For your education and amusement, I present this infographic of 31 popular coffee drinks from around the world. It’s like a Disneyland exhibit for coffee without the tasting, which effectively ruins it.

Did you know that Americans rank 12th in coffee consumption around the world? The Netherlands is first, drinking daily 2.4 cups per capita. The U.S. ekes by at just under 1 cup a day. What’s with that?

Stop the presses! These so-called “cups of coffee” may not be of uniform size. This article reports Sweden and Norway as consuming more milligrams of coffee than The Netherlands. Where is the government to approve these reports before they go out? This is where freedom of the press gets us, friends. It’s got to stop.

Back to coffee, Seattle has the most coffee shops per capita of any U.S. city. They have 1,640. The San Francisco area has 1,379, placing it twelfth. Who is in second place? Anchorage with 172 shops and few people than most. Portland, Oregon is third with 876. (These are 2011 figures.)

Because Americans believe in beverage liberty.

Gracy Olmstead writes about American coffee-drinking habits, noting that some drink what they drink as a status symbol. My $5 cafe is better than your pitiful homebrew, or words to that effect. One cultural observer says we have taken to coffee like fans of sports, picking a favorite team and arguing with others over brand names and techniques.

She also links to an article on putting butter in your coffee: “You might find it in Singapore, too, where coffee beans (usually of a lower quality) are stir-fried with butter in a wok before being strained through a filter into your cup. These morning drinks are said to provide energy throughout your day, and the same was touted about the butter coffee I was about to order — something that will not only rev up my body and mind, but keep me full all morning.”

People, I tell you. If I see someone put low-fat butter in their coffee as a way to hold to some kind of diet, I may not be able to restrain myself.

Fair trade labeling is intended to assure you that the coffee or other product you are buying has been certified as a quality product made in an environment that respects its workers. Usually bean farmers are poor, so if you believe you are helping them earn a “fair” or better-than-market wage, then you feel good about yourself.

But this book, The Fair Trade Scandal, argues that helping the poor isn’t the result, particularly in Africa. “The growth in sales for fair trade products has been dramatic in recent years,” it says, “but most of the benefit has accrued to the already wealthy merchandisers at the top of the value chain rather than to the poor producers at the bottom.” The author, Ndongo Sylla, is a researcher for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

The Acton Institute blog touches on the problems with fair trade. “In some cases,” Sarah Stanley writes, “fair trade growers have been known to sell lower quality crops in the fair trade market and then sell higher quality coffee beans in the non-fair trade market for a competitive price. A guaranteed price means that growers do not have to guarantee quality.”

One solution for coffee drinkers is to support active business owners, like Ryan Knapp of Madcap Coffee.

“We have been intentional on the fact that we are not going to have a label to say what our coffee is as much as we are going to be a brand that is committed to great business practices.” He goes on, “Fair trade, a certification doesn’t really tell the whole story…Fair Trade isn’t the best option always for producers.” What is the best option for producers? According to Knapp, “the big piece of it is the transparency aspect and knowing exactly where our dollar is going and being able to trace that down to people that are actually growing the coffee, farming the coffee.”

High volume Starbucks stores are blocking select electric outlets in order to move sedentary laptop users out of the store. You know the type. Perhaps, you are the type. You take your laptop to the coffee shop, pay too much for something that tastes so good, and take up a chair for the rest of the morning. In some New York Starbucks, they would love for you to move on down the road.

Something has been missing from our blog lately, and I’ve just remembered what it is. We need some coffee news. World coffee supplies are beginning to suffer. In Columbia, farmers are having a harder time producing quality coffee. Weather patterns have not cooperated.

And now for something completely different: a Tequila commercial.

This is thought-provoking. Is liberty or morality improved by using it, by thinking through your choices instead of following convention?

Burger King of Canada and USA will begin selling Seattle’s Best Coffee in their restaurants this fall. The Canadians will get the deal a month or so before the Americans will, because, let’s face it, Canadians need a stimulus that will rouse them out of the years of malaise that has been dragging their country down. Their coffee is terrible. I’ve never tasted it myself, because it’s terrible.

So Burger King has looked across the street at McDonald’s McCafe, which has been offering Newman’s Own Coffee for a few years, hears the rattling whistle of the espresso being made, and believes it needs to expand its beverage line. This reminds me of a Consumer Reports test that ranked McDonald’s coffee over Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, and Burger King. Did anyone go to Burger King for good tasting coffee back then? Now, they may have that option and be able to choose from unique flavors like Grease Fried Bean, The King’s Flamer, and Whopper Cafe Grande.

BTW, Burger King wanted to punish their customers for their loyalty and brand devotion, so they took the Whopper off the menu for a couple days. Naturally, they recorded the reactions.

Gourmet coffee companies may have lesson to learn from the fast food giants’ coffee decision, that their brew is a bit too pricey. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports McDonald’s has taken marketshare away from specialty coffee stores by offering less expensive drinks.

Will BK gain ground in the fast food market from McDonald’s with their new coffee options? Maybe. In the meantime, McDonald’s will begin offering fruit smoothies.

Caribou Coffee plans to be “the first U.S. coffee chain to commit to buying coffee grown only under sustainable farming practices developed by the Rainforest Alliance.” The Rainforest Alliance is a non-profit organization that works with farms to improve their crops and farming practices.

I hope they charge very little for certifying a farm. I can understand the cost for teaching farmers how to improve their work, but to merely put the Rainforest Alliance stamp of approval on a crop shouldn’t cost the farmer much, if anything. The farmers are barely making a living as it is, aren’t they? Why burden them to have their work approved by Americans?