Coffee from the farmer’s point of view.
In my browsing of one of my favorite magazine‘s blog sites today, I came across a post describing the life of a coffee farmer today. Multiple times on this blog I have talked about the prices coffee farmers make for a once-a-year crop, but I have only talked about it in generalities.
So I was talking to some coffee bar owners here in Colorado Springs over the last few weeks, and we all have come to the same conclusion:
Craft coffee in Colorado Springs is here. And growing. Fast.
From growing numbers of competitors in our monthly Latte Art Throwdown to a more refined palate on our regular guests to our shop to a large chunk of the upcoming CS Craft Week being devoted to our beverage, the craft coffee scene in the city is alive and well.
But what does that mean: Craft Coffee? Can the coffee drinkers of Colorado Springs expect to see that standoffish, snobby, “you’re scum if you put cream and sugar into my masterpiece” barista behind the bar of the city’s craft coffee bars? God, I hope not.
So if you like our Facebook page (and if you don’t, why not?), you’ve probably seen us talking about teaming up with the Arkansas Valley Organic Growers and offering a space to pickup your CSA basket weekly. I’ve seen some questions arise about it, so I thought I’d expand on what we’re doing…..
So it’s about that time again. Time to talk Christmas gifts. Yeah, I know. But bear with me….
So I’ve talked in the past about some of the steps coffee takes to get to us, but I haven’t really gotten into what happens once the coffee is in the roasterie. I think it’s about time to change that.
Let’s talk processes…
If you look around at many of the coffee stores online, you may notice coffees that are flavored. Ones like…
- French Vanilla
- Tiramisu
- Irish Cream
- etc..
…and you may wonder why we here don’t have flavorings for our coffees. And if those flavorings are good for you.
Well, why we don’t have flavored coffees is the point of this blog post, so I’ll get there in a second, but as for the question of if those flavorings are good for you… well… the answer is a simple yes and no.
I’ve been chatting with many people who have dropped by the shop to pick up coffee recently. And there seems to be a trend towards the “low-acid” style coffees. Again.
For longer than I can remember, the mass marketers have always been touting low acid coffees as being better for you. They won’t tear up your stomach and give you that dreaded acid reflux issue–or so they say.
I’d like to set the record straight on some things. Ready to go down the rabbit hole for a bit……?
So I saw a statistic while checking out various coffee sites on the ‘net that I have incorporated into our training here.
From planting of the coffee tree to your first sip, 2000 man hours went into making that cup of coffee*.
2000.
125 solid 16 hour days. 83 24-hour days plus some change.
Six days ago hell unleashed a fury on our beloved community. For days we watched in horror as the smoke cloud from the Black Forest Fire grew and shrunk, not knowing what was happening underneath. Our faces didn’t mask our shock as we watched video from inside the burn zone. The waiting. The hoping that all was fine even though in the back of our minds we knew it was not.
As the smoke starts to clear we are learning about the devastation left behind. Almost 500 homes of our community are gone. Two of our community members are gone as well. And we have not received the all clear yet.
Our hearts are heavy here at R&R. We mourn for the homes and the lives lost. From our front door we can look north to large swaths of burned trees, pockets of green, and a sense of stillness that trumps any of the stillness we’re used to up here.
But Hell forgot one thing about Black Forest: it takes much more than a fire to destroy our community. We are a strong folk who live amongst the trees.
Sure, we’re bruised and bloody right now. Sure, we’re stinging from the loss of our friends. Sure, we’re second-guessing everything about the Forest. But we’re still here. And we’re not going anywhere.
Our community will survive. Our community will thrive. No fire is going to stop that.
Thank you La Foret for this great emblem of our community.
And this little coffee cafe is going to be right there with you. In your community.
We will reopen the coffee side of our shop tomorrow (Monday) the 17th at 7:00 am. We lost all our food in the extended power outage, so we will not be serving meals or pastries until Tuesday. But we felt it was imperative to bring back a sense of normalcy–a sense of community.
We have cleared all our bulletin boards for you. Please post away all lost and found, services/items needed, services/items available, and any general wellwishes you have for our community. We all need to rebuild and restore our community quickly.
We hope to see all our good friends back in our store soon. We know many of you have had your lives changed dramatically over the last few days. Ours have too. But by coming together to share in our grief and joy is the best–no, only–way to make our community survive. And that’s what is needed most of all.
We will be donating 10% of our sales for this week to Tri Lakes Cares. To rebuild and restore our home.
Wishing all of you a sense of community,
Ryan Wanner, Owner/Roast Master of R&R Coffee Cafe, Black Forest’s COMMUNITY Coffee Cafe.
If you remember way back when… in our old store we had what we called the Fast Track. This is where you could run in, place your change in a cup, grab a cup, fill, and go. This was huge draw for the morning commuters and was sorely missed when we moved and discontinued it.
Well, it’s time to fill up!