This coffee company does not hide the fact that its coffee sales help support a children’s charity in Honduras called World Gospel Outreach — it’s stated on their coffee bag and very visible on their website.  I think it would be an interesting marketing discussion as to whether it is more advantageous  to promote the quality or specialty natures of the coffee or the charitable use of the coffee proceeds, but in that regard, this organization has done a good job of promoting both well without going over the top either way.  Their website says that the coffee is grown, harvested, prepared, dried and roasted in Honduras on the property of the charity, called Rancho Ebenezer, where “since 1996, [they] have been feeding, clothing, educating and housing children with nowhere else to go.”

This coffee is called Honduras Cloud Forest Coffee, and it’s touted as high altitude, shade-grown coffee.  The website says the coffee is sourced from the central mountains of Francisco Morazan, Honduras.  It comes in a colorful, well-designed bag and the whole bean coffee itself was sealed separately in an internal bag in an attempt to retain freshness.  Out of the bag, the visible quality of the roast appeared slightly darker than I typically like my coffee, and there was a slight oily sheen on the beans, but the oily nature wasn’t excessive, and overall the beans, based on a visible inspection, weren’t overroasted or burnt.

I brewed up a French press of the coffee over the weekend.    I honestly didn’t have high hopes because I didn’t expect these coffee beans to be very fresh.  It was a good start that they came whole bean — at least they didn’t grind them up in Honduras (or wherever they were roasted) and destroy any chance of retaining freshness.  Fortunately, there was a  bloom when the grounds came into contact with the water, which means that these beans were fresh and not stale.  That was my first hopeful sign that this cup of coffee wouldn’t be too bad.

The final brew wasn’t bad at all, either.  It made a good cup of coffee.  Again, I didn’t know what to expect, and I’ve had all kinds of coffees, and I honestly wasn’t expecting much out of this coffee, but I actually liked it.  Again, it was roasted darker than I typically prefer my coffees, but it wasn’t overdone.  At one point, I told my wife that any average coffee drinker who drinks what’s generally available on the market these days would find this coffee worth drinking.

If you’re interested in helping this organization with its ministry to abandoned children while drinking a coffee that is worth a try, you can buy it online at the Honduras Cloud Forest Coffee website.  There’s some basic information about the children the ministry serves and an online store that offers free shipping.  They also have a coffee club where you can receive a two pound or five pound shipment of their coffee at regular intervals.  There are also links to the World Gospel Outreach site where you can learn more about their work in Honduras and their organization in general.

Tim Ferguson, who owns Heroes, recently gave me a bag of Tanzania coffee to sample.  When I get beans from a local roaster to try, I usually swing by a local coffee shop and test them out with the owner of the shop for two reasons: 1) the shops have the best equipment on hand to brew up a couple cups to sample, and 2) I think it’s always good to keep the efforts of local roasters in front of our local coffee shop owners to help further the local coffee community. It’s always fun to evaluate a local roast with a coffee shop that works to brew excellent coffee every minute of every day.

Some of the local coffee shops use local roasts, such as the Mudhouse, which roasts its own coffee at the Mudhouse roasting facility downtown, Heroes Coffee Cafe, Big Momma’s Coffee, which uses coffee from a local roaster named Origins, and from what I’ve heard, Hot Shots over on East Sunshine in Springfield.  There may be other local shops that also use local roasters, but several of the local shops use national roasters, namely PT’s Coffee and Intelligentsia, both of which create a great coffee product on a national level with expeditious shipping to guarantee freshness.

On this particular day, I knew the The Hub Bikes and Beans, which carries Intelligentsia coffee beans, had just received a shipment of Tanzania beans.  So I felt it would be fun to do a side-by-side comparison of the Intelligentsia Tanzania with the Heroes Tanzania.  Jason Strother, who owns The Hub, can brew two cups side-by-side using a pourover drip brewer, using the same measurement of beans, the same grind and the same water.  By equalizing those variable as much as possible, we can see what comes out of these two roasts.

On physical inspection of the beans, we noted that the Heroes Tanzania beans appeared to be of the peaberry variety while the Intelligentsia beans appeared larger and may not have been a peaberry.  A peaberry is a special type of coffee bean.  Typically, two flat-sided coffee beans, called flat berries, develop inside each cherry of coffee fruit, but in the case of a peaberry, only one side of the coffee fruit gets fertilized and as such only one small oval, pea-shaped coffee bean develops inside.  According to Wikipedia, about 5% of the worldwide coffee crop comes in the peaberry form.  Tanzania has become known for sorting out the peaberries and selling them together as a coffee variety.  For more on peaberries and the specific peaberries of Tanzania, there’s an interesting, very detailed read over at the Virtual Coffee site on the matter.

Back to the side-by-side comparison, though, it was interesting to us that the Heroes appeared to be a peaberry variety while the Intelligentsia appeared to be more of a flat berry roast.  I was expecting both roasts to be of the peaberry variety simply because it was from Tanzania, but looking at the Intelligentsia site’s description page for this bean, I don’t see any reference to peaberry.  What was also noticeable in visual inspection was how similar the two roasts were.  The Heroes roast was barely darker than the Intelligentsia roast, but they were so close that you couldn’t really tell the difference until you put the beans side by side.

In grinding the beans, they smelled similar, and then in brewing, the only thing we noticed different between the two brew cycles was that the Intelligentsia roast had a more prominent “bloom” than the Heroes roast.

Fresh roasted and freshly ground coffee will typically “bloom” as it comes into contact with water, meaning the grounds will expand and almost foam together. From my experience, the bloom of a coffee brew is a good sign of freshness of the roast, but you can actually get too much bloom if you brew too soon after  a roast without letting the beans rest for a few days.  I once had a roast that wouldn’t stop blooming — the whole time the grinds were in the French press with the water, they were constantly effervescing and moving the grinds in almost a rolling boil style, and after a little research, I discovered that too much bloom means you’re brewing the coffee too early, and the beans haven’t had a chance to release enough gases post-roast, so all those gases are expelling out during the brew process.  Typically, a freshly roast coffee that has had ample time to rest will bloom for about a minute after coming into contact with water and then settle down.  Anecdotally, I’ve heard that you won’t get much bloom in a brew around 30 days post-roast, but I personally believe it’s shorter than that.  In this situation, though, the low bloom in the Heroes roast was somewhat odd, because I know it was freshly roast.  I’ve notified Tim about this odd behavior and he’s checking into it because the Heroes coffee should have bloomed more.

After the brew, Jason poured the coffees into cups, and we tasted them.  After a few slurps, Jason and I both agreed that the tastes of the coffees were almost identical.  The flavors were the same, the acidity and the same, but the only real distinction was the body.  The Intelligentsia brew was a little more syrupy in its mouth feel than the Heroes version.  We couldn’t really tag one as better than the other.  Instead, it came down to a preferential determination as to whether you wanted a more syrupy body to the coffee or a less syrupy body.

All in all, we considered this a success for Heroes Coffee.  Intelligentsia Coffee is a national roaster that produces some of the better coffee roasts in the coffee industry, so for Heroes Coffee to produce a roast of similar, almost identical qualities is a big deal.  Heroes is working hard to develop their roasts to the level of consistent quality that the national roasters, like Intelligentsia and PT’s Coffee, are putting out, and it’s exciting to see a local roaster producing a good Tanzania roast like the one we sampled.

I received a tweet on Monday from Marie asking if we could meet up to talk about the 417Coffee Disloyalty Card. We talked on the phone, and I was excited KY3 News had picked up the story. I never expected the television news to run a story on the disloyalty card, and I was really excited about the idea. Marie already had a plan to talk to a few coffee shops on camera, and she wanted me to talk about the card on camera as well, but my Monday was totally booked. She planned to move ahead without me and just use the information on the website and the interviews of the coffee shops. I was fine with that because the 417Coffee Disloyalty Card is more about promoting local coffee and the shops involved than about me making a name for myself.

Then something crazy happened — some guy in Buffalo (allegedly) decided to light his (alleged) meth lab on fire when the cops showed up at his house. That become Monday’s breaking news, and I got a tweet from Marie that she was being sent on location and wouldn’t be able to complete the story about the disloyalty card but wanted to continue to work on it.

Come Tuesday, and Marie was back on my phone wanting to meet up to shoot some video. I agreed to meet her at The Hub Bikes and Beans down the street from my office. In the early afternoon, Marie and her cameraman stopped by The Hub to a quick interview. It was a good time — I honestly hate being on camera, but it all worked out — but Marie already had bad news. The piece had already been bumped again because the Springfield city council was talking about creating jobs, but she said she wanted to get it on this week. Her cameraman shot some footage of Jason from the Hub making coffee, and he and Marie both tried some coffee (she got a frappe and he got a Costa Rica pourover drip coffee) prepared by Jason. Apparently, they also stopped by The Coffee Ethic as well to shoot additional footage, and they interviewed barista (and two-time Springfield Latte Art Throwdown champion) Dave Soper while there.

Today I got a tweet from Marie that the news piece was set to go on the 6 p.m. newscast. Of course, a storm rolled through, and I lost power at my house and it didn’t get recorded by the DVR. But thanks to the technology of the future, the video and the story (as well as a link) is live on the KY3 website, and I’ve posted it here for your viewing pleasure.

It was fun to proclaim the benefits of disloyalty to the KY3 news team, and it’s exciting that the disloyalty card caught their attention. A big thanks goes out to Marie for persisting and working to get the piece recorded, edited and on the newscast. The more we can promote good coffee in every form of media, the more better!

What’s a disloyalty card, you ask?  We’ve all used loyalty cards before — a punch card or swipe card that encourages you to visit the same coffee shop over and over for some kind of benefit or perk once you buy the right amount of products.  Ever since I started 417coffee, I’ve wanted to create some sort of card that did the opposite by rewarding you for drinking at a variety of shops around the 417 Missouri Ozarks instead of just staying with your own preferred coffee shops.  This disloyalty card is the answer!

Last December, James Hoffman, founder of Square Mile Coffee Roasters in London, England, and 2007 World Barista Champion, posted on his blog a new “disloyalty card” concept produced by Gwilym Davies, the 2009 World Barista Champion.  Gwilym runs a London shop called Prufrock Coffee, and he created a card that directs coffee enthusiasts to 8 other London coffee shops.  When drinkers have visited each shop and tried their drinks, they can then visit Prufrock Coffee and Gwilym will make them a free coffee drink at his shop.  These 8 cafes are producing quality-focused coffee, and as Hoffman says in his post, “There is no catch, it isn’t some cunning ruse to sell more coffee… Gwilym just wants people to go and try coffee in different places.”  Since Gwilyn’s card launch in London, disloyalty cards have also sprung up in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and then in Seattle, Washington.  Now, we’re excited to offer a coffee disloyalty card to highlight the excellent coffee shops we have here in southwest Missouri, particularly Springfield and Branson.

Enough with the history of the concept — what’s this whole 417coffee Disloyalty Card thing and what can it do for you?

Here’s the deal:  We have put together a collection of 8 of the best shops in the 417 Missouri Ozarks — 7 in Springfield and one on the edge of Branson in Hollister.  Each of these shops is willing to be put to the test by allowing you to compare them side-by-side with the other 7 shops on the card.  The participating shops are:

• Vintage Paris Coffee and Wine, 260 Birdcage Walk, Hollister, Missouri (in downtown Hollister just over the bridge from Branson Landing)
• The Hub Bikes and Beans, 811 N Boonville Ave, Springfield, Missouri (just north of Chestnut Expressway in Springfield across from the old City Hall building)
• Big Momma’s Coffee and Espresso Bar, 217 East Commercial St., Springfield, Missouri (on historic Commercial Street in downtown Springfield)
• The Coffee Ethic, 124 Park Central Square, Springfield, Missouri (on downtown Springfield’s Park Central Square, attached to the Park Central Square branch of the Springfield-Greene County library)
• Kaldi’s Coffee, 850 S. John Q. Hammons Pkwy, Springfield, Missouri (located on the lower level of Plaster Student Union at Missouri State University’s campus)
• Heroes Coffee Cafe, 601 North National, Springfield, Missouri (at the southwest corner of National and Chestnut Expressway in Springfield, across from Ozarks Technical College)
• Hebrews Coffee, 1604 East Republic Road, Springfield, Missouri (on Springfield’s bustling south side near the YMCA)
• Dancing Mule Coffee Company, 1945 South Glenstone, Springfield, Missouri (just north of Aunt Martha’s Pancake House and the Brown Derby International Wine Center)

The disloyalty card is actually a very simple concept –

1. Get a card at any of the 8 shops participating in the disloyalty card program. Cards are limited, so get one quick!
2. Buy a qualifying drink at each of the 8 shops and get your card marked at each shop.
3. Get a free drink at the shop of your choice once you have had a drink at every shop on the card and they’ve marked off your completion at their shops.
4. Turn in your card with your name and email address on it, and you will be entered in a giveaway of prizes from 417Coffee.

We’ve posted a summary of the program and all the official rules and explanations at a special 417Coffee Disloyalty Card page here at 417Coffee with maps, hours, phone numbers, websites and more to help you as you make your way to each shop.

As we get started, this 417Coffee Disloyalty Card is a limited edition project.  There are only 250 cards available.  We may produce more, but for now, there’s only a handful to be given out.  Each participating shop has a set of cards, so go to any of the eight shops to get your card now before they run out.

We have to openly acknowledge that this disloyalty card is not designed for you to go buy a oversugared, whipped cream-topped, syrup-flavored frappe.  This whole concept is focused on quality coffee, traditionally prepared.  So we’re limiting the qualifying drinks so that as you visit each shop, you can actually taste the coffee and its quality.  The drinks you can purchase to get a mark on your 417Coffee Disloyalty Card are as follows:

• brewed coffee (preferably single origin instead of a blend),
• iced coffee (not frozen coffee),
• a traditional espresso drink, which would include:
  • espresso,
  • Americano,
  • macchiato,
  • cappuccino,
  • traditional mocha, or
  • traditional latte;
• any other drink that each specific coffee shop deems appropriate as an expression of their shop’s dedication to good coffee.

On top of getting great coffee, getting to compare these shops, ultimately getting a free drink and a chance to win in a giveaway, some of the shops will also make it worth you while by providing some perk or benefit when you tell them you’re there to use your 417Coffee Disloyalty Card.  We’re leaving all that to each individual shop, but be sure to ask if they’re giving out a discount or some other promotion to 417Coffee Disloyalty Card users.

Here at 417coffee, we heartily agree with that coffee culture concept expressed by Hoffman about Gwilym’s intentions.  We believe that the best coffee culture is one where coffee drinkers, baristas, and shop owners can engage in a community learning and education experience by not just sticking to one shop that they like but instead moving around, building relationships, and trying the coffee at other shops, roasted by other roasters, and prepared by other baristas.

Each coffee shop has its own style, its own philosophy, its own mindset and culture and crowd, but if we can promote the concept of quality-focused coffee through multiple coffee shops, and then those shops begin building relationships, sharing information and maturing in their processes of making coffee and their understanding of the bean, everybody wins!  Yes, it requires openness, transparency, and willingness to be critiqued and to even fail on occasion, but if we’re pursuing coffee together with pure intentions for the betterment of the local coffee culture, critique and failure can be a good thing if it leads to more education and a better coffee experience for everyone.  We appreciate the 8 shops taking part in this program, their owners and their baristas as they have provided input, momentum and excitement in the development of this program — we’re excited to help them share their coffee to a broader audience, and we are very thankful for their willingness to participate.

Get out there and enjoy some coffee!  And be sure to write your name and email address on your completed card when you turn it in for your free drink so you can be entered into giveaways here at 417Coffee.com.  There’s been some discussion of putting together some coffee crawls to hit all of the shops in succession to complete the cards. Feel free to update us via Twitter or the comments of this post or on the disloyalty card page.  Also, feel free to put together photos and videos of your endeavors to complete the card and post them on Twitter and on the 417Coffee Facebook page and in the 417Coffee Flickr user photos group.

[UPDATE: 6/17/2010 - today we created a 417 Disloyalty Card GoWalla trip that you can follow and check in with as you pursue completion of your 417Coffee Disloyalty Card.]

The roasting process is a sweet and simple chemical process. As the temperature rises, the coffee makes a small 1st crack, which releases a small amount of its weight and doubles in its size. As the bean continues to heat it will undergo pyrolysis. This is referred to as the 2nd Crack. This is where the chemical compounds in the bean change and release CO2. The bean losses about 13% of its weight at this stage. The bean then continues to darken after that. Most commercial roasters will have a guide to show you what time and temperatures to use to make the appropriate roast you want.

Featured on the New York Times site today, the new KA-POW! bar is a concoction based on the idea that you can take coffee beans and, with a little help from cocoa butter and sugar, produce an edible bar out of them in the same way you can produce a chocolate bar from cocoa beans.  According to the story, the KA-POW! bar “looks like chocolate, snaps like chocolate and melts like chocolate. But it has the full, rich, lingering flavor of coffee.”

Better yet, the KA-POW! bar is made from single origin coffee beans roaster by top-notch small batch roasters like Extracto Coffeehouse and Roaster, Heart Roasters, Ristretto Roasters, which helped produce a Ethiopian Sidamo Guji version and Stumptown Coffee Roasters, which helped produced the Guatemala Finca Antigua Buenavista bar.  Like a cup of single origin coffee out of a Clover, French press, siphon/vacuum brewer or pourover from a fine coffee shop, each bar has its own unique flavor.

Interestingly, when I click through to order from the Sahagun Handmade Chocolates site, you can’t order a specific version.  Instead, it just simply offers a “KA-POW! bar” option for $5 per bar.

I’d love to suggest this idea to Springfield, Missouri’s local chocolate producer, Shawn Askinosie of Askinosie Chocolate (not that he has anything better to do with his time with all the projects he runs). We’d love to see a coffee bar added to his repertoire of fine chocolates.

Last week, I was asked a few times if I had heard any reports that Rendezvous might be closing, but I hadn’t heard anything.  Rendezvous hasn’t generally been in my circuit of shops that I visit simply because I haven’t had the best coffee, food or service experiences there.  I’ve stopped by Rendezvous several times in the time it’s been open, had coffee and lunch there a few times. The coffee and food quality has been less than expected, and the staff, while getting the job done, haven’t been friendly or outgoing.  On the upside, they had a decent selection of random coffee and tea brewing equipment on hand, my wife did discover a good chai tea mix on their shelves one time, and as a coffee homeroaster, I loved the roast smoke smell when they occasionally roasted coffee.  The people of Rendezvous really never pursued a relationship with us here at 417coffee and, to my knowledge, they have never taken part in any of the local coffee culture events like the latte art throwdowns.  As such, it’s not been one of my regular shops, although it stays on my radar.

The reports I’ve received are that people were moving things out of the Rendezvous Coffee location over the weekend.  Thereafter, both commercial vendors and regulatory contacts have confirmed that they are closed.  While this doesn’t close the door of them moving to another location, the reports I’m getting from trustworthy sources are that they are definitely closed for now at the Park Central West location.

I’ve heard no detail as to exactly why they closed. Both the Rendezvous Coffee Lounge website and Facebook page are still live.  Hopefully, they will post something for their customers on the sites.

This Finland revelation led to some Googling.  First, I discovered that alcohol used to be illegal in Finland, so coffee became the social beverage of choice in Finland, and even when alcohol was legalized, coffee stayed on top as the drink of choice. In recent years, as the population has aged, coffee consumption has dropped off to some degree. The older coffee drinkers were the diehards, and the loss of their older generation is also leading to a decline in coffee consumption.

I also came across a report of a study in Finland that helped highlight one of the positives of coffee consumption.  According to this study, Finnish smokers who consumed — get this — 8 or more cups of coffee a day had a 23% lower risk for cerebral infarction – the most common kind of stroke. The long-term study consisted of 29,133 Finnish men aged 50 to 69 years who smoked at least five cigarettes per day and had no history of stroke. From 1985 to 1988, these men were recruited into the trial. Approximately 2.5% of the study sample reported never drinking coffee, and approximately 64% did not drink tea. Daily coffee consumption among drinkers averaged 5.7 cups. “After adjustment for age and cardiovascular risk factors,” the study reported, “both coffee and tea consumption were statistically significantly inversely associated with the risk for cerebral infarction.”

Except, as Fast Company has noticed as well in their post about the umbrella, it doesn’t seem to be the most flexible design.  The handle cup holder forces the umbrella back at an angle, so it requires you to hold the umbrella a specific way in order to use it.  That angle could definitely cause problems.  I’ll quote Fast Company because they summarized it very well:

What happens when a gust of wind kicks up? I’ll tell you what happens: Your shirt’s ruined, your hand is burning, and you’re cursing the well-meaning but misguided Jung-Woo Lee. Since your coffee flew into the thick necked bruiser next to you, he’s kicked your a**, to boot. So you’re wet, black and blue, angry, you smell like coffee–which you haven’t been able to consume yet. And then someone comes by and says, “Wow, cool umbrella–is that a cup holder?”

Yeah, I’m not sure the umbrella cup holder design has been perfected yet.  Let’s wait for version 2.0.

Espresso, Intelligentsia from Department of the 4th Dimension on Vimeo.