bluehouse Weblog

In order to offer our customers better quality and healthier items we are discontinuing our flavored drip coffee. There’s been a lot of debate at bluehouse about this change because we know some of our customers (and staff) love flavored brews. We’re convinced this is a good change because:

* Conventional coffee flavorings are made of artificial flavor compounds and solvents, and we want to promote food and drinks that do not rely on artificial elements to enhance or change their flavor, We don’t think there is anything wrong with chemicals (Better Living Through Chemistry!) but we prefer to advocate for products that are as close as possible to their natural state

* We tried organic coffee flavors but found that all they did was increase the price of the coffee, not the flavor

* Flavored coffees contaminate the taste of the regular coffees that we brew. We are proud of the coffees that we select for our customers and want to make sure you enjoy the best product our roaster offers

* Why take our awesome organic, shade grown and fair trade coffees and dump a bunch of chemicals on them?

With flavored coffee out of the way, here’s what we are excited to offer you:

* Miss your flavored coffee? Through March 9th just ask and we’ll put a shot of regular or sugar-free flavored syrup in your drip coffee. This does not include au laits, espresso drinks, chai or hot chocolate.

* An increased variety of regular coffees, selected to offer a darker and lighter roast every day, that expose our customers to truly delicious coffee and espresso

* Quality flavored syrups to add to your drip coffee or espresso drinks

* Exploring natural ways to flavor coffee with spices or other ingredients (such as vanilla, cinnamon or other ingredients)

Further Reading:

Coffeereview.com has a number of posts about flavored coffee:
http://www.coffeereview.com/reference.cfm?ID=102

Answers.com gives a rough outline of the coffee flavoring process:
http://www.answers.com/topic/flavored-coffee-bean

INeedCoffee.com gives a list of natural ways to flavor coffee:
http://www.ineedcoffee.com/07/flavored-coffee/

Celebrate!

MLA Arts Brief Launch Party

presented by Smalltimore events

Please join us on Thursday, Feb 21st from 6-9 pm at Lemongrass and Tsunami (1300 Bank Street, Baltimore) to celebrate the inaugural issue of MLA Arts Brief with special guest James Earl Reid (this issue’s featured artist). Drink specials and appetizers provided by Lemongrass, Tsunami, and Corona

To attend, please RSVP to smalltimoreevents@gmail.com

Founded in 1985, Maryland Lawyers for the Arts provides pro bono legal assistance to income-eligible artists and arts organizations, and educational workshops and seminars on topics affecting artists.

Are you an artist with a legal issue? To find out if you qualify for pro bono legal services, visit www.mdartslaw.org or call (410) 752-1633.

A quote from the Arts Brief:

Through Arts Brief, we hope to educate, entertain, and inform both the arts community and the legal community about important and/or interesting legal issues, and to let everyone know what MLA has been and will be doing. Whether you are an attorney interested in arts issues or an artist interested in legal issues, Arts Brief is for you. We’ll be covering legal developments in all the major disciplines — visual arts, filmmaking, writing, and music — as well as emerging arts like gaming and digital video — so even if you don’t find your genre in this issue, keep checking back for articles and events affecting YOU. — Michael Yang, President

As I am currently on a business trip, the first I heard of the cancellation of WYPR’s “Steiner Show” was when the emails from infuriated customers started coming in. As a long-time supporter of that public radio station, bluehouse is a natural target for that outrage.

Although we currently are not running a campaign with WYPR, we were planning on a large spring purchase, and they were kind enough to leave our banner and logo on their site in the interim.

I would like our faithful customers and Mr. Steiner’s faithful listeners to know that I have asked for our banner to be removed and informed our rep not only of our displeasure in this development, but also that we will not be going forward with our planned sponsorship, which I had intended to begin next month.

Mr. Steiner is a Baltimore institution and provided a daily public service that educated, provoked, and delighted thousands of people. He will be missed by bluehouse, and we appreciate the time our customers have taken to share with us their views on this subject.

–David Buscher, proprietor