Green Mountain Coffee / Keurig® has released the list of cuts that will soon be made to the lineup of k-cups® available to users of the Keurig® single cup coffee brewing system. Green Mountain Coffee now owns all of it’s former roasting partners and so it makes sense to cut back on some of the duplicate products available in the various product lines. Following is a list of products destined for the chopping block by the end of this year. The good news is , you can still get many of these products at a discounted price (before they disappear for good) from our online store located at: www.coffeehouseexpress.com . Supply of these products are limited and won’t last long. Don’t miss out on getting that last cup of one of these fine coffees.

• Caribou French Roast
• Caribou Sumatra Decaf
• Coffee People French Roast Decaf
• Diedrich Colombia Decaf
• Diedrich Variety Pack
• Diedrich Morning Edition
• Diedrich Sumatra
• Emerils Vanilla Bean Bam
• Gloria Jeans Chamomile Tea
• Gloria Jeans Pumpkin Spice
• Gloria Jeans Sleigh Ride
• Gloria Jeans Special Blend Decaf
• Gloria Jeans Tea Variety Pack
• Green Mountain Autumn Harvest Blend
• Green Mountain Holiday Blend
• Green Mountain Spring Revival
• Green Mountain Summer Safari
• Green Mountain Wicked Winter Blend
• Green Mountain Hazelnut Dark
• Green Mountain Heifer Hope Blend
• Green Mountain National Wildlife Blend
• Timothy’s Colombia Fair Trade Dorado
• Timothy’s Mexican Organic
• Tully’s Evergreen Blend
• Tully’s Full City Roast
• Tully’s Madison Blend
• Tully’s Sumatra

On Wednesday September 8th coffee prices hit a 13 year high, a whopping 41 percent increase in the last several months. What’s to blame? ABC News reports both an increasing global demand for coffee and a difficult growing season last year, especially in Colombia where the crop was down by 3 million bags. This Spring, commodity coffee prices were near $1.30 per pound, by September 8th it had made it’s way up to $1.95 per pound.

Consumers have begun to feel the hit, as retail coffee prices are up around 10 percent since June. Last month J.M. Smucker owner of the Folgers and Dunkin Donut coffee lines increased their prices 9 percent. September 7th Green Mountain Coffee Roaster announced a price increase effective October 11th on all of their k-cup portion pack coffees that will cost the consumer an additional 10 to 15 percent. Green Mountain Coffee also owns the Timothy’s World, Diedrich, Gloria Jeans, Tullys, Coffee People brands, and recently purchased Van Houtte.

Are consumers likely to abandon their beloved cup of java? If they are anything like me, I doubt it. While we all may grumble at the rising prices, coffee is treated as a necessary item to some, one that they are not quickly willing to part with.

Green Mountain Coffee roasters has announced it will buy Canadian coffee roaster Van Houtte for $890 million dollars, a move that will place the sole production and distribution of all Keurig K-cup portion packs under Green Mountain. Until now Green Mountain, who owns the Keurig Single cup coffee brewing technology, had a handful of independent roasters that licensed the technology to manufacture their own branded k-cups along with Green Mountain’s own line of K-cups. These roasters included Diedrich, Timothy’s World, and Tully’s to name a few. Over the last 2 years Green Mountain has purchased all of it’s licensees and now will have complete control of the Keurig and k-cup market.

The Keurig k-cup technology incorporates a specially designed single cup brewing machine and the portion pack or “k-cup” that will work only in the Keurig machine. Keurig manufactures 3 lines of brewers for the home, office and hotel markets.

Melitta is in the process of making some changes to both the look and name of their single cup coffee pod program. The pod program formerly known as the “One:One” or “Javapod” is now being transitioned into the new “European Indulgence” line. Melitta claims the changes will help control costs and enable them to be more flexible in adding additional products to the line in the future.

The new packaging will be black and feature a contemporary European style cafe scene, supporting the European Indulgence positioning. The product names are also going through some changes to improve communication to the customer. For example “Skip the Buzz” will now be “Breakfast Blend Decaf” and “French Kisses” will now be “Parisian Vanilla“. Although some of these names will change, the products will still remain the same. Not all pods will be getting new names, it looks like Melitta knew better then to mess around with the popular “Buzzworthy” and “Love at First Sip” pods.

Look for these changes to begin being phased in immediately and be complete by the end of the year.

Washington State patrol responded to a phone call on Thursday afternoon from a distressed motorist who believed that someone had planted explosives in his car. Traffic was stopped as Northbound lanes of Interstate 5 were closed while crews responded.

But State Trooper Keith Leary says that the object was nothing more than a container of ground coffee. Officials haven’t reported yet why the man through the coffee was a bomb, but it seems that it might be a good idea to look into the source of his suspicion.

While driving on Interstate 5, the man looked in his backseat and saw the unknown object. He quickly pulled to the side of the road and phoned the authorities, apparently telling them that he sometimes leaves his car unlocked and was worried that the object in his backseat might be an explosive.

The highway reopened later that afternoon–but it’s pretty weird that this guy thought ground coffee was a bomb.