ONLINE CORRESPONDENT Featured photo by Tim Durgan via Unsplash With a population of 3 million, Chiang Mai is a little (by Asian standards) gem in northern […]


Is the World Barista Championship too exclusive & expensive for competitors?

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The 2023 Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide Has Landed

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Christmas Carols: The Good, The Bad, and the Festive

Understanding the Process: Double Fermentation

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Out Now: The February + March 2023 Issue

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We check in with the Cup of Excellence executive director to learn his current coffee-brewing habits. BY TANYA NANETTISENIOR ONLINE CORRESPONDENT Featured photo by Emre…

Christmas Carols: The Good, The Bad, and the Festive

Brewing at Home and On the Road with Darrin Daniel

We check in with the Cup of Excellence executive director to learn his current coffee-brewing habits. BY TANYA NANETTISENIOR ONLINE CORRESPONDENT Featured photo by Emre…


Girlsplaining Workshop Unites Women in Coffee in Quito, Ecuador

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Study Shines New Light on the Complex Arabica Coffee Genome

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Christmas Carols: The Good, The Bad, and the Festive

Christmas Carols: The Good, The Bad, and the Festive

minimum dose size?

Jan 31, 2024 |

I use the Hario switch to brew my coffee and am trying to reduce my caffeine consumption. Hence I would like to brew smaller cups of coffee. I am currently using 10g of coffee with 160g of water. (1:16 Ratio) I am wondering if there is a minimum amount of coffee...

Christmas Carols: The Good, The Bad, and the Festive

A few years ago on our Fueled By Death Show, Jeff and Dustin broke down the history, origins, and traditions surrounding the songs of the season—Christmas carols. (You can watch the full video below)

(Photo by Digital Vision)

It all started because in 2018 the song, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” made the news—people wanted the song to be banned. Not a new idea, yet at the height of the growing #MeToo movement the problematic nature of the song was brought into light once again.

The song was written in 1944 by songwriter Frank Loesser as a fun party song for his wife and their friends. However, throughout the years the song has been vilified because of the lyrics that could be interpreted as promoting rape culture. In 2018 there were calls made to a radio station in Cleveland to have the song pulled, but then many more calls came in to have the song put back into rotation!

Anyway, that got us thinking about Christmas carols in general so here are some fun facts we uncovered:

Religious Origins

The holiday of Christmas borrows a lot of its traditions from the early Pagan celebrations surrounding the Winter Solstice. Singing songs around the seasonal gatherings were adopted by the Christian church, and many of those early carols were religious in nature.

First Ever Carol

The first known Christmas carol was written in 1410 and was about Mary and Jesus meeting different people around Bethlehem. Only a fragment of this song remains in tact today.

Publishing Songs For Fame

Thanks to William Sandys and David Gilbert we still know many of the older Christmas carols today. They published “Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern” in 1833 and the book was a success. It was the first time in print for songs like “The First Noel” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”

Pop Goes Christmas

Well many of the more widely known Christmas carols are a few centuries old at this point, there have been a few songwriters that have made their mark on the holiday season. This includes “Last Christmas” by the group Wham! and the immensely popular “All I Want For Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey.

What are your favorite Christmas carols?

Watch the video from Fueled By Death Cast:

 

 

Christmas Carols: The Good, The Bad, and the Festive

Perfect Little Beans

Chinmey Hill Coffee uses specialty-grade beans with zero primary defects (such as black beans or sour beans) and less than five secondary defects (such as broken beans). This is important because primary defects will greatly affect the taste of the coffee. Having zero defects allows the coffee to be the most optimal flavor.

Window for Optimal Flavor

Chimney Hill Coffee ships our coffee the same day it was roasted, so you will receive it before it enters the window of optimal flavor.  This means you’ll never miss the opportunity to enjoy the coffee’s peak flavor.

Coffee Ratings

Coffee undergoes many scoring processes by professionals who achieved their Q Grader certification. Coffee is first graded when it’s green. If there are defects the coffee is determined to be “not-specialty grade”. For those coffees that pass green grading, they are sample roasted and cupped. (Cupping is the official term for critically tasting and scoring coffees. The official cupping form is standard worldwide, and where the 100-point scoring system comes from.) A coffee’s dry fragrance, wet aroma, flavor, aftertaste, body, acidity, balance, and overall impression are taken into consideration while uniformity issues and defects, will lower the overall score.

Specialty Coffee

Specialty coffee, coined by Erna Knutsen in 1974, refers to a coffee that receives a quality grading score of 80 percent or higher. While “premium” or “gourmet” seem like they’re synonymous with “specialty,” they simply are marketing terms with no defined standards. Specialty coffees are grown in specific and ideal micro-climates, and have distinctive and unique flavor profiles, with little to no defects.

Third-Wave Coffee

We’re currently in the third wave of coffee. The first wave of American coffee put pre-ground, vacuum-sealed cans in kitchens across America. The second wave started with the late ‘60s introduction of Peet’s coffee (by Alfred Peet) through the proliferation of Starbucks. The third wave of coffee focuses on origin transparency, nuanced flavors, and artisan roasting. The term “third wave” is synonymous with specialty coffee.

Christmas Carols: The Good, The Bad, and the Festive

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