The Cinnamon Cardamom Latte, blends the sweet delight of our house-made cinnamon and cardamom simple syrup with espresso and a blanket of warm, steamed milk. This syrup is so popular we created a recipe using it as a base. A heady combination of sugar and spice, the Cinnamon Cardamom Latte blends the best of both worlds to produce our most crave-able latte of the year.
Our Hot Honey Mocha is spicy enough to warm you up from head to toe on even the coldest days. We start with our own Kaldi’s Chocolate Sauce, then bring the heat with Mike’s Hot Honey, a chili infused honey, to concoct the warmest mocha you can imagine. Order one, grab a seat, and let each sip bring you closer to spring.
Long a barista favorite for snuggling up with a gentle, warm drink, we’ve put our own coffee twist on the London Fog. We created an even tastier version for you by infusing lavender and Firepot Tea’s Italian Grey tea into a simple syrup we make ourselves. Then, we add espresso and gently steamed milk to create a drink that’s cozier than a pair of warm slippers.
When you’re rushing through your morning and need to grab a quick snack, our scones are always the solid choice. The Hibiscus Orange Blackberry Scone combines the richness of blackberries with the zing of orange and balances those two notes with a mild, floral hibiscus.
Curled up in your favorite chair, there’s nothing more reassuring than the wafting aroma of cookies baking in the oven. We’ve done all the hard work and mixed you up a batch of our Snickerdoodle Cookies, baked them, and have them ready waiting for your craving!
If you loved our Strawberries and Almond muffin last spring, adding the Blackberry Muffin with Lemon Curd to your cafe order is a must. Made with the same delicious gluten-free batter that harkens to an angel food cake-like texture, this muffin is also stuffed with sweet lemon curd and plump, ripe blackberries. That sweet, tart combination topped with a crumbly streusel is guaranteed to make your morning sing.
Just a few bites of our Coconut Macaroon and your cares will melt away. Golden brown, with a crisp, flakey outside, yet chewy and rich on the inside, there’s nothing quite like a coconut macaroon to transport you to a warm, tropical paradise. Dipped in dark chocolate for a layer of decadent sweetness, we bet you’ll be back for one more tomorrow.
Whether you’re stopping at DeMun on your way to go sledding on Art Hill, on your way to work in Ellisville, filling an hour at the Depot between classes at Emory, or just spending the morning in your favorite neighborhood Kaldi’s, our seasonal drinks and bakery items are can’t miss treats this winter.
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As another year draws to an end, we like to look back and celebrate all the moments that brought us joy. Some made us proud, some were learning moments, but all were only possible because of your support. 2023 was an action packed year, filled with familiar and new faces, old relationships made stronger and new friendships forged.
As we begin planning and looking forward to 2024 with excitement, we hope you’ll look back with us fondly as we pick some of our favorite memories from the past year.
This time last year, we were looking forward to two big events: the arrival of our 3thiopia blend and the inaugural STLSC season kicking off in the spring. We tend to see everything through the lens of coffee around the roastery, so there was palpable excitement at being the official coffee of Saint Louis’s brand new MLS team. As our 3thiopia made its customary late January launch, our sales team and trainers worked to get the cafe at STLSC’s Pavilion store ready for opening day. Meanwhile, our marketing team was dreaming up a promotion unlike we’d ever put into action.
The Game Day Club Tumbler was so successful that we sold out 3 batches of this tumbler that gets you free drip coffee on STLSC game days. We can’t wait to see all the tumblers coming through our doors as STL City SC game days kick off again this coming spring.
Spring always puts a twinkle in our eye, as March 14th lets us put a spotlight on our hometown of Saint Louis, while April 1st gives us a chance to “launch” a fun gag on social media. 314 Day saw a custom sleeve and a limited release Fleur de Lis Blend.
Kaldi's Coffee and Gioia's Deli "Hot Salami Blend"
On April Fool’s Day, we collaborated with Gioia’s to send up coffee blends, with our new “Hot Salami Blend,” which was tempting enough to elicit a few “where can I buy this?” emails.
In Saint Louis, we opened our first cafe in Saint Charles, celebrating the drive-thru’s opening with a ribbon cutting and giveaways. And we also entered the final build phase of our cafe in Washington University’s Neuroscience Research Building cafe, just minutes from our Roastery, which opened a few months later.
Our new cafe in the NRB at the Wash U. Med Center
Across all of our brands, we raised over $40,000 for our team, and sent emergency supplies to Maui, while donating to local relief organizations on the ground as well.
On the mainland, we announced our merger with long time friends, Dancing Goats Coffee. We’ve known and loved the owners and operations of Dancing Goats for decades, and their presence in the Pacific Northwest and Atlanta dovetails perfectly with our Atlanta cafes and Saint Louis headquarters.
Dancing Goats Cafe at Ponce City Market in Atlanta
The year’s been a learning experience as our teams have worked more and more closely, traveling to each other's locations and having weekly calls in a mutually educational relationship.
The Baked Maple Pumpkin Latte
Fall and Winter bring some of our most cherished releases of the year, as the Baked Maple Pumpkin Latte signals the beginning of the festive season. This year, we celebrated our favorite holiday, National Coffee Day, with a special release we called the Irrational Coffee Day Blend.
Irrational Coffee Day Blend
Why the name? It was a flavor packed blend of 7 different coffees with wildly different processing methods from our long time friends at Gold Mountain Coffee in Nicaragua, blended with a prized Colombia Gesha from long time producing partners, the Imbachi family.
The coffees included another excellent coffee from our friends in Nicaragua at Gold Mountain Coffee, this time a mix of Caturra and Bourbon varieties from the farm of Don Roger and Isabel. Everyone who pre-ordered Spooky received a special 3oz pouch of the Nicaragua as a stand-alone bonus.
A tribute to the original, historical coffee blend Mocha Java, our ‘Tis the Season features a Sumatran and an Ethiopian coffee, wrapped in custom packaging from the Firecracker Press. This year's packaging reflects the many homes and places that make up our community, all being brought together by coffee.
Coffee is our passion, but drinking coffee alone is a lesser pursuit than sharing it with someone. The relationships we’ve built over the years, from coffee producers to our teams in Hawaii to every one of you who walk through our doors daily give our days meaning, fill us with joy, and drive us to pursue quality in everything we do. Creating new blends to share with you, collaborating with old friends to bring a smile to your lips, and forging new partnerships as we work to make the future that little bit better, all of these things make our 2023 a broad success.
We’ve got more great things in store for 2024 and can’t wait to see you in the new year.
]]>Our bags began with a dream: find a new color to represent Kaldi's Coffee. It can be difficult to describe yourself in a few words, but we have always identified our values and mission to align with words like timeless and classic with a modern bent. We sought a color that reflected those ideals.
Kaldi's Navy, as we now refer to it, is that color. Polished, distinguished, and all the while accessible, our new brand color welcomes you into our coffee, cafes, and vision with renewed energy. But it's not all seriousness — fun is one of our core values too! Kaldi's Navy serves as the foundation for a new slate of bright labels with big color pops. You'll see these new colors on our bags and other branding over the next few years.
A new bag meant new opportunities to describe our coffee. We are proud to introduce completely rethought and redesigned coffee labels on our new bags.
A coffee label should help you find a coffee you love quickly. Or, if you’re interested in something new, the labels should instill you with the confidence that you’re buying something you’ll enjoy. These ideals were paired with a desire to tell a story through design.
Here are a couple examples of how we did that:
We have always prioritized direct relationships with our coffees, but we know many of our guests prefer to buy products that have been certified as Fair Trade and organic. Our core products – FTO Birds & Bees and FTO Natural High – have been updated with green, leafy tones, serving as an easy visual indicator for these certifications.
By and large, we offer single origin coffees from four distinct growing regions: Africa, South America, Central America, and Asia-Pacific. Each of these regions has been given its own design. We hope this helps you pick out coffees faster while giving our offerings a unique identity on our webstore and shelves.
Over the years, Highlander Grogg has won devoted fans far and wide. We've always viewed Grogg as a gateway to specialty coffee, and know it offers a fun, little-bit-decadent beginning to a great day. With fun as our guide, we gave Grogg a whimsical and punchy update. We think it will stand out on your coffee counter as you smile and sip your syrupy start to the day.
You'll notice that the patterns on our new labels are big and bright. Some may even call them "loud", but we hope classically so. If you're a frequent guest in our cafes, you may have noticed our decorative wallpaper, especially in Kirkwood, DeMun, and Ellisville. We love these ornate and welcoming designs, and we wanted to take that feeling and connect it to the bag that you purchase. So, whether you're frequenting our cafes or buying a bag online for home, you're getting the same Kaldi's Coffee vibes.
Wallpaper, like that in our DeMun cafe, inspired our new bags
We're excited to reintroduce our core blends with brand new taste descriptions. For the first time, you'll see flavor notes for all of your favorite coffees. Our goal is to give you even more confidence in your selection while helping you develop your palate as you sip on the candy-bar-in-a-cup 700 (chocolate, caramel, red fruits, smooth) or our perfectly-balanced Cafe Kaldi (citrus, vanilla, subtle roast).
Along with new taste descriptions, all of our standard blends now showcase a roast level. Roast levels are the topic of much debate in coffee — for example, our "medium" roast may be someone else's light — but they can still be very useful when selecting from one roaster's offerings.
Our single origin coffees are usually our lightest roasts. With these as a foundational "1" on our scale of 7, we assigned roast levels to all of our other core coffees. Most fall between a "3" and a "5", with our darkest roast, Cafe Malta, getting full roast marks.
We love the educational aspect of this change, and we hope you feel inspired to try something new as you explore the vast and varied world of specialty coffee.
See our Blend Buying Guide for even more information.
Kaldi's Coffee has seen a lot of change since 1994, perhaps none bigger than our growing presence in Atlanta, Georgia. We've been on the campus of Emory University since 2016, and in the summer of 2023, we were proud to announce our merger with another storied coffee brand, Dancing Goats® Coffee.
This connection allowed us to begin roasting coffee in two locations for the first time. Guests that come into Kaldi's Coffee and Dancing Goats® Coffee locations in the southwest experience coffee roasted in our Atlanta, GA roastery, while all St. Louis, MO and kaldiscoffee.com web customers will continue to enjoy coffee roasted out of our St. Louis headquarters.
This ATL-STL connection has been an exciting change for us as we welcome new passionate team members and roasters, and offer more relationship-driven coffees to guests across the country.
The story of Kaldi, the legendary goatherder credited with finding the mystical properties of coffee, is one of discovery. As coffee has spread across the world in the intervening centuries, it has spurred on countless discoveries and connections. We connect to this history by making it our mission to help you open your day to new possibilities, whether it's through a warm welcome from a barista that changes the course of your day, or an unexpected flavor from an exceptional coffee from one of our producing partners.
The story of coffee goes back centuries, and each coffee's journey ends in your cup. It is our defining mission to make these final points of that journey exceptional for you, so you can carry on the legacy of discovery that coffee began all those years ago.
#followthegoat
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Each year as the holidays rush toward us, we like to pause and remember all of our wonderful neighbors. Each of our cafes is as unique as the faces that walk through our doors each day, and each neighborhood’s thriving community reminds us daily how much the people in our lives matter. Sharing moments with you throughout the year gives our cafes meaning, fulfills our purpose, and there’s no better time to share our gratitude than when the winter months bring us closer than ever.
Nothing warms you like wrapping your fingers around a hot Peppermint Mocha or a Peppermint Hot Chocolate for the kids. Our chocolate sauce provides the perfect amount of sweetness to balance the fresh nip of peppermint from our very own house-made peppermint simple syrup. You’ll be smiling again as you sip the swirl of whipped cream laid down on top of these delectable confections, which are spiked with crushed peppermint candy sprinkled across the top.
Available hot or iced
Our dark chocolate cake mixed with crushed peppermint, baked as a loaf and topped with a vanilla glaze and crushed peppermint candies. Treat yourself to a bite!
A chewy ginger cookie containing ginger, molasses, and applesauce; topped with turbinado sugar for a little crunch. The perfect pairing when you’re headed into the cold with a hot chocolate. (Not available at Drive-Thrus)
An annual favorite, our rich, rosemary brown sugar simple syrup creates a heady aroma each day as we prepare it. As a full and sweet bouquet wafts across our cafes, just remember, it tastes even better.
Make this syrup at home: Brown Sugar Rosemary Simple Syrup Recipe
Also makes a great cocktail: Brown Sugar Rosemary Old Fashioned
Available hot or iced
Everyone deserves a little decadence, and our Croque Madame brings an extravagance to your morning that you’ll instantly appreciate. The intricate layers start with a dollop of honey butter caramelizing on the bottom of a toasted croissant square. The croissant is topped with a mustard aioli, melted havarti, ham, and arugula. But we don’t stop there; a sunny side egg sits atop this masterpiece, and it’s topped with green onion before we end where we began, with another dollop of honey butter, which slowly melts across this stunning breakfast. (Not available at Drive-Thrus)
While the Baked Maple Pumpkin Latte only stays with us through Thanksgiving, this scrumptious Pumpkin muffin is here to stay through January. A soft, warming retreat from the bitter edge of winter, our Pumpkin Muffin is sure to please. (Only available at Drive-Thrus)
“I just want a bite,” arrives plated and ready to savor, as we bring you a Waffle Snacker this winter. A small Belgian waffle, served with a ramekin of chocolate dipping sauce, lets you indulge your sweet tooth while saving room for that big dinner you’ve got planned. (Only available at Drive-Thrus)
Our holiday scone is indulgently sprinkled with white chocolate chips and cherry exclamations beneath a citrus glaze which will make your taste buds dance.
Available only at our Drive-Thrus, our Turkey BLT is a satisfying spin on an old classic. Piled high on a brioche bun, then layered with turkey, bacon, arugula, and a flavor-packed, sun-dried tomato aioli. (Only available at Drive-Thrus)
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Looking for a little more info on how to choose the right blend for you, or get more info on what a coffee blend is?
This page is for you! We'll start with a quick primer and then see how our coffee blends change in taste and origin to accomplish the consistent taste that makes your morning.
Coffee blends are a mixture of coffees from different countries, farms, or producers that come together to create a unique taste profile. This is opposed to "single origin" coffee, where the specific coffee you're drinking just has one producer, farm, cooperative, or mill.
Coffee blends are designed to be consistent. Due to harvest schedules and crop freshness, the components of blends change throughout the year, but a roasting team uses its expertise to craft blends that taste very similar in your cup, regardless of whether you’re drinking them in January or June (check out more about how we source coffee on our Coffee Sourcing page).
Our own coffee blends are also designed to appeal to the wide range of tastes in the specialty coffee world. You will see several roasts and names, ranging from lighter to more developed. Moreover, each comes with different coffee origins and components designed to hit a unique flavor profile.
With all this choice, it can be hard to know which one is right for you. So, to make it simple:
Below, we’ve prepared a general buying guide of our own blends, putting them in order from our lightest roasts to our darkest and describing their taste.
Terminology key:Development:
Sweetness:
Acidity:
Balance:
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Sweet with pleasing acidity
Roast level: ◉◉◉○○○○
Our Breakfast Blend is a lighter roasted blend designed to maintain sweetness while being acidity-forward. If you like a coffee that's warm and inviting while still having a little fruit-forward pop, this is your blend. Look for a milk chocolate finish.
Smooth & bright, brew hot or cold
Roast level: ◉◉◉○○○○
Haya is a blend of Ethiopian and Latin American coffees. We formulated Haya to be brewed as cold brew because its components yield the deep chocolatey notes you’re used to while having a delicate, floral overtone from the Ethiopian component. We believe this sets it apart from other cold brew offerings and yields an extra layer of refreshment to your cold beverage. But it works just as wonderfully as drip coffee, and chances are you’ll find a new favorite whatever way you make it.
Our perfectly balanced house blend
Roast level: ◉◉◉◉○○○
Our house blend since we opened up our doors in 1994 and started roasting in our DeMun location. It is a blend of two roasts - one more developed to bring out deep sweetness, the other less to add complexity - that results in a perfectly balanced cup. Read more about the history of our flagship blend in our blog, Much More Than a Blend: Cafe Kaldi.
A dialed-in blend for espresso and drip
Roast level: ◉◉◉◉○○○
A coffee with a caramel sweetness, smooth body, and dark chocolate finish that tastes great as both drip coffee and espresso. A staple for the home and for the espresso bar, and the perfect everyday coffee for any coffee lover. Read more about the never-ending quality control and effort we put into our espresso blend in our blog, Much More Than a Blend: 700.
An approachable & balanced roast
Roast level: ◉◉◉◉○○○
A medium roast of our certified Fair Trade Organic coffee, this blend features an approachable acidity and a balanced sweetness. Perfect for any occasion. Check out our blog, "Much More Than (FTO) Blends: French Roast and Birds & Bees" to learn more about its history and roast profile.
Perfectly balanced, 1/2 the caffeine
Roast level: ◉◉◉◉○○○
The perfect coffee for the late afternoon or all day sipping. Modeled after our house blend, it's made up of 50% Swiss Water Decaf Cafe Kaldi and 50% regular. The result is a perfectly balanced cup with exceptional sweetness atop a deep chocolatey base. And just the right amount of caffeine.
Perfectly balanced for day & night
Roast level: ◉◉◉◉○○○
A decaffeinated version of our classic house blend. Our green coffee undergoes the Swiss Water Process which allows for a coffee to maintain its flavor without the use of chemicals. Our roast accentuates the coffee's sweetness and brings you a perfectly balanced cup for any time of the day.
A rich, sweet cup
Roast level: ◉◉◉◉◉○○
Sourced to always be a blend of Fair Trade and Organic coffees, our FTO Natural High is one coffee roasted two ways and blended to showcase a deep, chocolatey sweetness while leaving a subtle, crisp acidity.
A warm & inviting dark roast
Roast level: ◉◉◉◉◉◉○
A crowd-favorite, we carefully develop this coffee until almost all essential oils rise to the surface. The result is a darker roast that features a warm and inviting sweetness, reminiscent of caramel and dark chocolate with almost no acidity.
Our tribute to Italian coffee
Roast level: ◉◉◉◉◉◉◉
One of our most developed blends and perfect for the lover of deep, rich notes. Roasted dark and slow as a tribute to coffee's heritage in Southern Italy, this blend's full body and bittersweet chocolate flavors taste great as both drip coffee and espresso.
In 2001, we were one of the first retailers in St. Louis to offer certified Fair Trade Coffees and we still offer a selection of these blends today. Over the last several years, we have started focusing on new programs (see Kaldi’s Relationship Coffees) that reward quality and taste as well as help small farmers who may not qualify for Fair Trade certification.
Fan favorites — and oftentimes gateways into specialty coffee — like Highlander Grogg and Decaf Highlander Grogg stand a bit outside the usual breakdown by roast level and components. These coffees are flavored with natural oils after roasting to achieve their taste profile.
Our two most popular blends provide exceptional coffee experiences with mass appeal. But which should you choose? Take a deep dive before you buy with our blog, "Comparing Cafe Kaldi & 700".
Shop a coffee subscription! Controllable through text and ultra convenient.
Double bonus: subscriptions ship free at $20 and save 10%.
Learn more about Coffee Subscriptions
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WHY FRESH ROASTED COFFEE MATTERS
Related Content:
Much More Than a Blend: 700 | Kaldi's Coffee Blog
Kaldi's Coffee Subscriptions - Making Coffee Work For You | Kaldi's Coffee Blog
Coffee Processing & Your Cup | Kaldi's Coffee Blog
Join us on Friday, September 29th as we honor coffee by bringing people and incredible coffees together.
How to get it: Just show your barista that you "Liked" our special National Coffee Day post on Facebook or Instagram from 9/29!
To truly celebrate coffee, we must be with our guests, so we're offering this special promotion on Friday, September 29th.
Our Instagram post on National Coffee Day will be a reinforcement of our values and commitments to the coffee supply chain and the incredible producers that we partner with.
To get 75 cents off your coffee drink: Show your barista that you "liked" this special post and get a token of our appreciation as you sip on this incredible beverage.
*at participating cafes, does not apply to smoothies or ready to drink bottles and cans. In-person orders only. Offer only valid on 9/29/2023.
Available in select cafes on 9/29 | Limited web pre-order on 9/25 (sold out online)
VISIT THE PRODUCT PAGE |
A play on the name of the day (National / Irrational - you get the picture), our seemingly irrational but very intentional blend of Colombia Imbachi Gesha and 7 mixed processes from Nicaragua is a unique, remarkable, and highly memorable way to commemorate the day.
Our roasters work hard to ensure core blends like 700 and Cafe Kaldi consistently taste the same, month after month. This blend is a vehicle that allows them to stretch their imaginations and have a little fun!
Colombia Imbachi Gesha has been a favorite at our Roastery since its release. When we decided to make this blend, it was very apparent that the Imbachi Gesha had to make an appearance. Special blend, special coffee.
As luck would have it, earlier in the summer we brought in small amounts of inventive and unique lots from our friends at Gold Mountain Coffee Growers. We didn't have enough of the coffees to offer them each on their own, and barely had enough of each lot fill more than a few 12oz bags. But we knew we wanted to do something that allowed our guests to experience each of these special coffees.
... it's a representation of our values and the relationships we've fostered in our nearly 30 years.
We've worked with the Imbachi family in Colombia for many years, and we released their Gesha variety as part of our Cupping Room Series for the third time in the summer of this year.
We've also been working with the great people at Gold Mountain Coffee Growers for many years. Each year, we purchase at least one container (250+ 150 lb bags of green coffee) of their coffee to use in our blends, as well as a few single origin lots to proudly offer on their own. This year, we released Don Roger & Isabel Mairena's coffee.
Together, this blend is more than a slightly off-kilter, very delicious blend of coffees. It's a representation of our values and the relationships we've fostered in our nearly 30 years.
We've probably never had so much trouble (or fun) making flavor calls!
The mixed processing of this blend gives it morphing quality like few coffees we've ever experienced. You'll find it very sweet, but the qualities of that sweetness change from hard candy to soda to even a little chocolate. Above that sweetness you'll find very delicate notes like stone fruit and florals, but even these shift as the cup cools and as you make your brews.
It's what makes this coffee so wonderful and fun, and we hope you take some mindful moments with it as you sip, enjoy, and let the flavors unfold.
We taste: green hard candy, grape soda, nectarine, jasmine, dulce de leche
We're in awe at the innovation and dedication of our coffee producing partners, and this blend represents both of those qualities.
Gesha has been consistently sought after since it rose to prominence in the late 2000's, and since then it has spread to most growing regions. This Gesha from the Imbachi family is clean, vibrant, and crisp, the work of a quality-focused family.
The coffees from Nicaragua are firmly pointed towards a newer take on coffee. Consumer tastes have changed drastically in the last few years, and there is increasing demand for innovative processing techniques that bring out wild flavor profiles and intense tastes. Gold Mountain Coffee Growers have several producers experimenting with these methods, including processes like carbonic maceration and adding yeast while the coffee cherries ferment.
Both coffees are the work of love and dedication. Both represent something bigger than coffee. And both come together in this once-in-a-lifetime blend for coffee's biggest day.
AVAILABILITY:
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Honoring producers and the wonderful people at every step of the coffee supply chain is something we practice daily. We'll always cherish a day that brings that more into focus, but if you'd like to learn more about our practices and values we've provided some links below.
Have a wonderful day!
We think of coffee as a journey of discovery, and we hope that these changes offer a more welcoming entry point for all coffee pod-lovers, while representing our own journey and values more accurately.
In this blog, we go into a little more detail about the process and benefits of this welcome change.
When we began creating our original pod line in 2020, we wanted to be sure their brew quality aligned with our normal, high standards, so we chose to use classic Kaldi’s Coffee blend and roast profiles, roasted by hand, just like our other coffees. The quality is enhanced by filling our pods with larger amounts of coffee than many other pod brands. This helps us avoid what many consider a “weak” cup, that can often result when brewing Keurig coffees.
We immediately identified the production of plastic, single-use cups as our pods’ major weakness, and began searching for a more sustainable alternative. We were moving towards a compostable solution when the supply chain issues of 2021 struck, delaying our improvements. We remained undeterred, and once compostable pod manufacturing was available, we initiated a pod rebrand and moved quickly toward production.
Our rebrand of pods and their boxes brings a vibrant display of color to our packaging, to celebrate this eco-friendly update. We’ve also renamed our “Dark Roast” pod to “French Roast,” bringing it proudly in-line with our whole bean offering of the same name.
While the USA doesn’t have a recognized certification for home composting, we’d like you to know that these have earned that certification in Austria, as well as the European DIN Home Compost certification. To view all of our manufacturer’s certifications, visit the Smile Compostable Solution’s website.
Switching our coffee pod packaging to this new commercially compostable version offers several benefits for the environment. Here are two key advantages:
It's worth noting that commercially compostable boxes require proper disposal in composting facilities to maximize their benefits. Visit www.findacomposter.com or use other local resources to find a commercial composting facility near you.
We hope you love having an earth-friendly pod option. Whether you’re brewing them at home daily, buying them for an Airbnb, or using them as a high quality coffee break at the office, we also hope you love the familiar flavor of great coffee that you’ve come to expect from us.
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For the last decade, we’ve been celebrating the back-to-school season by putting a twist on one of the most anticipated drinks of the year. Our Baked Maple Pumpkin Latte (lovingly sounded out as "BUMPLE" amongst Kaldi's team members) is one of your favorite seasonal drinks of the year, and we work hard to make it perfectly satisfying.
This year's no different, as the crimson display of changing trees and the swish of leaves underfoot carry us into fall. Accompanying your favorite lattes are new sweet and savory options to fill your days with both nutrition and indulgence.
Each morning, we spread a tray of pumpkin out, pop it in the oven, and let its hearty aroma fill our cafes as it bakes. When it’s browned to a golden hue, we combine it with real maple syrup, cinnamon, and prep it for service. You might only see the puree being steamed into a decadent, creamy delight, but we’re confident our team’s extra attention adds just as much to your smile as the whipped cream topped with grated nutmeg. The BMPL is a pumpkin latte unlike any other. Experience the difference that freshly baked pumpkin puree makes, as you sip it alongside our latest seasonal specials.
Can also be ordered iced
Our blackberry orange scone is a delectable pastry that balances a crumbly texture with bursts of fruit. The plump blackberries create moist pockets of fruit throughout, offering bursts of juiciness that complement the scone's tender consistency. The orange zest flavors beautifully elevate the overall taste, adding brightness and a touch of aromatic fragrance that accompany the richer, blackberry flavors.
Enjoy your blackberry orange scone with a warm cup of tea, such as our Italian Grey, to enhance the citrusy notes and enhance the overall sensory experience, or pair it with a cup of freshly brewed coffee for a more robust, contrasting flavor combination.
Keep it sweet and simple before the summer's gone by refreshing yourself with a Hibiscus Berry Iced Tea. We start by creating our own blackberry simple syrup in each cafe, then shake it up with Firepot Tea's Hibiscus Ginger tea. Topped with a few blackberries, this tea is a treat that will extend your summer.
Get your morning off to a satisfying start with our Italian Breakfast Sandwich. We’ve paired the perfect textures of an English muffin to hold a fried egg, a sausage patty, and a vibrant bed of arugula. We all know the crevasses of an English muffin are perfect for holding spreads, so we created a rich, sun-dried tomato pesto to schmear across the muffin, evoking the rustic, Italian countryside.
Available at DeMun with Veggie Sausage
Our black cherry walnut muffin combines the rich taste of black cherries and the nutty goodness of walnuts. A tender muffin with a slightly crunchy top, it’s perfect at breakfast, brunch, or as a delicious snack.
Whether enjoyed as a quick morning pick-me-up or as a delectable afternoon treat, our black cherry walnut muffin is a mouthwatering delight that will leave you craving more. Its perfect blend of fruity sweetness and nutty goodness makes it an irresistible treat.
When the days begin to fade, the hush of leaves swishing fills the air, and an early morning chill creeps closer, our Cinnamon Brûlée Latte will keep you warm. This classic cinnamon latte, topped with turbinado sugar, is warm and inviting. That sugar, resting atop the foam, is finished with a hand torch, caramelizing the sugars into a crunchy layer of toasted sweetness that echoes the crush of fall.
The fall can be exhausting, as the days become shorter, the nights longer, and a chill creeps into the air, yet the world stays in constant motion. Recharge with our nutritious and protein-packed Chicken Power Bowl. We start with a bed of quinoa, then stack it with blistered tomatoes, black beans, and arugula sauteed in a lemon vinaigrette. Proteins arrive with tender, shredded chicken topped with a freshly fried egg. To round out the dish, we garnish the egg with our new salsa verde and a sprinkle of feta cheese.
Not available at DeMun or at Kaldi's Coffee Drive Thrus
Our churro waffle is an indulgent fusion of two beloved treats: churros and waffles. What could be better than the classic flavors of a churro transformed into a fluffy, yet crispy, waffle that is coated in cinnamon-sugar.
As you take a bite, you'll experience a delightful contrast of textures. Our churro waffle is slightly crispy and caramelized, reminiscent of the crunchy outer layer of a traditional churro. Inside, it is soft, fluffy, and light, akin to a classic waffle's texture. This combination creates a perfect balance of crispiness and fluffiness in each mouthful. We leave the maple syrup on the side, so you can choose how much more delight you can handle.
Available on weekends at Chesterfield, Kirkwood, Skinker, and the Crescent
If you could wrap fall in a pastry bag and carry it with you anywhere, you’d probably be snacking on our Pumpkin Muffin with Walnut Streusel. Baked fresh daily, it’s got all the warming goodness you love about our Pumpkin Bread, but with crunchy chunks of delicious walnut streusel topping the muffin. We’re sure you’ll love it every bit as much as you love the BMPL and Pumpkin Bread.
This item is only available at our Drive-Thru locations in Ellisville and St. Charles
You loved our bandanas so much this spring that we've brought their design back on our Klean Kanteen Sport Bottle. Stay hydrated and stylish as the fall calendar fills up, or mix and match with the bandanas in our web store.
Stay flexible this fall with this versatile, all in one solution. Hot coffee or a latte on the run? It's insulated, with a no-spill screw top. Finished your coffee and need a water bottle? Easy-to-clean stainless steel is ready to go and always on displays as our simple goat logo echoes the fine simplicity of this all-in-one tumbler.
Love what you see?
ORDER ONLINE
FIND YOUR CAFE |
Certainty and surprise. Too much of one can be boring, the other nerve-wracking. But the right mixture can lead to a very pleasant experience, like being certain that you will have a pleasant surprise. These kinds of things are rare, but that’s the exact mentality we’ve tried to bring into our single origin "Roaster’s Choice" coffee subscription program.
Is it right for you? We’re here to help you decide!
Here, we'll cover:
We put a lot of time and passion into sourcing for our single origin specialty coffee program (single origin is any coffee that solely comes from one farm, cooperative, or producer). Each year, we get thousands of samples from around the world, then get to roasting, cupping, and scoring them as we whittle down the ones that “wow” us and have a great story to match its taste. When sourcing and selecting, we try to design our lineup so there’s a nice balance of origins, tastes, and prices. But, due to coffee harvest schedules and limited availability, the coffees that we offer come and go through the year.
Our Roaster’s Choice subscription, then, is simply a monthly selection of our current single origin lineup. Each month, subscribers receive one of the coffees that we think is tasting great and meet a few criteria. So it’s 12 different coffees a year, sent on their schedule.
When we decide what coffee to make Roaster’s Choice for the month, we consider:
The coffee that you receive is a bit of a surprise (this page is kept updated as soon as the coffees switch), but it’s mixed in with the certainty of knowing that your subscription is:
As an added bonus, the Roaster’s Choice program is $17.49 a month for a 12 ounce bag, which is almost always cheaper than the bag that you receive. We also have a 2 pound option, which is currently the only way to get this size in our single origins.
Different coffees from around the world
Let’s take a look at the coffees we’ve launched since early 2022 to see how this plays out:
January 2023 | Costa Rica Roger Ureña Hidalgo |
February 2023 | Brazil Serra do Cabral |
March 2023 | Papua New Guinea Baroida |
April 2023 | Colombia Familia Macias |
May 2023 | Ethiopia Hamed Awol |
June 2023 | Rwanda Sholi Natural / Kenya Kamwangi |
July 2023 | DR Congo Muungano Natural |
August 2023 | Colombia Nariño Aponte Honey |
September 2023 | Mexico Ozolotepec |
October 2023 | Kenya Gatina |
November 2023 | Colombia Familia Imbachi |
December 2023 | 'Tis the Season |
January 2024 | Costa Rica Roger Ureña Hidalgo |
February 2024 | Exclusive: Nicaragua Tropical Fruit Symphony |
March 2024 | Peru Nicolas Chilcon |
Looking at January 2023 through May 2023, we went from a white honey processed coffee from Costa Rica, to a peanut-butter-jelly-in-a-cup Brazilian offering, then over to a shockingly fruity coffee from Asia Pacific, then to two of the best producing regions in the world, Ethiopia and Colombia. Meanwhile, we continued to offer coffees only accessible to Roaster's Choice subscribers in varying months.
With these changes and switch-ups, subscribers essentially travel the coffee world like no one else.
To recap:
So, the Roaster’s Choice recurring (i.e. pay as you go) subscription can be a perfect way to keep your coffee fresh and your coffee life from going stale. It also makes the perfect gift to the coffee lover in your life! Mixed in with some of the tips and tricks from our previous blog, you can set yourself up with Roaster’s Choice in a variety of ways.
For instance, you could set a subscription for 700 every 2 weeks, then interchange with Roaster’s Choice so you can have a stellar, consistent blend followed up with an always new single origin (week 1 700, week 3 Roaster's Choice, and so on).
Humility is a core value at Kaldi’s Coffee, but we are pretty proud of our Roaster’s Choice program. It's a fantastic representation of the passion and thoughtfulness that we put into our coffee sourcing. Many customers have found that it’s the right fit for them, and we think it has a place in every coffee lover’s life. And when paired with our set-it-and-forget-it subscription model that can be conveniently managed by SMS text, tasting the world of coffee is easier than ever.
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MAKING A COFFEE SUBSCRIPTION WORK FOR YOU
Related content:
Much More Than a Blend: 700 | Kaldi's Coffee Blog
Choosing Your Next Single Origin Coffee | Kaldi's Coffee Blog
Coffee Processing & Your Cup | Kaldi's Coffee Blog
Interested in learning more about this delicious beverage and how it can fit into your coffee life? Read on to find out:
editor's note: updated 5/13/2023 with a new Hario Switch Flash Chill recipe and a new Youtube short
Before we get started:
Cold brew concentrate is cold brew with a very high coffee to water ratio. The drip coffee you're used to is anywhere from 1 part coffee to 16 to 20 parts water. We also call this "strength".
Cold brew concentrate is often 1:4 to 1:8. It is literally a concentrated coffee drink and is much stronger - and has much more caffeine - than the same amount of drip coffee liquid.
You will see us reference these terms a few times, so this is worth a primer!
Coffee grounds (usually coarse) + water (cold or room temp) + time (8 to 24 hours) = most cold brew
Cold brew coffee is usually made by steeping coffee in water for a number of hours at cold or ambient (room) temperature. This slow, low temp brew makes cold brew taste very different from hot brewing the same type of coffee beans: mild chocolate and mellow, low acidity fruits are common flavor notes. We tested this for ourselves, and you can read our findings in our blog, "Cold Brew Taste Test: 5 Coffees, Hot vs. Cold".
Cold brewing – or in many cases ambient temperature brewing – uses time in place of temperature to ensure extraction. Cold brewing can take between 8 and 24 hours, depending on who you ask and what your target cold brew taste is.
You can use your trusty French Press to make cold brew - Get our recipe + Youtube video here
Cold brew coffee is also often made as a concentrate which is then diluted - or "watered down" - to taste from there. So, while pour-over coffee and most drip coffees have a brewing ratio of about 1 to 16 coffee to water (ex: 20 grams of ground coffee brewed with 320 mL of water), cold brewing is usually done with less and with a wide range of possibilities to suit different tastes.
MORE ABOUT COLD BREW RATIOS:A 1:8 or 1:9 ratio is pretty common when brewing your cold brew coffee — so for instance, 50 grams of ground coffee to 450 milliliters of water. Some stronger brewing ratios out there offer even more concentrated potency. But other cold brew recipes are actually a lot closer to hot coffee ratios at 1:11 or 1:12, and are specifically geared to making “ready-to-drink” cold coffee - i.e. no dilution needed. These 1:12 cups will also mean your mug of coffee has more caffeine in it by volume, which is where another "myth" about cold brew may come from (but we'll cover that in a bit). |
Iced coffee used to mostly be just what it sounds like: normal brewed drip coffee or espresso to which one adds ice. It was not — and maybe still isn’t — uncommon to watch a barista or diner employee simply take some coffee from batch brew, throw some ice in it, and call it “Iced Coffee”.
“Flash chill” or “flash brew” coffee is a more recently popularized innovation on iced coffee. These “flash” methods take two steps to increase the quality of iced coffee:
Cold brew is slow-steeped for longer periods of time. It differs from iced coffee, which has been hot brewed specifically to extract those additional layers of flavors and other natural coffee compounds that don’t get extracted much or at all in cold brew (see more about extraction in our "Science Corner" section below).
Check out our Recipe Blog using the Hario Switch.
Watch our Youtube video by clicking the thumbnail below:
Going a little deeper: Cold brewing can be very forgiving of older coffee beans, and it’s easy to prep in large quantities in advance. This creates a refreshing, convenient, and caffeinated drink for busy mornings.
Folks who drink cold brew also buzz about one other cold brew feature: mild and low acidity! Cold brew coffee tastes less acidic than hot brewed coffee from the same beans, and it’s famously mellow and smooth––not just on the palate, but also the stomach. But why?
Well, science. Heat has a huge effect on extraction*. Cold brewing leaves behind some acids that hot coffee pulls out easily. This not only creates a coffee that is flavorful, smooth, and mellow, but also one that can hold up for days and still taste fresh.
*Science corner:Want to know more about how this works? Hot water is simply better at dissolving soluble solids. Hot water is also better at weakening molecular bonds and creating oxidative reactions that release–extract!–a ton of the organic compounds locked up inside a coffee bean. But cold brew is a lot less efficient at this, meaning smaller yields of some compounds in coffee, particularly specific acids and oils. While these compounds help create depth and aroma in a hot cup of coffee, they are what’s known as “volatile”, and can disappear or degrade once that hot coffee cools. ACID TRIP Even more, hot coffee and cold brew from the same exact beans may share a similar pH value, but studies have suggested that pH doesn’t correspond to the actual titratable acidity and total acids differences between the two brew methods. Cold brew’s acids are basically weaker and might be why folks with more sensitive stomachs can enjoy it more than a hot cup of coffee. |
Cold brew isn’t just convenient and easy on the stomach, but like all coffee, it has some healthy compounds too:
While cold brew coffee will typically extract less of these organic compounds than a corresponding hot coffee of the same origin/roast, these helpful compounds are still present in most cold brew coffees.
It can be if you want it to be! It can also be weaker.
One of the biggest myths about cold brew is that it’s always strong and highly caffeinated. This isn’t exactly true. What is true is that because it’s brewed with a higher ratio of coffee to water, the concentrate that is made can have considerably more caffeine than the same volume of hot brewed coffee, even espresso. This is in spite of hot brewing being able to more effectively extract caffeine and other compounds.
However, almost nobody drinks cold brew concentrate straight. It’s usually cut with more water, ice, or even milk or alt milk, which pushes the caffeine content of a single serving back down to the normal range for a typical cup of coffee. So unless you’re making a strong concentrate and chugging it as is, your glass of cold brew should be about the same as a hot cup of coffee, caffeine-wise.
But what about your favorite store-bought cold brew, or the cold brew from your favorite cafe? Just like drip coffee, the strength of cold brew coffee varies place to place and product to product. It's essentially up to the desired strength of the manufacturer or coffee shop.
As a concentrate and when refrigerated, cold brew can last a few days to about a week and a half. If you’re brewing your own cold brew, we strongly advise storing it in the fridge after it’s been brewed and filtered. Be sure to keep it in a good airtight container and not open it too frequently for the best results.
Note: If it’s been diluted with milks or alternative milks, it probably should be consumed within a few days. Same for plain cold brew if you’re opening the container to pour yourself a glass every day.
Most people drink cold brew plain or on ice, but some like to add flavorings or milks. Check out our honey alt milk cold brew recipe for inspiration!
How long ready to drink cold brew purchased in a grocery store or cafe lasts depends on how it’s made, and what’s written in the label. Kaldi’s Coffee cold brew cans all have a Best By date printed on the can. This best by date is applicable until the can is opened; once it’s opened, it’s best to consume it within a day or two, for best taste.
After learning all this information about the cold brewing process, you may be left wondering: What will this make my coffee taste like vs. hot brewing?
As we mentioned above, we asked ourselves that same question and devised a little test. Using 5 coffees - 2 blends, 3 single origins - we used our French Press cold brewing method and our traditional cupping method to do a side by side comparison.
As a basic summary, we found:
Read the full experiment and breakdown in our blog: |
Our bottled Cold Brew Concentrate takes all the best parts of cold brew coffee and adds in even more convenience. We think of it as perfect coffee in moments.
This 3:1 Concentrate makes delicious cold drinks, hot drinks, and iced lattes. You can do this with any concentrate you make, as well, but our bottles make it easier and take out the 12-18 hour wait time. You can learn more and get recipes on our Cold Brew Concentrate page.
SHOP NOW | $14.49
We hope you found this helpful! Here's a recap of everything we covered before you start sipping your next tasty cold brew:
Cheers, and happy (cold) brewing!
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Let’s get right to the garden goodness by gathering arugula, tomatoes, and basil for our new Tomato Toast. We start by whipping up a feta spread, packed with salt and pepper, lemon juice, and chopped basil. Spread across a batard loaf from Companion Bakery, the whipped feta gives us a bright bed to place oven blistered tomatoes, sprinkled with basil and maldon salt. Plated with a swipe of mustard, our Blistered Tomato Toast bursts with the flavors of spring.
Also packing an intense burst of tomato, our Sun-dried Tomato and Mozzarella Scone brings a bright, yet savory, spring scrumptiousness to our bakery cases. We won’t blame you for blinking as your palate goes into overdrive processing the cascading flavors that wash over you while enjoying this scone!
While fresh tomatoes and basil celebrate the renewal of savory spring delights, floral herbs also beckon from the garden. We look first to our sister tea company, Firepot Tea, and their delicate collection of floral ingredients for inspiration. Lavender and Indian Rose Garden Tea, mingled in a simple syrup, form the basis of two spring delights. The Lavender Rose latte evokes the subtle sweetness of spring by simply adding espresso to the simple syrup. For an extra layer of greening goodness, try the Iced Lavender Rose Matcha, which uses Firepot’s Amai Matcha for an extra-fresh pop of bright flavor.
Blueberries and lemon zest always form a classic summer combo, so we’re taking them up a notch in our new Lavender Blueberry Lemon Poppy Mini Loaf. Bursting with summer flavors, the addition of lavender adds a subtle botanical note that smooths the sugar-rush zing of our classic lemon poppyseed bread.
The diversity of a garden can be a beautiful delight. Full of familiar favorites, year after year, a good garden also holds space for experimentation and unfamiliar delicacies. Our Iced Ube Latte may not resonate immediately by name, but we’re sure that when you try this subtly sweet latte, you’ll enjoy the experience. Ube, derived from the Tagalog word for tuber, is a deeply purple root vegetable from the Philippines that is both sweeter and more mellow than a yam. Long cherished around the world for its ability to create gorgeous desserts that aren’t cloyingly sweet, we’re thrilled to serve you this vibrant drink and hope you love it, whether you’re tasting ube for the first or the thousandth time.
A more familiar spring comfort from the garden, strawberries, takes center stage for our seasonal Strawberry Almond Muffin. Gluten-free flour gives this treat a light, almost angel-food like texture, enhanced even further by a sweet streusel and almond topping. A truly fitting start to any sunny morning. (Prepared without any gluten ingredients)
Our Chocolate Chunk Cookie is an everyday favorite, so we sweetened it with garden goodness by adding raspberries. Always a classic comfort, these cookies now sing with mouth-watering spring goodness.
Nothing tastes like a million bucks more than the classic mix of peanut butter and chocolate. Our millionaire shortbread bites start with shortbread from Companion, layered with peanut butter and a hardened chocolate ganache.
As the summer’s radio soundtrack summons the sense of crashing waves against sand, delighted children frolicking in a pool, and the waft of a thousand backyard barbecues, we close our eyes and end with a perfect picnic lunch. Our Honey Buffalo Chicken Salad hits the spot with its bed of greens, cucumbers, buffalo chicken, feta cheese, croutons, and shredded basil. Tossed in a cucumber yogurt dressing and drizzled with honey, this salad is serious about summer.
We hope that spring break and summer vacations provide you wonderful escapes this year, but we know there’s nothing like finding an escape in your own backyard. If you’re in the neighborhood, stop by a cafe to experience the subtle nuances of an Iced Ube latte and its flavors of southeast Asia, or close your eyes and imagine your lunch break is a sun-soaked barbecue while you tuck into a Honey Buffalo Chicken Salad. Wherever you go and whatever you’ve got planned, we’ll be right here to welcome you in and make you feel at home again.
Coffee is a bit of an enigma. On the one hand, it’s like a miracle food that can last a really long time on your shelf. Brew up a bag you bought two years ago and chances are you won’t find yourself heaving on the ground. On the other hand, it’s just like any other fruit, and its best tastes are only available within a relatively small window of time.
If you peruse our website and general information about best coffee practices on the web, you’ll see lots of references to “Fresh Roasted Coffee”. But what does this mean, why should you care, and what should you do to maximize your coffee experience?
Let’s find out!
(last updated 4/2023)
First, let’s go over what’s happening to your coffee as it ages by using a familiar example: apples. Chances are you’ve bitten into an apple and as you were eating it, a little bit of browning occurred. That’s oxidation, and the same thing that happened there is happening to your coffee beans, especially when pre-ground. Time plays the other role — the things that make coffee "sing" simply break down over time and play less and less a role in the liveliness of your cup.
Oxidation and time dull the flavors of your coffee just like it does any other food (among other factors), and thus fresh roasted coffee is going to give you the longest period of time to get the most vibrant, lively tastes. As a basic rule, we consider a coffee fresh and vibrant until around 4 to 6 weeks off roast, but some coffees can last up to two months.
So to recap and expand:
*Quick caveat: Coffee requires a little bit of rest after roasting. Most coffees require at least a few days after roast to taste their best. Thus, the best coffee isn't fresh off the roaster by any means. But, buying fresh roasted coffee gives you the maximum number of days where it is tasting its best.
Save a little bit of your last bag and put it to the side. When you receive your new bag with a more recent roast on date, brew them back to back and note the differences in taste. Chances are one will seem to have more “life” to it - what we often term as acidity and what comes through in the cup as fruitiness, or a really rich chocolate or nutty taste. The older cup will seem more tame by comparison. Still good and you'll still get the caffeine boost, but something is missing.
We love the Fellow Opus as an affordable way to grind fresh
The coffee bag itself, if sealed properly after use, is a great way to keep your coffee fresh
We believe buying fresh roasted coffee is one more piece of the quality chain that starts at the farm of our producing partners. Every step in the coffee process, from picking ripe cherries to the attention to detail during processing to the roasting at our facility, either adds or subtracts to the final product in your cup. Buying fresh roasted coffee, grinding it fresh, and using sound brewing techniques completes the final chapter of this amazing story.
Happy brewing, and keep things fresh!
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HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR NEXT SINGLE ORIGIN COFFEE
Much More Than A Blend: 700 | Kaldi's Coffee Blog
Kaldi's Coffee Subscriptions - Making Coffee Work For You | Kaldi's Coffee blog
Coffee Processing and Your Cup | Kaldi's Coffee Blog
Updated in March 2023 with a new entry into the market: the Fellow Opus.
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If you’re buying pre-ground, the answer is probably not.
Grinding your beans fresh from whole bean is widely accepted as the easiest way to make the largest improvement to the taste of your cup. And, when you combine fresh ground with fresh roasted coffee (read our blog “Why Fresh Roasted Coffee Matters” for more on that topic), you’ve done most of the work in making lovely coffee that reaches its full potential.
But, the world is currently flooded by grinders of every price, quality, and ability (a quick check on Amazon yields results all over the map). With all of this choice, it’s easy to get confused. And this confusion makes it even easier to stick with your tried-and-true, highly-convenient pre-ground, or to throw money at a suboptimal grinder that doesn’t get you the results you want.
I want your coffee experience to be as good as it can be. Here, I’m going to do my best to ease any grinder confusion and make a case for investing in a great grinder right away.
SPOILER ALERTI’m going to say that 90% of the people reading this should just buy a Baratza Encore or Fellow Opus, but I’ll try to prove why. |
I'll be covering seven different grinders. You can skip to specific grinders by clicking the links here.
In my early days of coffee, I had little understanding of grinders but heard that it was good to have one. Like most people buying their first grinder, I went on Amazon and bought a cheap blade grinder with good reviews and felt pretty fancy about it compared to where I had been - I could buy whole bean coffee at the grocery store now! But, after experiencing less than stellar results (and a lot of sludgy, bitter French Presses), I went back to Amazon to upgrade to the Hario Skerton, a hand grinder that has some quirks and needs a lot of elbow grease. This improved the taste of my cups, but was overall not a pleasant experience.
At this point, I realized I'd already invested $80 in two coffee grinders and I still wasn't thrilled with either one. So, I finally bought the Baratza Encore and started making the best coffee at home that I ever had.
This all leads to one simple truth: I wasted money on suboptimal grinders instead of just getting a really good one to start. I’ve seen this happen over and over, and the goal of this blog is to help convince you to not make the same mistake.
Just to be thorough, I’ll spend some time spotlighting some other common models on the market - and ones that I personally have experience with - to give you more context on why investing in a good grinder from the very start makes the most sense. For each, I’ll also list out some pros, cons, and my personal and unscientific opinion on their cup quality.
Disclaimer: This post is not meant to be judgy, just helpful. If you have one of the grinders on this list and you love it, then that’s all we’re aiming for!
This guide is for you if:
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The Baratza Encore is not new, but it is still my first recommendation for a grinder that will fit the needs of most people. It’s intuitive, high-quality, and produces a grind consistency more than good enough for most coffee drinkers (especially if using a drip machine). Right from the jump, you will taste the difference. It’s also a durable tank with renowned customer service backing it up.
I’ll be extra clear here: If you just want an easy, good tasting cup morning after morning, go straight to the Encore or the Fellow Opus (more on that below).
Skip things like the Cuisinart coffee grinder, the Hario Skerton, and others in that range. The Encore is a little expensive comparatively, but it’s the first price point in the automatic grinder market that actually gets you a really solid cup of coffee for years and years. I’ve seen it over and over: someone buys 1 or 2 of the cheaper grinders at about $100 total, then upgrades to this grinder (including me). It’s best to just use that money towards the Encore, and spend $159 up front on a quality grinder, instead of accidentally spending $259 over time as you realize your coffee could be so much better.
(I had this grinder for a long time before upgrading to a premium hand grinder and ultimately the Fellow Ode.)
BREW METHODS: Pour Over, Drip, French Press, Cold Brew
PRICE: Around $159 ($199 for the new ESP model)
PROS: Intuitive, produces balanced cups, made to last
CONS: A little bit loud, not the best grind consistency at the coarser end, you might want to upgrade later on as your passion for brewing increases, can’t do espresso
OVERALL CUP QUALITY: 7.5 /10
The Fellow Opus took the coffee world by storm in early 2023. Its combination of price, quality, and grind range instantly put it near the top of the conversation for entry-level grinders. We tested it ourselves and our results matched the overall hype - so much so that we chose the Opus as the grinder we sell on our website.
What makes us most excited about the Fellow Opus is the value. With a consistent grind no matter the setting, you will get good flavor clarity and excellent body out of your shots and brews without having to break the bank. Our testing with pour over shows that the Opus provides consistently balanced brews with good distinction of flavors. When we pulled shots of espresso, we found that the shots were actually very forgiving - we got better than decent shots even when they went a little faster or slower than we intended.
All of this means that you will probably make coffee you really love with the Fellow Opus. Our only nit-pick is that it can be a little messy, but this is easy to mitigate with some well know tricks (like the Ross Droplet Technique). Dialing in for espresso can also be a little funky.
BREW METHODS: Espresso, Pour Over, Drip, French Press, Cold Brew
PRICE: $195
PROS: Excellent quality to price ratio, full range of grind options, smaller counter footprint, powerful motor, makes coffee with a very pleasant mix of sweetness and clarity
CONS: Getting hyper-dialed in for espresso is tricky, a little messy, more plastic parts than other grinders
OVERALL CUP QUALITY: 8/10
The Fellow Ode has become one of the most popular grinders on the market. Its unique, stylish design definitely sets it apart from the Encore’s more industrial look, and its 64mm flat burrs give you cups with really lovely clarity and elevated sweetness.
It’s more than double the price of the Encore, but this is one of the rare cases where you probably do get double the performance for your money. This is the grinder I have on my counter, and I love it.
Consistent grind quality from the Fellow Ode
BREW METHODS: Pour Over, Drip, French Press, Cold Brew
PRICE: $350 and up
PROS: Very consistent grinds (for better tasting brews), grinds most batches in under 10 seconds., great styling, one of the better bangs-for-your-buck on the market, upgradeable burrs
CONS: Earlier models can be a little messy with grounds, more expensive and maybe too expensive for most coffee lovers, does not grind for espresso if you’re interested in that.
OVERALL CUP QUALITY: 9/10
I’ll start with this: hand grinding is not for everyone. Since you’re supplying the force instead of a motor, you will get a bit of an arm workout each time you make coffee, especially if you like lighter roasts (dark roasts are a breeze). While many — including myself — grow to love this haptic feedback as part of their morning ritual, there are many who get tired of it.
That said, this premium K-Max hand grinder from 1ZPresso (pronounced E-Z-Presso) is absolutely amazing and makes great coffee if you’re willing to put in the work. Because you aren’t paying for a motor, you’re getting higher quality parts that help make your coffee tasty, like better stabilization and burrs. And, this particular grinder is really not that bad in terms of the force you need to supply. Grinding 20 grams takes about 30-40 seconds without much strain for all but the lightest of roasts.
BREW METHODS: Espresso, Pour Over, Drip, French Press, Cold Brew
PRICE: Around $230
PROS: Great grind quality, actually grinds pretty fast for single cup brew, easy to use and tweak your grind setting, will last you a very long time (fewer parts that can break), portable for camping trips and vacations, unlike the above grinders it can grind for espresso
CONS: A little pricey, it will take you a while to grind for larger batch brews, hand grinding can become monotonous unless you really like the ritual of it (and the great quality of coffee grounds)
Overall cup quality: 8.5 /10
Want to learn more?Coffee Chronicler has a great review of the 1ZPresso K-Max on his website. |
This is one of the cheapest options for a really solid hand grinder. Timemore is relatively new to coffee grinders, but has quickly become known for good quality products with solid performance.
The Timemore Chestnut C3 is small, purposefully so. It is especially suited for travel and was designed with the Aeropress in mind to help save space in your backpack or suitcase. Therefore, it can only hold about 25 grams at a time. If you’re like me and mostly make single cups at a time, this is totally fine. If you make 40 grams or more in your auto brewer every morning, this might pose some challenges.
The adjustment mechanism of the Timemore Chestnut C3
So, while it’s cheap and does a good job with grind quality, it has its limitations. It’s not the fastest at grinding, it’s not the most consistent, and it doesn’t have the ability to make the minute tweaks in grind size that would make it ideal for espresso (but it can make a good shot!). But, if you travel a lot, are price conscious, and plan on using the Aeropress as your main brewer, this grinder should be on your shortlist.
BREW METHODS: Espresso, Pour Over, Drip, French Press, Cold Brew, Great for travel
PRICE: $79 and up
PROS: Great for traveling and can fit inside of the Aeropress plunger, solid grind consistency, relatively easy to find and repeat your preferred grind setting, solid construction
CONS: Only a 25 gram capacity, not has great of grind consistency as more premium hand grinders, not capable of doing espresso
OVERALL CUP QUALITY: 7 /10
Honorable Mention: 1ZPresso Q2. It's about $20 more, but produces quality grinds well above its price point. It also fits in the Aeropress plunger for easy travel.
WANT TO MAKE YOUR BEST COFFEE AT HOME?See our best brewing tips for the Aeropress, Kalita, Chemex, and more: Brewing at Home |
This is where I started on my grinder journey. A blade grinder uses sharp blades to cut the coffee beans, and all coffee beans are exposed to the blades at all times. This means it’s impossible to fully control particle size consistency, i.e. how uniform in size each piece of ground coffee is. Some bits will be very chunky because the blades didn’t reach them much, others will be pulverized into fine dust. The result is usually a pretty muddy cup because some of the grounds are over-extracting (bitterness) while others are under-extracting (sourness).
Close up of the coffee grinds coming from a blade grinder. You can see big chunks and powder mixed together.
A blade grinder gets the job done. And that’s all that can really be said about it.
If you’re looking for consistent, high quality cups each morning, this is not the gear for you, and you’ll be left wanting to upgrade pretty soon after buying it.
BREW METHODS: Pour Over, Drip, French Press, Cold Brew
PRICE: $20 - $30
PROS: Cheap, can get you okay results with a couple well-known hacks, widely-available, grinds quickly
CONS: Poor grind consistency leads to less than stellar cups, limited capacity, very limited ability to repeat great brews
OVERALL CUP QUALITY: 3.5 /10
The Hario Skerton is well known to many specialty coffee fans. It’s been around for a long time, and was pretty much alone in its class when specialty coffee truly began taking off. As a result many coffee fans have one of these grinders collecting dust in their cabinets (including me).
The Skerton is a bona-fide burr grinder, using ceramic upper and lower burrs to crush coffee beans. This burr set up lets grounds pass through a gap once they reach a certain size, thereby setting it apart from a blade grinder. This is theoretically great, but the Skerton comes with flaws. It has poor burr stabilization (which to be fair to Hario, they have tried to fix with newer models such as the one pictured here), which without getting too deep into it means that the grind consistency is generally poor. It also has pretty cheap burrs and parts, thereby resulting in a grinding process that’s either a few or several minutes and oftentimes requires hard labor.
I personally think the Skerton is one of the reasons that so many coffee people still bristle against hand grinding. They’re essentially scarred from having a laborious process that resulted in a not-so-tasty cup.
The jar from the Hario Skerton with coffee grounds
BREW METHODS: Pour Over, Drip, French Press, Cold Brew
PRICE: $55 and up
PROS: Cheaper than electric burr grinders, more consistent at the finer ranges, solidly built, improved click system on the Pro version
CONS Challenging to dial in, long and laborious grind process, fairly inconsistent grind quality (especially in the coarser ranges)
Overall cup quality: 5 /10
Hey, this thing has 4.5 stars on Amazon and is over $50 - it has to be good right? For many, this can seem like a really solid investment and it’s easy to see why. $50 is not an insignificant sum of money! And it’s electric, so no destroying your biceps and wrists every morning.
But, that price comes at a cost. The burrs are what are called “false burrs” and are made extremely cheaply. It’s predominantly made of plastic, which gives poor stabilization. It sounds like a vacuum cleaner and produces gobs of static. Lots of other corners were cut, and the overall user experience is simply not great - and neither are the cups it produces.
The grinds from the Cuisinart have a lot of static and make a good amount of mess
So, you’re left with yet another grinder that is essentially negating the quality of the coffee that you bought, and thereby causing you to lose out on your coffee investment. And with its questionable longevity, you may end up having to buy another one (which puts you well over half the way there to a very high quality Baratza Encore).
BREW METHODS: Pour Over, Drip, French Press, Cold Brew
PRICE: $55 and up
PROS: Electric, accessible price point, better experience if you have a full hopper, built in grind timer
CONS: Poor grind consistency, limited grind options, bad static, cheap materials, questionable longevity, many quirks make it not have the best user experience
OVERALL CUP QUALITY: 4.5 /10
INTERESTED IN SWITCHING FROM AN AUTO BREWER TO POUR OVER?See our blog about starting off with the Kalita Wave 185: Kalita Wave 185 Pour Over How To |
This was certainly a long walk, but hopefully I’ve provided you some useful information. In the end, the Baratza Encore is simply still the king at bang-for-your-buck grinder choices to most coffee drinkers and the Fellow Opus is a fantastic new entry into the market. The quality in these grinders' grind consistency and materials means that most people will find their experience with them better than good enough, and you’ll be happy for years (in regards to the Encore, I’ve heard many stories of people having theirs for 10+ years and counting, and I gifted one to both my sister and sister-in-law and they are very happy owners).
So, I say this because I care: skip the cheaper options. It may actually be better to buy pre-ground for a while and just save up for the Opus or Encore rather than purchase cheaper, less-quality grinders that you’ll want to upgrade in a short period of time.
And, if this blog ignited any more curiosity in you, you should know that there are A LOT of great grinders on the market now in every shape and size. Things like the Niche, DF64, Baratza Vario, Eureka Specialita (I use this for espresso at home), and more have all gained fans far and wide, and are truly great pieces of machinery at higher price points. There’s a reason people fall down the coffee rabbit hole, and a whole community is waiting for you should you fall down it yourself.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy your coffee and your moments with it. A beautiful cup is a beautiful start to the day, and I think a more beautiful cup unlocks even more beautiful days. A great coffee grinder may very well be your key.
Cheers!
Statistically speaking, you fall in one of two camps:
We’ve already written about the history and the ins and outs of these two blends in our “Much More than a Blend: Cafe Kaldi” and “Much More than a Blend: 700” blogs. Those are still very relevant and great odes to our house and espresso blends.
But today we’re going to really focus on roast profiles, components, and taste to more deeply compare and contrast Cafe Kaldi and 700. If you’re already well-versed on the two blends, consider this an updated primer.
Below is a quick guide, but read on for a Cafe Kaldi and 700 Deep Dive!
Our signature house blend is designed to appeal to all types of coffee drinkers. As a post-roast blend, there are two main components that are roasted separately and then combined together to make a final product. We call these “Light Side” and “Dark Side”.
This kind of roasting style offers a couple of advantages. By more effectively dialing in both parts of the roasts, each lives up to their best potential. It also allows us more consistency as the blend components change with the harvest seasons.
Dark side and light side of Cafe Kaldi
“Light Side” and “Dark Side” are how we streamline communication to the roast profiles, but it’s a bit of a misnomer — it’s more like medium-light side and medium-dark side. This smaller gap in roast degrees alleviates issues with roast profiles extracting differently when brewing, and still results in a richly sweet, complex cup.
As our stalwart espresso blend, 700 performs best as a through-and-through medium roast. This roast profile provides consistent extraction in shot after shot of espresso, but still leaves a light acidic pop atop the deep chocolate base. We cup 700 at least twice a week to ensure the roast profile is hitting these marks. Unlike Cafe Kaldi, it is all done as a single roast.
As mentioned, Cafe Kaldi is a post-roast blend. Latin American coffees—Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia—typically provide the sweetness and depth of the more-developed Dark Side. Very often, these are relationship coffees from Colombia Monserrate and El Salvador Manzano.
What we think really sets it apart, however, is what’s in the Light side. Light side almost always contains a significant portion of Ethiopian coffee — usually from our partners at the Gera Estate — that gives the blend its pleasing acidity.
Actually, 700 and Cafe Kaldi very often use similar components! Colombia Monserrate, Nicaraguan coffees from our partners at Gold Mountain, and coffee from the Flanzer family at Brazil Ecoagricola can all be found throughout the year. The key difference is in the proportion that each coffee makes up in the blend and roast profiles. 700 also does not usually have an Ethiopian coffee as one of the components which aids in its chocolate-heavy taste profile.
Learn more about our sourcing and Relationship Coffees.
A picture of the Colombia Monserrate community taken during one of our origin trips.
The beauty of both of these blends is their wide appeal. Each is incredibly sweet and balanced, but the components and roast profiles discussed previously result in decidedly different experiences.
If you or someone you love just wants that good, “bold” cup, the chocolatey, roasty-almost-smoky notes of Cafe Kaldi will hit the spot. Veterans to specialty coffee will appreciate the rich balance the blend offers with the darker, roast-ier notes, but also the light sparkle of citric acidity and florals that comes from the Ethiopian component in the light side.
The dark side of Cafe Kaldi is also specially designed to bring out a rich body, providing the blend a satisfying mouthfeel and richness that any coffee lover will enjoy.
In some ways, 700 is a candy bar in a cup. Chocolate, caramel, and a backdrop of fruitiness allow the blend to be an all day drinker that also stands up incredibly well to milk and cream. More than any perhaps any other blend, we scrutinize 700 for its balance and we specifically roast it to enhance the sweetness you experience in the cup.
Cafe Kaldi and 700 are both available in 2lb bags
Honestly, we can’t pick sides here either. Instead, we’ll provide a some scenarios that may resonate with you:
Drip Coffee: Both blends are great as drip, but we use Cafe Kaldi as our main house blend because of its familiar-yet-complex taste profile that shines most as drip. We also like to think of it as a gateway to specialty coffee. So, if you or someone you love is curious about getting into the world of specialty, a cup of Cafe Kaldi from your home drip machine might just be the answer you’re looking for.
Espresso: If you’re primarily an espresso drinker, you will find an optimized experience with 700. Balanced shots, solid extractions, and predictable performance are all major focuses of the blend. And like we mentioned, it pairs remarkably well with any milk, milk alternative, or cream.
Taste preferences - Quick Hits
Cafe Kaldi and 700 have been parts of countless mornings and we think that longevity says something. In each blend, you will find a specially crafted coffee experience that began with roasting green coffee samples, then meticulously cupping and evaluating, and finally scrutinizing completed roasts to make sure they’re tasting to spec. Each are designed to be consistent, high quality, delicious, and comforting.
So… which should you pick? We’ll just advise you to do what we do:
Don’t pick at all!
Swapping between Cafe Kaldi and 700 gives even more balance to these wonderfully balanced blends. You can get Cafe Kaldi on one order and 700 on the next, back and forth in delicious perpetuity. Our subscription program makes this even easier: you can start one subscription for Cafe Kaldi, and another for 700, and simply stagger them order to order.
Delicious coffee to your door, on your schedule, with some built-in flexibility.
No matter what, we hope you find a blend that you love, because we love roasting it for you.
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You can also view the blog here.
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MUCH MORE THAN A BLEND: CAFE KALDI
Related Content:
Tell us if this sounds like you:
- You’re busy.
- You need coffee.
- And not just any coffee, great coffee
- Sometimes, you get so busy that you forget to buy coffee.
We get it. While not an earth-shattering problem, this is one that certainly can spoil a morning, especially if that first sip is something you look forward to as much as we do.
Sometimes it’s too much to go out and get coffee. But... what if that coffee could just come to you?
Our recurring subscription program takes the guesswork out of your coffee routine and allows you to craft it to your coffee needs. It’s as easy as:
Easy right? Your favorite coffee comes to you when you need it and you can cancel anytime.
But just setting up a subscription is only scratching the surface of what the program can do. Every subscription comes with a “Customer Portal” where you can make all sorts of changes and modifications, but there are also some really cool things that you can do to tailor your experience to your needs.
Our program also offers convenient management by text if you opt-in. Right before each one of your orders, you'll receive a text alert that also allows you to make changes from your phone. You can do things like delay the order if you have too much coffee or even switch the coffee you receive for some applicable subscriptions:
Read our Subscriber FAQ here
Want a bag a little less / more often?
We’ve seen a lot of creativity with our customers, and it’s a joy seeing the different kinds of set-ups that have been made since the beginning.
Our Roaster's Choice coffee subscription is a great option for those looking for a little variety mixed with a little certainty. Each calendar month we'll choose a new coffee out of our current selection, and you get to choose the best way to receive it.
Two facts: People love coffee. People love gifts. So how about gifting a coffee subscription?
This model is a little different where you pay upfront rather than as you go, but we have options for a 3 month, 6 month, and 12 month subscription for select blends and Roasters’ Choice. Other than that it works the same: set up the coffee, change the address when you check out, and then we will handle the order processing and delivery from there. You can even attach a little note to your recipient that we will hand-write for them!
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We have also been known to throw in some “extras” from time to time for our subscribers. We can’t guarantee when or what, but we definitely enjoy including some tokens of our appreciation to those that trust us with delivering them their coffee. It’s a task that we take humbly and seriously, and you deserve the best.
As if all of that wasn’t enough, all recurring blend, pods, and Colombia Community subscriptions receive 10% off!
Since 1994 it has been our goal to source and roast the best coffees in the world and bring them to you. We were thrilled to launch this new program because it made doing the latter that much easier.
Thank you for your support and your consideration of our subscription program - we wouldn’t be here without the support of our loyal guests and customers, and we want to be there for you, too.
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Last updated: 2/8/2023
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BLEND BUYING GUIDE
Related Content:
Much More Than A Blend: 700 | Kaldi's Coffee Blog
Choosing a Roaster's Choice Coffee Subscription | Kaldi's Coffee Blog
Much More Than A Blend: Cafe Kaldi | Kaldi's Coffee Blog
The days are short and dark this time of year, but we’re seizing the opportunity to brighten each one with our latest seasonal specials. Familiar, inviting aromas fill our cafes as we stock up on winter spices, hearty snacks, and sweet delights.
The Cinnamon Cardamom Latte returns to chase away the chill. Your winter favorite combines the sweetness of our house made cardamom and cinnamon simple syrup with espresso and a blanket of warm, steamed milk. You’ll recognize its familiar comfort and smile at every sip.
A smile-inducing sweetness topped with walnuts sets off this mini-loaf, a breakfast spin on carrot cake. A seriously nourishing base of carrots, pineapple, walnuts, and spices hides beneath an indulgent swirl of cream cheese filling.
Created as the perfect blend of sugar and spice, our Chipotle Mocha is designed to warm you up from head to toe on even the coldest days. We start with our classic Kaldi’s Mocha syrup, then supercharge the heat by mixing cinnamon, chipotle, and smoked paprika to concoct a spicy treat that will get you ready to charge back into the elements in no time at all.
Hibernation is the season when we tuck ourselves under blankets and brace against the cold, and our Bread Pudding with caramel sauce is the perfect embodiment of pulling on another blanket and letting the world pass by. This warm, sticky bread pudding topped with rich caramel sauce and walnuts will chase your cares away as you nestle into another bite.
For those mornings when you’re on the go and just want a snack to tide you over, we’ve created a bite-sized solution. Our morning breakfast bite is a smaller version of our classic granola bar; you won’t find a more convenient combination of oats, chocolate, and dried cranberries.
Our house made granola makes a surprise appearance on this mini loaf as a comforting, hearty topping. The loaf itself summons the memory of apple pie baking in a cozy kitchen, as warm cinnamon spices mix with the natural sweetness of moist apple bread.
When winter nips at your nose and you find yourself rubbing your hands together furiously, duck inside a warm cafe for the best escape from the cold. Savory scones will greet you in our cafes with the most delectable mix of ingredients. Chorizo, green salsa, cheddar cheese and green onions combine in this mouthwatering breakfast.
We know escaping to an island might be an ideal alternative to hibernating through the cold, but it’s not an option for most of us. This caffeine-free treat brings the sunshine you’ve been missing and serves it up in a creamy, savory-sweet cup of enchantment. We start with Firepot’s Golden Soul, a natural mix of turmeric, ginger, cardamom, clove, and cinnamon, then sweeten it subtly with a house made Dragon Fruit simple syrup to bring a touch of bright strawberry acidity into your cup, steam it, and garnish it with a dragon fruit powder dusting.
]]>Our closest community is made up of vibrantly unique team members, and Phil Moll's emotionally charged interview made us reflect on our team's passion, humility, and humor. Phil looked back across the years that he's been with Kaldi's, offering wisdom about how to make every day a new adventure, and reminded us of the power we all have to connect with the people around us daily.
A celebration of coffee’s original source and the diversity of Ethiopian coffees, our blend of three different Ethiopian coffees was a must buy for coffee aficionados in 2022. Featuring some of the best coffees we’d tasted in years, 3thiopia also highlighted a relationship coffee, with Tigist Waqo’s naturally processed coffee returning in her excellent crop, which we also featured as a single origin.
Each morning, we revel in connecting with you over coffee, but in March, lead barista Jalen Kelly gave us recipes to extend the revelry through each evening. His Irish Coffee recipe arrived in time for St. Patrick’s Day festivities and his Thyme and Rosemary Manhattan kept us in good spirits through the end of a dark, cold winter.
Humility is one of our core principles, which keeps us from bristling when the latest fad or buzz word comes in for criticism in popular culture (looking at you, avocado toast). We know self-serious baristas, coffee snobs, and coffee dissertations can fray the most patient guest’s nerves when all you want is a good cup of coffee in the morning. We decided to mock ourselves a bit by examining and hand-counting 700 beans of our 700 blend, one at a time, and offering it for sale for $700, as the ultimate “artisanal experience” in coffee. Laughing at yourself is a great way to stay grounded, and we love that you got the joke too. See the most ridiculously artisanal coffee here.
As the mercury climbed toward summer temps, our thoughts turned to cold brew. We love welcoming guests into our cafes, wherever they’re coming from, and try to make our blogs the same way. This one started with 5 questions our baristas often hear, then tried to answer them with general knowledge for beginners, while supplying hard science for those of you years into your coffee journeys. It also marked our first, focused effort to relaunch our Youtube channel with a companion video that began with our trainer, Maud Hasler, in a boat and wound up in our cold brew laboratory. Read the blog and see the video here.
Last year, we created the name Ameri-Kona to play on the phrase, “a slice of Americana”. A celebration of coffee from all of the Americas – Central, South, and the only-USA grown coffee, Kona –, Ameri-Kona arrived on our shores in June with hype videos and beach scenes. For the second year in a row, this coffee provided a rare chance to celebrate the hard work and dedication of the Americas’ coffee producers. This year we tried to supercharge your excitement for Ameri-kona’s return with hype videos and a huge giveaway worth over $1000. Once again, you responded with love and enthusiasm, and we can’t wait to see what next summer holds for this unique blend.
After analyzing the creative process and the results generated by our first real foray back into YouTube, we were really ready to dive back into video production for the first time in years. July saw 2 full videos and 2 shorts posted to our Youtube channel, signaling our intent to reach out to our online community with greater regularity and great content.
With the thrill of going back to school in the air, we prepared to learn new lessons as we opened our newest concept, the drive thru cafe in Ellisville. Designed to meet the needs of the Ellisville community that had grown more clear during the pandemic, our drive thru location has walk-in counter service, patio-only seating, and online ordering available via Toast. Since its opening, we’ve applied some early lessons, expanding the hours from 6am to 6pm, as well as expanding the menu to offer full meals. We can’t wait to continue learning and improving the experience in 2024 as we look to open more cafes. Read about the creation of our first drive thru here.
In September, we reflected on the wide world of coffee, commemorating some of our coffee communities' farthest flung members, while also honoring our founding roots in Saint Louis. First, we looked at coffee’s remarkable journey to your cup, beginning the moment it’s planted. To celebrate all of the workers who make a single cup of coffee possible, we commissioned and unveiled a mural on the side of our Roastery.
We also celebrated a hometown hero who inspired Saint Louisans throughout most of the decades we've been in business. As Albert Pujols' career neared its final chapter in the 2022 playoffs and his home run total approached 700, we put a plan into action to say thank you to him, while also thanking all of his and our supporters. We created 700 numbered, special-edition bags of our 700 blend, then gave them away across all of our Saint Louis area cafes as the playoffs began. Read about the giveaway here.
Coffee lovers cherish the changing of seasons, as we grip our mugs a little tighter to fight off the first chills of fall. Another annual tradition, our ‘Tis the Spooky blend signals the turn toward winter as darkness creeps its long cape across the lawn. This year, we were inspired by the classic vampire film, Nosferatu, and our coffee blend was as spine-tingling as any scary movie, filled with the candy inspired tasting notes of tootsie-rolls, caramel apple pops, and red vines. This blends unique profile also laid the foundation for our Phantasm Old Fashioned Recipe.
Fall brought a flurry of new flavors to our cafes. Made from scratch, the Baked Maple Pumpkin Latte has always been a favorite. This year, the Pistachio and Honey Latte was a breakout star, as you came back over and over again for this elegantly balanced drink. As Thanksgiving rolled by, we said goodbye to the BMPL and hello to Gingerbread, Peppermint, and Brown Sugar Rosemary Lattes. We love knowing that you love the continually refreshed, house made flavors that our team pours so much time into each year.
The year could only end one way, as we came together as a company for our holiday blend, celebrating coffee and a 10 year partnership with The Firecracker Press by creating a whimsically unique package for our ‘Tis the Season Blend. We created a documentary film about the history of the partnership and the creation of this year’s bag design, added 24 bags of ‘Tis as prizes in our 3-6-12 Giveaway, and encouraged the sharing of coffee by creating a free drink card designed to let you share a smile by gifting it on, or enjoy a moment for yourself by redeeming it alone. Whatever the holidays hold for you, we hope they’re happy and filled with great coffee and a great community, whether it's large or small.
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Step inside any of our cafes this winter and you'll find familiar faces and new offerings from the espresso bar, bakery, and our warm, bustling kitchens. Linger and enjoy the spices that sift through the air, or grab your order and step back out into the world refreshed. We're thrilled to be part of your holidays and can't wait to bring a smile to your lips this season.
An annual favorite, our rich, rosemary brown sugar simple syrup creates an intoxicating odor each day when we prepare it. As a full and sweet bouquet of aromas wafts across our cafes, just remember, it tastes even better.
(also available iced)
Make it at home: Brown Sugar Rosemary Simple Syrup recipe
Nothing warms you like wrapping your fingers around a hot Peppermint Hot Chocolate. Enjoy our chocolate sauce, which provides the perfect amount of sweetness to balance the fresh nip of peppermint from our house-made peppermint simple syrup. You’ll be smiling again as you sip the swirl of whip cream laid down on top of these delectable confections, which are spiked with crushed peppermint candy on top.
(also available iced)
Close your eyes and imagine dipping gingerbread into a hot chai and you’ll have a sense of the comfort found in this cup! Our house made syrup combines molasses, ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon before we mix it with Firepot’s classic Chai! Need a break from caffeine? Substitute Rooibos Chai and enjoy a soothing, herbal treat!
(also available iced)
A little sweet, a little spicy, this latte brings a snap of flavor to match the season. We started with molasses, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger to create a mouth-watering gingerbread snap of flavor for this latte.
(also available iced)
‘Tis the Season to indulge your inner child. We’re crushing peppermint candy into frosting, then sandwiching it between to tantalizing layers of velvety cookies, which are studded with white chocolate chunks.
Your favorite fluffy cinnamon rolls from our bakery, boosted into the ultimate in savory-sweet treats by blanketing them in a rich, sticky caramel sauce topped with toasted walnuts.
Hints of cinnamon and ginger mix with rich, dark molasses, in a sweet potato puree with dried cranberries that builds to a subtly sweet, hearty start to any cold morning.
Close your eyes and imagine this gooey, childhood classic, reimagined as a melt-in-your-mouth muffin. Our bakers magically combine soft, fluffy marshmallow cream with a double chocolate muffin mix, then top it with graham cracker crumble.
Our dark chocolate cake mixed with crushed peppermint, baked as a loaf and topped with a vanilla glaze and crushed peppermint candies. Treat yourself to a slice, or talk to your barista to order a loaf and light up your holiday gathering.
A chewy ginger cookie containing ginger, molasses, and applesauce; topped with turbinado sugar for a little crunch. The perfect pairing when you’re headed into the cold with a hot chocolate.
Huevos Rancheros - Escape into this new breakfast offering on a cold day and let the beach vibes carry you away. Black beans, spicy chorizo (also available with veggie sausage), and a sweet potato hash, topped with a sunny side up egg, salsa verde, and feta cheese create a mouthwatering breakfast option.
(also available vegetarian)
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Every year as the holiday season draws near, we eagerly look forward to cherished traditions and family celebrations. Over the years, 'Tis the Season, our annual holiday blend, has grown from an idea to a central part of our annual traditions.
This unique, once-a-year holiday blend is beautifully packaged to bring warmth to chilly days. ‘Tis the Season has become a tradition in its own right for our customers and team members alike. Fantastic as drip coffee, decadent in a pour-over, and amazing as espresso (stop by one of our cafes and try it in a mocha!), its aroma and taste profile provide the quintessential holiday experience, all in one cup.
Here, we’ll talk a little more about the creation of this time-honored tradition.
‘Tis the Season has a specific flavor profile that our coffee quality team aims for every year. ‘Tis targets holiday-focused flavor notes, such as baking spices, chocolate, and dried fruits, creating the perfect brew for family gatherings at year’s end. It is a rich and warming holiday blend that literally smells and tastes like festivals and cozy comforts in the deep of winter.
It is a rich and warming holiday blend that literally smells and tastes like festivals and cozy comforts in the deep of winter.
The ‘Tis the Season holiday blend is Kaldi’s Coffee’s annual update of the historical “mocha java” blend: an homage to coffee’s early introduction to Europe via the Dutch. Commercial coffee of the 17th century arrived in Europe almost exclusively via the Dutch East India Trading Company, which imported beans from Mocha, or al-Makha, in Yemen, and from the Dutch-colonized island of Java in Indonesia. At some point, an intrepid trader blended the beans from these two origins together to get the best of both worlds, and the legendary mocha java blend was born.
Each year, ‘Tis the Season holiday blend harkens back to that first documented coffee blend. We combine the earthy, spicy notes of a Sumatran coffee, which most closely resembles the classic “Java” component, with the fruit-forward flavors of a natural-processed Ethiopian. The flavor profile of the Ethiopian beans match the more acidic, wine-like profile original Mocha beans, while the Sumatran coffee's earth spices echo the original Java coffees. The blend of the coffees is then roasted to develop a rich, satifying sweetness.
To get this holiday blend right, and ensure the perfect winter festival sipping, we begin sourcing these coffees in the early summer, trying dozens of samples to find the perfect pairing. We work closely with our importers and our relationship suppliers to find coffees that can potentially live up to our expectations for ‘Tis, and propel the holiday blend to new heights of flavor and aroma year after year.
In this quest, we encounter many delicious Ethiopian naturals and earthy Sumatrans. The challenge is to find not only two exceptional coffees that can stand up on their own, but a pair that complements one another just so. It’s also important to find coffees that will be available and fresh when we need them!
Usually the coffees are chosen by September, and it’s always an event the first time our roasting team makes the first large roast for our team members to taste. The first test brews are very special and one of those “it’s really the holiday season now, isn’t it?” kind of moments — the air quickly fills with that familiar aroma that tells everyone, “‘Tis is brewing!”.
The first test brews are very special and one of those “it’s really the holiday season now, isn’t it?” kind of moments - the air quickly fills with that familiar aroma that tells everyone, “‘Tis is brewing!”.
Historically, Kaldi’s has created a mocha java blend since at least 2006, but it was in 2013 that ‘Tis the Season as a holiday blend debuted. That year, and each year since, we have partnered with local St. Louis letterpress printers The Firecracker Press to create ‘Tis the Season’s beautiful, custom-designed packaging and every year we are incredibly impressed with the creativity and quality of their work.
Firecracker Press was founded in St. Louis in 2002. For a few years, Kaldi’s Coffee and Firecracker Press shared a building on Washington Avenue in downtown St. Louis before Kaldi’s moved to midtown and Firecracker Press moved to Cherokee Street. We rekindled our relationship in 2013 with the advent of ‘Tis the Season. Our designer at Kaldi’s knew that such a special coffee deserved a special package, so he reached out to Firecracker Press to design what was then going to be a one-off design and blend for the 2013 holiday season. A one-off turned into a massive success, and here we are, 8 years later, continually re-thinking what this blend is and what this blend looks like.
The packaging is handcrafted, intricate, and designed to feel like an already wrapped gift. We hope that whether it's given as a gift, received as one, or purchased as a treat for oneself, that 'Tis the Season is experienced not only as a coffee that's a joy to drink, but also as a crafted experience worth holding and beholding as well.
This leads to another tradition for us:
Each design has been drastically different from the ones that came before, but each has been as well-thought out as ever.
Over the course of those 9 years, we have featured everything from tickets that can be detached from the packaging and brought into the cafes for a free drink, to packaging that can unfold into a full poster, to a mug that matched the bag design. Each design has been drastically different from the ones that came before, but each has been as well-thought out as ever.
Year after year, Firecracker Press crafts a uniquely holiday package that perfectly encapsulates what we love about the coffee itself: the amount of care it receives at every step of the process, from planting the seed to brewing your cup.
Cheers to another year!
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This summer, to commemorate the hard work that first brings coffee to us and then to you, TopCoatSignCo graced our home with a mural. Depicting some of the steps coffee takes in its journey to your cup, our mural celebrates the coffee producers abroad and the coffee professionals here in Saint Louis that make each sip possible.
Here, we'll use a few sections from the mural to help spotlight the amazing journey coffee to your cup.
All around the world, coffee begins its journey as a sapling, grown at altitude, often in small villages perched on mountainsides. Elevations from 900 to 1,800 meters are generally the ideal height from sea level for coffee. Here, TopCoatSignCo took inspiration from our longest standing coffee buying relationship, the village of Monserrate, which sits between 1,500 and 1,700 meters high.
Learn more about our relationship with Colombia Monserrate:
Most coffee is still picked by hand, as skilled farmers try to select coffee cherries at peak ripeness so your cup has maximum flavor. Machines are also difficult to operate on steep hillsides, as well as being quite expensive, and so are largely relegated to huge, commercial coffee farms in Brazil. We don’t purchase coffee from such farms, instead taking real pleasure from shaking the hands of the farmers who picked our coffees themselves. If you're interested in learning more, check out our Coffee Sourcing page.
Coffee’s processing is complex and often performed at village cooperatives, but it’s still common to see hand-cranked mills beside farmer’s houses around the world as well as at those cooperatives, as they mill coffee cherries to strip the fruit from around the coffee bean.
After coffee is depulped, the seeds (beans) need to be dried. Here, our mural shows a drying bed, full in the sun, being raked by a farmer to ensure even drying.
Colorful, burlap bags are often the mark of proud farmers, processing stations, and exporters. The coffee itself is sealed in grainpro bags to ensure freshness and minimal moisture loss, but the traditional burlap is often features an ornate design, or in special cases, hand painted artwork.
Roxie, our vintage, cast-iron Probat 1937 coffee roaster is shown in all her industrial glory. When most roasts end around 400 degrees, there’s always a little smoke!
Learn more about our own roasting in our blog, "The Vintage Coffee Roaster Behind Your Beans".
Your coffee is transformed by every hand in the mural’s process. When it arrives at our home, Saint Louis, we apply all our expertise to preserving and presenting those hands’ labors in the best possible way. Whether you stop for a sip at DeMun before the Forest Park Balloon glow, inhale the delicious aroma of fresh-roasted coffee far from the confluence of our three rivers, or are on your way to work with a mug in your car’s cup holder as you pass by us on 40, we hope you love this tribute to the world of coffee production.
We love our mural’s daily reminder to remember all the hard work that goes into our coffee, long before we roast or serve it. We hope have the chance to drive by soon, or schedule a tour of our roasting facility to get an up-close view of the mural!
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For almost a decade, we’ve been celebrating the arrival of the harvest season by putting a twist on one of the most anticipated drinks of the year, our Baked Maple Pumpkin Latte (lovingly sounded out as "BMPL" amongst Kaldi's team members).
Each morning, we spread a tray of pumpkin out, pop it in the oven, and let its hearty aroma fill our cafes as it bakes. When it’s cooked to a golden hue, we combine it with real maple syrup, cinnamon, and get it ready to serve. You might only see the puree being steamed into a decadent, creamy delight, but we’re confident the attention our bakery team gives it adds just as much to your smile as the whipped cream topped with grated nutmeg.
Can also be ordered iced.
Like a coffee bean as it roasts, the pistachio also emits a cracking “pop” as it ripens on the tree. We’ve taken the next step with those ready-to-eat split shells, breaking out a new flavor to create this autumn’s latest latte. To balance the piney nuttiness of the pistachio, we’ve sweetened this latte with real honey, for an elegant concoction that hits both as an iced refresher for your late summer days and a cozy, warm companion as fall turns toward winter.
Can also be ordered iced.
The Spiced Pumpkin Chai uses that same, delicious pumpkin puree, but bypasses espresso as it is added to a blend of Firepot Rooibos Chai and milk, to create a spicy-sweet delight that evokes the crackle of leaves beneath your feet and a nip in the air.
Can also be ordered iced.
Our classic matcha latte, without the sugar! If you love our regular Amai Matcha lattes, you just have to try our latest, earthier iteration. By cutting out the sugar, this matcha packs a greater umami punch, giving you a richer taste of this wonderful green tea powder.
SPICED PEAR THYME AND WALNUT SCONE
An elegant breakfast awaits when you sink your teeth into our latest scone offering. The subtle sweetness of roasted pear is amplified by maple syrup, while the simultaneous rich, snugness of thyme keeps this masterpiece bursting with character. The perfect complement to a cup of Cafe Kaldi, we can’t wait to see it brightening up your autumn mornings.
SWEET AND SALTY COOKIE
A delicious array of butterscotch chips, chocolate chips, salty pretzel pieces, crushed potato chips, and coffee, this wild cookie highlights the crunch of autumn, wrapping in the soft coat of an oatmeal dough.
SWEET POTATO WALNUT MUFFIN
The Sweet Potato Walnut Muffin is made without gluten ingredients, and is vegan, and we’re sure that it will continue to satisfy as the winter months loom. A heady mix of cinnamon, nutmeg, sweet potato, and banana make it the perfect companion for a morning coffee when you’re craving both caffeine and comfort.
PUMPKIN BREAD
A year-round favorite, our Pumpkin Bread’s aroma fills our cafes each morning as we bake it, a heady mix of baking spices, cinnamon, and pumpkin nestling into every nook. Perfect as a snack or a bagged breakfast, indulge a little and let us bring a smile to your lips. And as your calendar begins to bustle with the whirl of fall, lighten your load by ordering our classic Pumpkin Bread by the loaf at any cafe.
The best ingredients of harvest are loaded into this delightful salad, created by our very own Chef Patrick. Early fall’s balance between warm afternoons and cooler evenings receives an ode, as the Fall Harvest Salad walks the line between savory and sweet, most notable with the use of candied bacon. Roasted sweet potatoes, pepitas, walnuts, and almonds balanced with the citric pop of dried cranberries make each mouthful a new discovery. Sprinkled over a bed of mixed greens and topped with a maple vinaigrette, the Fall Harvest Salad feels like wearing a cozy sweater on a crisp day, the pure enjoyment of the best of both worlds.
It's fall at Kaldi's, and we're so thrilled to spend it serving you!
]]>Since its inception, we’ve aimed to make Ellisville unlike any drive thru you may have experienced, and we know it’s unlike any café we’ve ever built. Maintaining our current cafe experience while creating this entirely new type of cafe was paramount, so we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how our current guest experience would translate to this new concept.
In this blog, we'll lay out the inception of the drive thru and the specific design considerations we made to ensure you're still getting the memorable coffee experience we strive for.
The needs of customers and companies changed a lot in 2020 and 2021. With those changes, we saw an opportunity to expand the way we serve you and your families, by applying our decades of experience to a new form of cafe. We know with a car full of kids or a long commute ahead, staying on the go can be priceless, but we didn’t want to open a Kaldi’s drive thru just for the sake of the drive thru.
Ellisville has always been supportive of our Chesterfield café, but remains its own distinct community in a different, high-traffic area with its own commuters, patterns, and needs. For our very first drive thru, we looked at our current operations and tried to figure out how we could fit everything into an 1,100 square foot space. Our current cafes are designed with the guest experience first, so we started with that same perspective.
So, what’s the new guest experience like? As soon as you enter the line, you’ll see digital menu boards, which will communicate with our POS system. This communication should provide the same familiarities as standing inside one of our cafes. For example, if we’ve sold out of blueberry muffins, they won’t be on the screens, as if you were waiting in line inside a cafe, examining our bakery case.
After you order, we’ve built what is known as a “6 car stack,” which is the length from order to our pickup window. We chose this length knowing we need time to craft your drinks and food orders, but still wanting to get your freshly made latte into your hands quickly. At the pickup window, you’ll be greeted by a barista at the register, standing beside our bakery case, just like any of our other cafes. They have quick access to brewed coffee, iced coffees, iced teas, and pastries, so simple orders can be served quickly.
From there, peek around the corner and you’ll find our espresso machines, cold brew kegs, and smoothie blenders, just in front of the kitchen, where the burritos and egg bagels you love will be prepared. We also have a walk-up counter and condiment bar inside our front doors, in case you need to stretch your legs, have ordered online via Toast, or want to hang out on our large patio. A few parking spots are even dedicated for guests who are picking up online orders.
Whether you’re driving through or walking in to say good morning, we didn’t want a Kaldi’s drive thru to feel like any drive thru you’ve ever experienced. On the inside, we don’t have seating, but we laid a tile floor in the entryway and in the bathroom, hung beautiful wallpaper, and built shelving for plants, decorations, and of course, your ready-to-grab Toast orders. The space feels modern, welcoming, and is surrounded by meticulous landscaping.
We also wanted to ensure that our team member experience is just as pleasant. Drive thrus and commercial kitchens often feel like closed-off bunkers. We insisted on windows all over our new space, from the office in the rear of the space, to a high, wall-length window illuminating the espresso bar, and even inside the kitchen itself. The kitchen is bathed in natural light via east facing windows, making each morning a livelier, healthier space. Even before the electrical work was finished, with no lights working, the space was still well lit throughout.
The outside of the café received the same refined treatment, with a marble-like, weather resistant tower setting off the pickup area, brass light fixtures, a large patio, and manicured grounds below a large, backlit sign of our beloved goat.
Delivering the same, high quality coffee experience that we’re known for at speed requires cutting edge technology and we looked to an industry leader for help. The Eversys shot-master is a four group-head, two steam wand, algorithm driven wonder of an espresso machine. Constantly calibrated espresso and flawlessly steamed milk are hallmarks of Eversys, thanks to some amazing software and internals. Their systems help baristas with speed of service while maintaining our non-negotiable commitment to quality. We can’t wait to make you drinks using it!
Throughout the years, we’ve served you from the cozy confines of DeMun on snowdays to the bustling sidewalks of Clayton, Kirkwood, and the Central West End. Chesterfield’s been an oasis in a concrete coffee desert, our Atlanta-area Emory cafes are social and academic hubs of activity, while Citygarden in downtown Saint Louis provides lush shade and great art all day.
We’re thrilled that after nearly 30 years, you’ll get to experience an entirely new mode of service at a Kaldi’s Coffee cafe, while we hold firmly to the values that bring you back to us time and time again. We can’t wait to learn even more about what makes a cafe great, what you love the most about our latest iteration, and how we can continue to improve in our constant effort to provide you with the best coffee experience in the world.
We hope to see you soon — just pull right on up to the window and say hello!
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Honolulu Coffee is based out of Honolulu, HI, where they have several cafes and roast their coffee near downtown Honolulu.
Enjoy!
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Aloha!
We're excited to be here on the Kaldi's Coffee blog talking about Kona coffee alongside their Ameri-Kona blend special release. As you might guess, this a topic near and dear to our hearts.
Over the years, Kona coffee has become synonymous with Hawaii. There are many people that put experiencing Kona coffee on the shortlist of things to do on their getaway, and buying a bag of Kona coffee online has become a way for many to relive their Hawaiian experience. There's just something about its taste that transports you back to the islands. It’s always a thrill to see the passion and excitement on our customer's faces every day when we serve them our coffee.
Here, we'll be giving you some brief but thorough details on:
Mahalo!
The Honolulu Coffee Experience Center near downtown Honolulu, HI
Despite Kona coffee’s popularity and high demand, it may surprise you to learn that this coffee, or any coffee, isn't originally native to Hawaii! Instead, coffee was first introduced to Hawaii by way of Brazil in the 1820's. By 1828, the first ever coffee trees were planted in the Kona region, on the westward volcanic slopes of the Big Island.
As the decades went on, Kona survived via small family holdings, farmed by migrant workers, who did their work in the off-season, when they weren’t contracted to work on the much larger, more lucrative sugar and pineapple plantations. But even without it being a core focus, the Kona coffee varieties continued to quietly develop and improve.
Beginning in the 1980s, Kona coffee began to experience its long-awaited resurgence, along with the rest of specialty coffee all around the globe. As sugar and other cash crops declined, and coffee enthusiasts of the world turned to better tasting and more ethically sourced coffees, Kona was able to reclaim its earlier fame.
The History of Kona Coffee Beans in Hawaii
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Hawaii is the only geographical region in the United States capable of producing the quality of coffee beans that are classified as specialty coffee. This, paired with a few other facts and elements as mentioned below, has led to Kona becoming a household name.
Elevation, climate, and region: Compared to global coffee production, coffees in Hawaii are grown at a lower relative elevation. But because Hawaii is so much farther north of the equator than many other coffee regions, smaller changes in elevation have a larger impact on the coffee’s quality by allowing access to cooler air and the necessary blend of sunlight and moisture. The climate in Hawaii’s Kona region, and the mineral-rich volcanic soils of Mauna Loa’s steep slopes, ensure exceptional conditions for growing some of the world's best coffee.
Tough standards: Unfortunately, unscrupulous traders have been known to pass off other coffees as Kona coffee. The State of Hawaii issued legislation in 2003 to regulate this abuse of the Kona coffee name, and has more recently been considering even stricter standards on the use of Kona coffee in mixed-origin blends. Kona coffee is only grown on about 6 square miles, making it a hard-to-find, high-end product. In short, the perfect target, unfortunately, for food fraud. Tough standards and transparency are some of the tools we use to combat this.
The mystique: Allow us to get a little sentimental here. Kona coffee is more than just a name or a type; Kona coffee means Hawaiian coffee, in form and spirit. In the fruit and seeds of Kona coffee, we are mindful of the rich volcanic soil of the Big Island, and the deep, red-hot roots beneath the earth. In Kona, we taste the sky that brings cooling rain and the warm sun that dapples the coffee farms in the shade of ancient ohia forest.
We have the privilege, responsibility, and advantage of owning our own Kona farm located on the beautiful slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano. Our Kona coffee farm, obviously, plays a pivotal role in the quality chain. Afternoon cloud cover, nutrient-rich volcanic soil, and tropical rains make our farm's location an ideal place for producing and cultivating this world-famous coffee. Our Kona coffee farm understands that the growing process simply can't be rushed. Slow maturation of our coffee trees produces the optimal coffee cherries, which are handpicked, wet-processed and sun-dried.
This coffee is then processed and delivered to our roasting facility in our Honolulu Coffee Experience Center, giving our guests a true farm to cup Kona coffee experience.
When it's all said and done, all it takes is just one sip to instantly give coffee drinkers from all over the world a true taste of the spirit of Hawaii. This is the power and the potential of Kona coffee, and we take pride in nurturing this experience from farm to cup.
Drinking Kona anywhere is a pleasure and a luxury, but there is something special about drinking it where it was grown. If you ever find yourself in Hawaii, we invite you to come visit! You can watch us roast our coffee inside our Experience Center near downtown Honolulu any day of the week, then bring paradise home to your kitchen by buying a bag in any of our cafes, or relive those sweet island mornings by ordering any of our pure Kona coffee offerings on our website.
Mahalo!
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In this blog series, we offer you behind-the-scenes glimpses of our team members and the many unique viewpoints and experiences they bring to our company, our coffee, and the Kaldi’s Coffee community.
This month we sat down with Elle Miers, the General Manager of our downtown Clayton location at the Crescent. She’s been with Kaldi’s Coffee for many years, working both in Saint Louis and in former Kansas City locations. Lately, we’ve been utilizing her fount of experience in operating drive thrus to dial in some of our menu items and workflows for our new Ellisville location.
Watch our video interview with Elle here!
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Elle’s career in coffee should have been predicted at a young age, based on her early love of all things coffee. After moving to Saint Louis as a small child, she would visit South County Mall with her mom to shop and indulge her mom’s love of coffee. The olfactory overload that occurred while waiting in line at Gloria Jean’s made a deep impression on her, as sugar, chocolate, and roasted coffee mingled in the air. “I loved that smell, long before I could drink it, but I did start drinking coffee when I was 12, never stopped loving it, and knew I wanted to make it my career.”
At 18, Elle took her first step into coffee culture, taking over as manager of Coffee in the Delmar Loop in Saint Louis. It was her first introduction to cafe culture and all “their characters and regulars…getting to know them after only having worked fast food before was magical.”
"I did start drinking coffee when I was 12, never stopped loving it, and knew I wanted to make it my career."
Eventually Elle moved on, Coffee in the Loop closed, and she spent years working for a national chain’s drive through operations. In 2014, with little knowledge and limited experience of specialty coffee, Elle began working with Kaldi’s at our Skinker location. “I knew I wanted to make my way down the coffee path…Working at Skinker, I worked with [head trainer] David Fasman and [eventual 2019 Coffee in Good Spirits champion] Matt Foster, who were both pretty well known in the coffee industry at the time, were deep sources of learning for me, and taught me a lot of what I know today. It was a very fun cafe to work in, I did everything but bake, and after a year I moved out to Kansas City to help run a Kaldi’s out there. Eventually, I came back to help the Crescent as their kitchen manager.”
When the pandemic hit, Elle stepped up, making her way around Saint Louis to help out at whichever cafe was in need of an extra hand. Working both on the registers and in the kitchens around town gave her a unique perspective. “I’ve seen that we have guests that come into different cafes all over the city. There’s Tommy, who I’ve seen at Chesterfield, the Crescent, Skinker. We have true Kaldi’s fans and I love seeing them all over the city, it’s like bumping into an old friend. During the pandemic, I helped wherever I was needed, but being on bar and being out front provides a great opportunity for connection.”
While that connection was still possible, it was also complicated by the pandemic. As Elle recalls, “Sometimes, I felt more isolated from customers, between the masks and the plexiglass shields, but I was happy to continue to work, knowing I was providing a getaway and a de-stressor for our regulars. I felt like I got to create moments where we could pretend together that things were all right. It opened my eyes and let me feel like we’re all active members of a community.” That passion for community means Elle’s feeling great about being rooted again, as she manages the Crescent cafe exclusively these days.
"...being on bar and being out front provides a great opportunity for connection."
The current Crescent team is pretty small; with many downtown Clayton offices still WFH, the cafe has a core of about five team members. Elle describes the team as full of jokes, camaraderie, with plenty of room for self-expression. “It’s fun working in a small team right now, we’ve really gotten to know each other well, as we almost all work every day we’re open. And the regulars, we love our regulars at the Crescent. They are friendly, steady, and very consistent in knowing what they want. It makes memorizing orders possible, and I love having a drink ready for someone right after they order it!”
"...we love our regulars at the Crescent. They are friendly, steady, and very consistent in knowing what they want."
Another plus of running the Crescent is that Elle’s had the time to work with our culinary expert, Frank McGinty, in preparation for our new Ellisville drive thru's upcoming opening. Elle says, “I’ve been cooking and tasting new food items, finding simplified versions of our current offerings, thinking about streamlined service, and drawing on my drive thru experiences…I can’t wait for our new drive thru to open. It’s a new way to get our name out there and an incredible opportunity to open the world of coffee up to new guests.” We can’t wait to share the results of all her hard work.
Opening up the world of coffee, the way it was opened up for herself, is clearly one of Elle’s passions. Welcoming and connecting guests is part of each day, but Elle also remembers what it was like to enter the world of specialty coffee, researching Kaldi’s before applying. “I googled Kaldi’s!” she remembers. “I read about the core values and mission statement, and had never worked for a company like that. Previously, I’d felt like a corporate worker bee, unknown and underappreciated. Here I feel cared about, and love that we continue to work on the culture together.”
The way Elle has examined the path she walked and now applies it to welcoming new team members and guests means each interaction is considered and helpful. Hear more of her thoughts below!
Kaldi’s has changed a lot since I started. When I first started, I didn’t think of my job as a forever career, but as I’ve continued working and seen all the aspects, I’ve realized that you can do anything here, there’s just endless possibilities.
My current favorite S.O. is the Ethiopia Ardi. It has everything I’m looking for in a black coffee. I love brewing it by hand, and enjoy its smoothness and bright notes.
Communication has been my most improved skill. I was extremely shy when I first entered the working world, and it took years to get better at open communication. Working in coffee has helped, because every customer interaction pushes us to develop our own thoughts and opinions about our coffees, and those opinions are valued here.
If I retired today, I’d go on some adventures. I love skiing, traveling, white-water rafting, hiking, and of course I’d be painting everywhere I went.
I love gooey butter cake - it’s so sweet and balances out any bitterness when you pair it with coffee or espresso - how can you go wrong?! I hadn’t heard of it before Kaldi’s, I’d never tried it before, but I was immediately hooked. The best way to eat it is to put it in the freezer and eat it straight out of the freezer (it never completely freezes and is amazing!).
Straight espresso or an Iced Oat Latte.
It would have to be Ethiopia, because it has a lot of fruity flavors, like blueberry and citrus, which I enjoy, and they’re the oldest varietals as well as having a ton of variety.
I love the 700, always. I’m a cult follower of it, I drink it every day, I love tasting it as I dial it in every morning, something about its rich chocolatey flavors just hit perfectly for me.
My favorite place to go on vacation is British Columbia, and I love skiing on Red Mountain.
Fall. I love hoodies, I love bundling up.
Blueberry, naturally in an Ethiopian coffee.
I love abstract art, photography, and painting with pastels.
See more People of Kaldi's Blogs:
People of Kaldi's Coffee Blog Series
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THE PEOPLE OF KALDI'S COFFEE: LYNDSEY
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Each season as the weather warms, a classic coffee debate appears before us: hot coffee or cold coffee? Both seem to have their ardent supporters, with plenty in each camp clinging to their chosen temperature year-round, no matter the reading on the thermometer.
We love all coffee choices and support whatever brew method you love most, but it did leave us with a question:
How does cold brewing taste versus hot brewing?
Not content to rely on our pre-baked general assumptions, we devised a relatively simple experiment:
Then we gathered our team, took copious notes, and got way too caffeinated as we sought to find a definitive answer.
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We chose the most one-to-one comparison we could muster for this, utilizing “full immersion” methods for each, via the traditional cupping bowl tasting method for our hot brew and the most traditional cold brewing method (long steep, ambient temperature water), which we accomplished in a French Press.
We could have varied either of these methods, and when you’re experimenting at home you might choose drip coffee and a flash chilled brew (like our Clever Dripper recipe), or a hot French Press and a Toddy cold brew for comparison.
The important thing is to use benchmarks you’re familiar with and comfortable brewing. At our Roastery, cupping is our standard hot brewing method for evaluation, so that’s what we used here. Let’s get to the taste test!
The 5 coffees were chosen to give us the most thorough, rounded answer to our question. With these selections, we hope you find a match to your taste preferences, whether you love big fruit-forward naturals or the sultry, roasty notes of a very developed coffee.
Hot:
Cold:
The verdict: Hot brewing brought out more of the roasty notes from this medium-roasted coffee, but also gave the coffee more pronounced florals. Cold brewing gave us the creamy, chocolatey smoothness that we love.
Hot:
Cold:
The verdict: If you love dark roasted coffee hot, you’ll probably love it as cold. If you normally shy away from darker roasted coffee, you might be surprised at how sweet and mellow it is as cold brew. If you ever find yourself with a bag, try it cold!
Hot:
Cold:
The verdict: Peru Rutas del Inca remains one of our favorite coffees, but cold brewing did not bring out the best of this particular coffee. This was a surprising result for everyone at the table!
Hot:
Cold:
The verdict: We had a cold-brew skeptic at the table who confessed that this cold brew had shocked them with its overall quality! We saved this French Press in our fridge to drink later (i.e. it was delicious, and in stark contrast to the Peru, it brought out even more of the flavors we loved from the coffee.
Hot:
Cold:
The verdict: Ethiopian coffees are pretty much just exceptional no matter how you brew them. We did taste a little more of the fermented nature of the coffee come through cold. If you want a very fruity cold coffee drink in the summer, find a natural Ethiopian!
Broadly speaking, we agreed on a few generalized characteristics when comparing the hot and cold versions of these coffees:
While those conclusions were consistently true across all the coffees we tested, it’s also interesting to consider the exceptions:
Obviously, single-origin coffees come in and out of season, so these specific results won’t be useful year-round, but we encourage experimentation and exploration for anyone interested in tasting something outside of the everyday.
Any hot and cold brew method could be used in setting up a comparison like the one we did. An easy place to start is brewing a cold French Press, decanting the brew, cleaning the press, then brewing a hot French Press and comparing them side by side as the hot press cools.
Coffee brings us back again and again to our core values of fun and continual improvement. In our cupping room, we had the coffee “purist” who discovered a cold brew he unexpectedly loved, saw some of our preconceptions fail completely, and enjoyed the experience of discovery as we tasted familiar and new coffees in an unfamiliar way.
Who knows, you may discover a gem of a cold brew like we did with the PNG or find that your favorite coffee is delicious in a new way like we did with the Ethiopia Ardi. Maybe you’ll be inspired to branch out from blends to single origin coffee for the first time, or to enjoy the pleasure of a chocolatey cold brew that’s heavier bodied than your normal hot brew, or find that you prefer the precise, clean flavors of a hot brew after years of being a cold brew fanatic.
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Whatever you do with this new knowledge, we hope you keep challenging your palate to expand beyond familiar comforts and enjoy the journey of discovery, no matter where it leads you!
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This month we sat down with Lyndsey Patel, our Head of Sales and Business Development. Lyndsey joined Kaldi’s about a year ago and brings a focused energy and a passion to help others that lights up the room. That passion has driven her career, her personal life, and a life-long commitment to volunteerism and philanthropy.
We hope you enjoy following along on her journey from Kansas to Kaldi’s, and discovering how Lyndsey’s passion motivates her to make her world a bit better every day.
Watch our video interview with Lyndsey (and Stella!) here:
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Lyndsey, a Kansas native, moved to Saint Louis in 2014, and one of her first experiences was visiting our cafe across from Washington University, on Skinker. To this day, she remembers, “the baristas were so friendly and the coffee was so good, it really helped me settle in and feel at home here.” At the time, Lyndsey was working for a national restaurant chain and traveling all over the country, so her neighborhood Kaldi’s in the Central West End became a reassuring part of her Saint Louis routine.
Lyndsey with her family
As COVID hit and travel became harder, Lyndsey’s adorable daughter, Stella, was born and she naturally began to think about making a change in her career. With her passion for Kaldi’s and best-foot-forward personality, she reached out to us and started a conversation about joining our team. We weren’t hiring at the time, but we stayed in regular contact, and the moment a role opened up that matched her vast experience, our decision was easy.
The department Lyndsey oversees, Sales and Development, helps to support and grow our wholesale customers. Over 300 customers, from groceries to universities to office spaces to single cafes, are offered our expertise, equipment, and training. Lyndsey’s mission is to bring our coffee experience to life for our wholesale partners.
As all of the retail sector has had to adapt to new challenges over the past few years, she describes her biggest challenges as “figuring out how to apply the learnings of our own cafes, in order to help our wholesale partners navigate the post-COVID environment, from staffing challenges to supply chain issues, to menu development.”
Outside of work, Lyndsey has many passions, first and foremost spending time with her daughter, Stella. We were lucky enough to be graced by Stella’s presence by chance on the day Lyndsey sat down with us, so be sure to watch our interview to meet her. Despite Stella’s age (2) Lyndsey travels with her, takes her to restaurants, and they can often be found strolling the galleries at the Saint Louis Art Museum.
Lyndsey also has a life-long passion for philanthropy, volunteering regularly for non-profits as a child herself, a habit that’s endured throughout the years. “I’ve always put a huge emphasis on philanthropy in my personal life. I’ve always been committed to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, but it’s become even more important to me since I became a mom, as blood cancers are some of the leading forms of pediatric cancers, as I understand the impact it has on young children and families.
Applying her passion for art, travel, and philanthropy has been easy for Lyndsey at Kaldi’s Coffee. She considers the drinks we produce a craft, and says learning about the detail, love, and presentation that goes into coffee has only deepened her opinion. Her passions for travel and philanthropy have also been reinforced, continuing her coffee love affair (which began drinking espresso in Italy many years ago) in a unique way.
She explains, “I get to learn about so many parts of the world where coffee is sourced, I’m constantly adding destinations to my travel wish list. And giving back goes hand in hand with that learning about all the processes and people involved in coffee’s supply chain, from the pickers to the farmers to the exporters, and the relationships that we have with them all. We're doing a lot to give back to those communities all the time, all over the world in so many ways, and that feels really rewarding.”
Passion is a core value at Kaldi’s Coffee, and something Lyndsey’s always tried to embody. From studies to careers to philanthropy, passion has always been a huge part of what drives her. Motherhood has created an even greater motivation, as she seeks to model a life driven by passion for her daughter, Stella, through philanthropy and a baseline desire to meet each day with focus and vigor.
As an adult, Lyndsey has focused her philanthropic work primarily on one charity, due to a close friend’s encounter with blood cancer in her early 20’s. When her friend was diagnosed in college, Lyndsey immediately looked for a way to help and found the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, volunteering as an intern with LLS.
It changed her life. As an intern she got to meet more people affected by cancer, and gained an up-close view of the impact, progress, and research that LLS was producing. Her internship also put her to work directly on the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s largest annual fundraising campaign, the Man and Woman of the Year contest. It’s structured as a competition for star fundraisers to challenge each other to raise the most money and features a child that’s honored in each campaign, as blood cancers significantly affect children.
After the internships, Lyndsey stayed involved in nonprofits, and a decade later, this year, she was nominated to compete for the Woman of the Year award. The very day she was nominated, she learned a close friend’s 3 year old daughter had been diagnosed with leukemia, sending her motivation through the roof. She set her goal at $50,000 because that amount would fund a specific grant that LLS could use to fight blood cancer.
Lyndsey created Coffee for a Cure to complement her efforts, by providing an alternative stream of fundraising. We were proud support Lyndsey, the LLS, and we contributed all proceeds from sales directly to Lyndsey’s campaign. Hear this inspiring story in her own words by watching our interview!
“A cappuccino: it’s always made beautifully, it’s simple, and it’s always delicious! I love our seasonal drinks too, how they taste, but also how much time and thought goes into them, from conception to execution”.
“I love the Ethiopia Tigist Waqo, it’s just so light, bright and delicious on its own. For blends, I love the adaptability of 700, as an espresso and as a brewed coffee!”
“My soul’s always in Italy, but I took a trip with my husband in late 2019 to Marrekesh, Morocco, and it was gorgeous, the food was so good, and I loved the culture, the shopping, and having incredible mint tea every day.”
“Depending on the day, it’s either our quiche with a side salad, or an Egg Bagel, I just love them so much!”
“If I could retire today, I’d marry my passion for art and travel, by visiting as many art museums as possible around the world.”
See more People of Kaldi's Blogs:People of Kaldi's Coffee Blog Series |
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THE PEOPLE OF KALDI'S COFFEE: JAKE SIMORKA
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Peach is the star of our seasonal offerings this year, hitting on levels that start as subtle nods toward the new season before springing into full fledged flavor explosions.
Let’s begin with our Peach Cornbread Muffin, a nourishing, semi-sweet introduction that echoes the promise of spring. Grounded in cornmeal, yet lifted by the occasional chunk of fresh peach, it acknowledges the need for a heartiness at the beginning of a chilly day, while pointing toward a warm May afternoon. Made without gluten ingredients.
Peach cornbread muffin
Packing an intense burst of peach, our Basil Peach Honey Scone displays a rollicking sweetness and fruity intensity that will light up your taste buds. We won’t blame you for blinking as your palate goes into overdrive processing the cascading flavors that wash over you while enjoying this scone!
Basil Peach Honey Scone
Spring also heralds the return of familiar comforts, as pools reopen and shorts reappear. Some of our familiar cafe favorites also return this time of year, as the peanut butter mini-cookie stirs from its bakery slumber to reclaim its prized place in our pastry cases (also made without gluten ingredients). It’s joined by the sugar-rush zing of our classic lemon poppyseed bread, which is sure to spread smiles.
Peanut butter mini cookies
We only have one returning drink this season, but it’s a doozy: the Lavender Matcha is back, in all its floral glory. Packed with the earthy delight of Firepot’s Amai Matcha and sweetened with a delectable, lavender simple syrup, its vibrant sheen will put a spring back in your step.
Lavender Matcha
As the radio’s summer soundtrack summons the crash of waves against sand, delighted children frolicking in a pool, and the waft of a thousand backyard barbecues, we reach for fresh delights to quench our thirst. Peaches aren’t just good in pastries, they’re amazing in smoothies too, so we’re rocking out with the peach pop of a Peaches and Cream Smoothie. This caffeine free blend is refreshing and nutritious, while those craving a caffeine jolt in the sun can choose our new Shaken Peach Iced Latte. A mouth-watering, house-made peach reduction is thrown into a bar shaker with espresso, your choice of milk, and iced before we serve up an extremely cold jolt of peach perfection that’s perfect for summer sipping.
Peaches and Cream Smoothie
Shaken Peach Iced Latte
Summer tees, seeking shade, and staying hydrated become sudden priorities as the sun hangs higher and higher in the sky. We’ve got you covered with fresh emerald and sunset Kaldi’s Coffee tees, evoking fresh fields and summer nights.
Sunset Orange T-Shirt - Shop Now!
Our next summer fling is a wild, custom Nalgene water bottle that is wrapped in an elevation map of Colombia Monserrate, the location of our longest running relationship coffee.
Nalgene Water Bottle - Shop Now!
Finally, stay cool all summer and long into fall with the Kinto Capsule Cold Brew Maker. An all-in-one capsule, the Kinto’s elegant design lets you cleanly brew up batches of your favorite Haya cold brew at home. Or mix it up and get wild with single origin refreshment as you beat the heat using our detailed Kinto brew guide. Whatever your taste in coffee, the Kinto puts the power of refreshment in your refrigerator and looks good doing it!
As you plan your summer adventures, we’re thrilled to be along for the journey. Whether you just need a spark in the morning, a drink to stow in your dash as you set out on a roadtrip, or are clipping our Nalgene to a pack as you set out on a trek, we can’t wait to experience everything the summer offers!
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There's much more to this blend than just its sweet, chocolatey balance. Through the lens of 7 numbers, we're here to shine a brighter light on this fan-favorite coffee blend.
Espresso QC and dial-in is one of the hallmarks of a week in the life of the Roastery. Our roasting and QC staff makes shot after shot, dialing-in, testing, and tasting 700 until we get that week's roasts up to spec. These notes make their way to our dedicated baristas, who then utilize their own time and expertise each morning to dial it in again.
You can read more about our quality control process in our blog, "Chasing Quality: A Walk Through Espresso QC".
Cupping is the industry standard for coffee quality control and tasting. And 700 gets as much time on the cupping table as any of our blends.
Various roasts are put to the test, ensuring that each version of 700 blend - with its rotating fresh crops and harvests - tastes the same in your favorite drink.
Cafe Kaldi used to serve double-duty as our main drip coffee AND espresso blend. This changed around 2008-2009, when 700 was swapped in to make our classic espresso taste even more balanced and good with milk.
The standard double-shot, our 700 blend is usually dialed in to around a 1:2 ratio (20g coffee grounds in, 40ml espresso out) for all of our drinks.
It should come as no surprise that our roasting staff is extra-busy dialing in roasts of 700 on our vintage Probat coffee roasters towards the end of the year.
Want to know more about our coffee roasting equipment? Check out our blog, "The Vintage Coffee Roaster Behind Your Beans".
Fun fact: Also named after 700 St. Bernards Lane, the address of our second roasting facility.
We opened our first cafe on DeMun Ave in Clayton, MO in 1994. DeMun has since grown into a neighborhood cafe rich with memories and history. 700 pays homage to this mentality and helps tell the story of Kaldi's itself.
Read more in our blog, "Est. 1994: DeMun's Origin Story".
Our baristas were busy grinding, tamping, and serving you our espresso blend, the product of many hands and much passion from crop to cup.
700 is the product of many human hands and incredible passion throughout the coffee supply chain. Its ubiquitousness on the espresso bar of our cafes, in the lattes of our guests, and on the countertop of your home is the product of many years of perfecting its roast profile, developing new relationships at origin, and training baristas to love brewing and serving coffee.
There are many numbers behind 700, but there are many more stories. And we are happy to continue telling those stories for years to come.
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COMPARING CAFE KALDI AND 700: A DEEP DIVE BEFORE YOU BUY
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I’ve been using the Kalita Wave 155 since 2016. I was in my early days of learning how to make pour over coffee. It was a ripe — and dizzying — time for new brew recipes and new brewers popping up on Kickstarter, and to my burgeoning coffee mind it seemed like every new theory or product would contain a revelation or a revolution.
Since then, I’ve learned a lot and become fully comfortable with my moniker of coffee hobbyist. But no matter what the hottest brewer or brew method of the moment is, I still end up going back to the 155 a few times a week. It has taken on a nostalgic, almost-legendary stature in my way-too-full cabinet of coffee brewers.
But why? Why does this modest brewer hold such a place in my heart? It’s probably 75% emotion, 25% science. But after 6 years of brewing on the 155, I wanted to write this for two main reasons:
At the end, I’ll give my brew recipe that has given me my best results through these happy years.
For the uninitiated, the Kalita Wave 155 is the smaller version of the classic 185. It comes in two materials: stainless steel and glass.
The difference in size between the 185 (left) and 155 (right)
I had two reasons for picking up the 155:
At the time, I was still having trouble getting brews that tasted like what I was drinking in a cafe or from more experienced hands. The Kalita Wave is renowned for being easy to use and giving great, consistent results. The 155 is no different in this respect, and this was very appealing to me as a beginner (it actually took me a year or two to be confident enough pick up a V60, which people kept saying is more “finicky” and suffers more from bad technique).
Also, as the only coffee drinker in my house, and as a person with a (still to this day) low tolerance for caffeine, I needed a brewer where I could feasibly do 13-16 gram coffee doses. This is not possible in a brewer like the 6 Cup Chemex, and the Kalita Wave 185 is more optimized for brews 20 grams and above due to its width and height.
Learn more about the Chemex & Kalita Wave in our blog:"Why Do We Brew with the Chemex & Kalita Wave?"
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So I put my order in for the stainless steel model and started making the most glorious brews of my life, the end.
...Not so fast! Coffee isn’t quite like that, and my process was only just beginning.
Armed with my Baratza Encore, fresh filtered water, and a Bonavita gooseneck kettle, I began my life with the 155. From the jump, I had inconsistent results and initially blamed my lack of experience. A brew that finished in 2 minutes 45 seconds one morning drug out to 4 the next with nothing changing in the middle. For some brews, the water would simply pool on top of the coffee bed and not go through.
Later on, I would recognize this as “stalling” or “clogging”, which can happen for a variety of reasons.
I learned some tricks along the way, like readjusting the filter in the brewer while it was draining and trying to be extra careful during the bloom. But, if there’s one rule I stood by then and stand by now it’s:
You shouldn’t be fighting with your coffee brewer
There are enough variables in coffee brewing to worry about: coffee region, processing, water temp, grind size, and on and on. One thing you should not have to worry about, in my mind, is if the brewer is going to “behave”. I’m always surprised when I see other brewers on the market that need a decent amount of coddling, tips, and tricks for this reason.
Frustrated, I ditched the stainless steel 155*. But, after poking through some more forums and hearing about some good experiences with the glass version, I opted to give it one more try.
The Kalita Wave is rather unique in the world of coffee brewers. The 185 model offers variations in glass, stainless steel, and ceramic, but the glass version is distinctly different in both the 155 and 185.
In the steel and ceramic version, the bottom of the brewer has a three pronged bump in the middle that pushes the filter up and off of the drainage holes. The glass model, in contrast, has the holes sitting in a kind of crevice along the sides of the brewer, with a pronounced bump in the middle. This essentially completely prevents the coffee filter from covering the holes and clogging (or stalling) the brew due to lack of air flow.
The difference between the bottom of the stainless steel and glass 155. The glass version has holes seated well below the bottom of the filter.
Once I started using the glass model, it was like using a whole new brewer - because, well, it kind of is (someone with a degree in the physics of water flow may find issue with that statement). Either way, I finally had the consistency I was looking for and the results in the cup were excellent from the jump. This, coupled with my newfound recipe, gave me delicious brews time after time and still do to this day.
*Note: I have used other stainless steel 155’s since this time and had no clogging issues.
Also interested in the V60? Get my deep dive + recipe!
The V60 | User Experience, a Very Deep Drive, and a Brew Guide
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It’s not a perfect brewer, however, and I encountered some quirks along the way:
Storing your filters in a coffee mug helps retain their shape and makes your morning brewing a bit easier.
Watch a quick Youtube Short of the recipe here:
Keep in mind that precision is not entirely necessary with this. Ultimately, the method could be summarized as:
Heavy bloom, then 30 ml pours changing between going inside out to outside in until you’re done.
I’ve always considered the glass Kalita Wave 155 to be a bit of an unsung hero for coffee brewers. It’s an older brewer, so it doesn’t have that “shiny new toy” feel. It’s quite small so it detracts heavy drinkers from picking it up. And it isn’t seen as often at cafes that are looking for bigger pour over batches.
But I believe it has a home in any cabinet. After all these years, no matter what coffee I have or what new brewer I’ve been testing, I end up coming back to its extraordinary balance and ease of use.
I hope this either helped you with your own method or at least gave a new appreciation for this little-teacup-thing-of-beauty.
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This month, we sat down with Jacob Simorka, one of our dedicated coffee roasters that also has a long background in hospitality and cafe service.
You can also watch our video interview with Jake here!
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Jake started at Kaldi’s Coffee in Kirkwood in 2013, while studying nearby at St. Louis Community College. He’d been working at Steak and Shake, but was looking for a change. He heard about Kaldi’s Coffee from a friend who was a barista there and applied. Jake got the call on his 20th birthday, while on vacation, and started in the back of the house, working as a cook, before hearing the siren song of coffee. By 2015, he was working shifts in the front of house, having passed through our barista apprenticeship program.
After months of working as a barista, Jake completed the next step in our training program, becoming a certified barista. This armed him with a degree of coffee knowledge which included the abilities to identify coffee origins by taste, to recognize defects in coffee preparations, to open the cafe while dialing in the espresso machine to taste and parameters set by quality control measures, and more.
Six months after certification, life took him to New York City. Arriving without a plan, he immediately applied for coffee jobs, landing at Lula Bean Cafe near his home in Brooklyn. Happy to be back in a cafe, but let down by the lack of specialty coffee and missing the attention to detail it requires, Jake soon discovered that he had neighbors who were more his speed. He befriended a few Blue Bottle baristas who lived down the street and started to keep his ear out for openings at their cafe in Brooklyn.
Soon, a position came open and Jake was hired at the Williamsburg Blue Bottle, a cafe/roastery hybrid where advanced coffee knowledge was only steps away from the espresso machine. He worked closely with the lead barista there and became good friends with the roasters, the quality control team, and all of the bakers, joining them for cuppings whenever possible. “I’m not the best at doing my own research; I’m more hands on. So I’d always go to people who knew more than me and have them help me out.”
With such great resources as part of his daily cafe routine, his knowledge blossomed.
In 2017, Jake returned to Saint Louis, knowing exactly what he wanted to do and where he wanted to be; he spent his first few months getting back in the Kaldi’s groove at Citygarden, then helped out at our busiest cafe in the MCC, but missed his days surrounded by the work of a roastery.
When a position opened up at our Roastery on our production line, Jake quickly applied and started, joining the 5lb and 12oz packing lines. He then spent 3 months learning how the rest of our warehouse works with our Allied team, which runs shipping and logistics for all the products we sell, store, and ship.
Working on the production and Allied teams put him side-by-side with the roasters again, just like he’d been at Blue Bottle. “I always made it known what I wanted to be doing, what my goals were. I would remind myself just by talking with other people around me, helping me constantly move forward on those things. It doesn’t have to go fast, but you should always have that in your mind, where you want to go.”
In 2018, Jake began training to roast coffee, with the roasting team of Bud, Andrew, and David providing hands-on coaching and feedback. Jake learned how to open the Roastery, as the early shift fires up all the machines, warming them to temperatures that are stable for the day’s work, continued his disciplined cupping, and began roasting the coffee that makes its way to your cup. Quality control became a main focus as well, and today Jake performs the quality control on our espressos every week, sending his notes out to our cafes’ lead baristas so you can enjoy the same great espresso drinks across our several locations.
With Jake’s steady hand on the roaster’s controls, combined with his unerring desire to expand his already formidable coffee knowledge, you know your coffee is being roasted with care and attention daily. Whether running quality control tests in our training center, cupping coffee with the roasting team in our cupping room, or rocking out while roasting, his career continues to embody our values of passion, continual improvement, and fun.
My favorite coffee that we have right now is honestly the new Brazil, because it’s not super-naturally. It has a little funk to it with some stone-fruits, but It’s still nutty like a Brazil. Single origin Brazil’s are fun, and pretty new to me; I’ve only seen them appear over the past few years.
My favorite drink in the cafe has changed over the years. When I worked in the kitchen, I’d drink iced mochas. Still delicious: it’s chocolate milk with espresso! Then I became snobby and only drank black coffee, then I got over myself and drank 8oz lattes. Now I usually drink a cup of coffee and a shot of espresso. If I want to treat myself, I’ll have a gibraltar.
I love Sumatras, but I could not drink Sumatras forever. If I had to pick my favorite region, I’d go with Colombia. They have such a wide gamut of coffees - they’ve got everything from sessionable, simple coffees to wacky naturals.
My favorite processing technique is probably washed coffee. Natural and honey-processed coffees are very very interesting, but I think it often uniforms the coffees too much and they can wear out the palate.
My favorite season is a little basic, but I love fall. It’s great for hiking.
I love hiking and riding bikes, but I want to start fly-fishing. I’ve been fishing most of my life, but I want to try something more active and different, so I’m going to start fly-fishing.
My favorite meal is fried chicken. It’s so dang good. I’ll only be able to eat it for a few more years, so I’m going to eat as much as I can while I still can.
My dream life would be to own my own general store/cafe and live above it.
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THE PEOPLE OF KALDI'S COFFEE: PHIL MOLL
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