Imagine standing in line at your favorite coffee shop waiting to order your 12 ounce, nonfat, extra shot latte when you suddenly notice the espresso machine is being taken apart. You get worried, wondering if you’ll be able to get your caffeine fix at all. By the time you reach the front, the machine is put back together, no longer being poked and prodded with a wrench by a technician you’ve never seen before and your barista has your latte ready for you before you’ve even paid. Three and a half years ago, Cameron Ankele was a personal trainer, and before that he was a bullet maker for a small ammunition company. His love for coffee began in 2008...
We are thrilled to announce that we are one of the first roasters in the world to buy and showcase the first ever specialty coffee lots from Myanmar. We are featuring two villages from the Ywangan area in Southern Shan state. These Villages, Tet Kone, and Mya Ze Di, are truly amazing places with amazing people. In February, we visited each of these villages and saw an amazing will to succeed at producing world class coffee. This was the first year these two villages had collectively produced coffee and we are already seeing the ability to produce these great coffees, after one year! This is what excites us about the new coffee origin; the drive and spirit of the communities...
September was one of our busiest months for events. Loufest and the MS 150 fell on the same weekend, with Pedal the Cause following two weeks after. Our team was hard at work getting everything together to ensure the events were successful. Loufest, as always, was a lot of fun for everyone involved! We were able to serve cold brew, shaken honey almond cold brews, hibiscus ginger iced tea, and introduce our new nitro cold brew. Music and sunshine was exactly what we all needed after days of thunderstorms; we were lucky the skies cleared long enough for everyone to enjoy the beautiful festival. It is always great to participate in an event with so many other talented members...
Steve Schuh and Louis Nahlik were in Colombia August 1-8, 2016, where they visited our relationship partners in Monserrate as well as a few other places. Here's their recap: MONDAY/TUESDAYWe spent all day Monday travelling from St. Louis to Bogota, with a connecting flight in Houston. Tuesday morning, we woke up and continued travelling, this time from Bogota to Neiva, Huila, Colombia. We visited a brand new dry milling plant there owned and operated by RACAFE. The plant was finished in January 2016. They don’t manage any specialty coffee there yet, but the goal is to move some of the specialty coffee milling from Bogota to here. After visiting the plant, we drove to Garzon, another small town in Huila,...
In January of 2016 Frank McGinty, Tony Auger, and Tyler Zimmer, along with a crew from Feast T.V. traveled to El Salvador. During this trip they visited the farms of Emilio Lopez and Maria Pacas. Both Lopez and Pacas are sixth generation coffee producers, we are proud to have such a wonderful relationship with them. On July 14th we hosted a screening of the Feast TV episode. The thirty minute episode showed the journey from St. Louis, to the mountains of El Salvador, and back to our Roastery in St. Louis. Everything from picking the coffee cherries in the field, cupping the coffee was shown. It was a wonderful addition to the coffee culture and helping people understand the importance...
