 |
 |
|
|
|
Sections
WritersRSS / Newsletter
SearchFriends of
|
Home / Cafe Culture / SweetMarias.comThis review was from December 1999.
Name: Sweet Maria's Home Coffee Roasting Supplies About The AwardThe motivation for creating INeedCoffee.com earlier this year was that most coffee web sites suck. Since 1994, I've been searching the web looking for a great coffee resource that was easy to navigate. For every decent page, there would be fifty that send you reaching for the back button on your browser before the page was even finished loading. It sort of irked me that a great beverage such as coffee had such crappy web sites. Meanwhile, half-drunk beer drinkers were creating great web sites dedicated to their beverage of choice. Beer drinkers could peruse places like RealBeer.com that were slick, informative, and easy to navigate. Meanwhile the best that sober coffee fanatics can churn out is twelve pages of bloated FrontPage templates to deliver one paragraph of quality information. However, there are a few examples of coffee web sites that excel at providing coffee knowledge and/or entertainment. INeedCoffee will give a Coffee Site of The Month award to those sites that best complement the coffee experience. Home RoastingI can't add up the number of times I've heard: "So you actually roast the coffee in your home?" When I explain the simple yet elegant art of home roasting they look amazed as if I had just reveled the secret of a magic trick that always had them puzzled. This is where Sweet Maria's fits into the equation. They are a business that caters to the home roaster. They sell green beans, coffee roasting equipment and coffee books from their shop in Columbus, Ohio via a secured server on their web site.
The Site ItselfThis site excels on providing extensive information to the home roaster. Every bean sold is given a detailed cupping review along with hints on how to roast it. Speaking personally, this has been a tremendous asset to my home roasting. Each piece of equipment has a full write up. The site also provides many articles and past newsletters to read. And if you still have questions, Sweet Maria's hosts a mailing list for home roasters. Post a question or just scan the posts for valuable information. One caveat: before going into SweetMarias.com one should have a basic knowledge of home roasting. After reading INeedCoffee's tutorial How to Home Roast, going through SweetMarias.com will be more enjoyable and you'll get more out of the experience. The only major weakness of the site is that it has is several spelling errors; but this is forgivable given the vast amount of information available to the home roaster. If you have an interest in home roasting, bookmark SweetMarias.com, the December 1999 winner of the INeedCoffee Site of The Month. |
