I know this might seem like a strange time of year to bring in Kona, but in my mind it made sense.

I don't know how many of you have noticed, but we've always put our spent coffee grounds in bags and put them out by the door for you to take. You might have wondered what in the world someone would do with used coffee grounds. Well, I'm here to tell you.

There are several things I've heard of people doing with them, and I'll tell you and let you decide for yourselves.

The Tulsa Zoo used to come get the grounds because they do educational classes for kids and they told me it's easy to make fake animal poop out of coffee grounds. Interesting.

We did a story a while back on AA Cafe about a scientist developing a fuel from spent coffee grounds that could run an automobile.

My girlfriend recently gave me an article about various things to do with the spent grounds, and here are a few of the suggestions:
- Dye stuff brown (Incidentally, I used a Guatemalan coffee to stain the 8-foot wood table in the DoubleShot.)
- Use the abrasive, acidic nature of spent grounds to clean pans and dishes
- Supposedly if you put them around your garden, it will keep cats out of your plants (buy my cat, The General Sterling Price, loves drinking the last few sips of my americanos and he doesn't seem the least bit averse to my own coffee odor)
- Dry them and put them in pantyhose or whatever and hang them around smelly places. Coffee absorbs odors really well. That's one reason you need to keep your unused coffee beans sealed up and away from odors.
- Supposedly it's good for your hair. They recommend rubbing the grounds into your hair between shampooing and conditioning. (Hair salons?)

And of course, the thing spent coffee grounds are most used for is fertilizer for the garden. I don't have a garden, but a lot of our customers do and they tell me about the success they have using the coffee grounds. Below is a letter from Daniel Myers on the subject. I thought you'd get a kick out of it.

Brian:
I wanted to let you know that Doubleshot Coffee Company’s Ambergris Espresso grounds are superior to Starbucks© grounds in my garden. I am more than happy to write this letter because I’ve never had the results in production or soil augmentation before I started using your Espresso. And, I can prove it!
Last year, I began rehabilitating an old flower bed that was mostly clay soil and overgrown with weeds. I’ve known for years that spent Espresso grounds make the best soil additive and mulch for clay soils but really only had one choice for spent Espresso; that is until last May when I noticed you were giving away spent Ambergris Espresso grounds. I was decidedly curious, so I tried a bag. I liked it so much, that I decided to test head-to-head both SBUX and Ambergris in a test plot. The plot was divided into two 12” by 30” beds; one for each Espresso. Each bed had the same Canna Tropicana flowers, same added top soils, same supplemental fertilizer, and the same amounts sun & water. Then I rated both Espressos’ beds on the following categories:
1. Break down Clay into humus
2. Growth
3. Prevention of weeds and insects
I really was surprised to see how easy Ambergris worked into the ground, much easier than SBUX, and made a rich ‘Tea’ when watered. The result was a faster breakdown of clay into organic matter and humus. By Mid-August, I had broken almost 2” of clay with rich humus in the Ambergris bed. The SBUX had only ½”. This was a big surprise. I was more surprised at the rate of growth.
On the average, the Ambergris bed produced 6 feet, 2 inches tall Cannas’; the SBUX produced only an average of 5 feet, 10 inches of growth. Now in all fairness, there was one area the SBUX did exceed.
SBUX killed every weed and insect in its test bed. Not even stubborn weeds could survive, only dwindling to tiny, easily pulled springs. In fact, if the Canna leaves touched the SBUX Espresso they would burn a hole completely through the Canna. Nor did any insect, including the giant grasshoppers which I endure each August, dared to eat from the Canna’s leaves in this bed. It might have worked too well. For when I uncovered the SBUX bed this spring to inspect the roots on the bulbs, I found the bulbs had completely disintegrated.
I’m not sure if gardening falls into your plan for World Coffee Domination, but it might be a Third Colum action. I know I was sold on Ambergris Espresso as eminently drinkable, but now as ambrosia for my garden too.
Thank you,
Daniel Myers…

There. Now don't you want to come down here and pick up some spent grounds? We put them out about every day. And now you know what to do with them.

It's raining again. In torrents. I'm sure the plants are loving it; the rain making everything green and healthy. We want to make everything green and healthy too. That's why we've started the DoubleShot Green Initiative, to make the DoubleShot more environmentally sensitive and to make it easier for you to be "green."

We allow you to do a number of things to "reduce your carbon footprint." We're not really sure how our footprints became carbonized in the first place. But here's what we've come up with so far to help out:
Drink coffee in ceramic instead of paper to-go cups.
Re-use your paper cup (maybe plant seedlings in it because they don't last too long when you keep refilling with coffee) or buy a travel cup. We have great travel cups for sale at the DoubleShot or bring your own.
We are now recycling paper at the DoubleShot, so when you're done with the news, throw it in the "Recycle" box. (Thanks to Christie for making this happen.)
You can bring your one-pound or half-pound bags back in when you buy more coffee beans and we'll refill them.
We bag up our spent coffee grounds for you to take and use in your garden.
You probably throw away a cup sleeve every day. If you save it, you can bring it back and use it again. Or if, like Patrick Fox, you have a huge pile of cup sleeves sitting around your office, bring them in and we'll re-use them all.
I moved the bike rack inside the building. It's hard to ride your bike to work when it rains every day, but when you do you can park inside. No worries about someone stealing or messing with your bike.
You know all those jute coffee bags full of unroasted coffee beans that are piled around the roaster? Well, my mom is taking the empty ones home and making them into really nice, sturdy, lined shopping bags. Buy one and the next time you go to the grocery store you won't have to bother with the pesky "paper or plastic?" flimsy, disposable bags.

I'm a conservationist, I guess. I love nature and the wilderness. I regret that we don't have the un-domesticated lands that the great explorers of our country walked through. That our wild animals are all but extinct. That even the small patches of "wilderness" we have left (like Turkey Mountain), our government bureaucracy wants to "improve." LEAVE IT ALONE!
Anyway, when I was in college I was called a "bleeding heart liberal" for my stand on nature and conservation. That made me laugh. Call it what you will, but do your part to help.

Don't be an EARTH HATER!

That's right, I got my first record company contract recently with RCA.

No, it's not for my melodic whistling. Or my hoof-beat belly rhythms. Not even for the brilliant, off-beat guitar-backed songs I made up at the end of the last DoubleShot birthday party.

It's for DoubleShot Coffee!

There's a guy named Landon Pigg who recently recorded an album called "Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop." Someone at RCA decided it might be cool to use coffee as a promo for the album, and contacted Mark Prince at coffeegeek.com, who recommended little old me for the job. Things worked out, and so far we've roasted and packed (by hand) 800 quarter-pound bags of coffee, which RCA is slapping Landon Pigg stickers on. Pretty cool.

So you should buy the Landon Pigg album. I think you'll like it.
Hopefully RCA will keep buying coffee from us. And maybe we can talk them into coming here to record a music video or something.

See... our coffee is famous!

And the feeling is mutual.  My final words to the electric company at midnight last night were "Thanks for all your help.  You SUCK."  And then I sat down and tried to figure out how I could start a competing electric company or at least get off their stupid electric "service."