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.]

This map is an attempt to lay out all of the shops that focus on coffee in the 417 area code in these Missouri Ozarks.  It’s easy for us to get zoned in on the Springfield area since there are so many shops here, but please know that we keep our eyes open for shops all over the 417, including Branson, Hollister, Monett, Lebanon, Willard, Bolivar and more.  The 417Coffee Google Map is an attempt to do some tracking and offer some useful information.

You can view the Springfield, Branson & 417 Missouri Ozarks Coffee Shops in a larger map by clicking through this link.

I’ve used three different icons.  One icon is our old 417Coffee logo (which looks better on the map than our new logo), and this icon is designed to designate locally-owned coffee shops.   Second, there’s a generic cup logo that designates chain coffee shops that aren’t locally owned.  And third is the Starbucks logo that designates all the local Starbucks coffee locations.  (I’ll openly acknowledge that some would debate that Kaldi’s and Fog City may or may not be “locally owned”, but that’s a question for another day, but I generally consider Kaldi’s local due to its Missouri ownership while Fog City appears to represent itself as a piece of the San Francisco Oven scene.)

I will add more to the map as time goes on, and I do my best to keep it updated, although it lags sometimes due to shops coming and going.  I’m open to collaboration and tagging of photos and videos on the map if we can figure out how to make that work.  Enjoy!

Dancing Mule Coffee, located at 1945 South Glenstone Avenue in Springfield, Missouri, (in the shopping center just north of the Brown Derby Wine Center and Aunt Martha’s Pancake House) will be hosting Latte Art Throwdown #2 as an open invitation event to any experienced baristas who want to participate.  The event will be May 23, 2010 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. and will be open to the public.  The first Latte Art Throwdown, hosted by The Coffee Ethic on Park Central Square in downtown Springfield a month or so ago, was well attended by both baristas and coffee fans from the area, and we’re looking forward to seeing how many show up for this second event.  These competitions are a good opportunity to meet other local coffee afficianados and see the best baristas in the area show off their skills. This Latte Art Throwdown is available on Facebook, so stop by the Facebook event page, invite your friends, and RSVP if you want to attend.

I attended my first coffee cupping this morning at The Coffee Ethic in downtown in Springfield, MO today. I didn’t exactly know what to expect, but I had seen a cupping on a YouTube video, so it wasn’t completely foreign.

I was pleasantly surprised once I arrived to find that I was not the only participant who had not been through this experience before.  In fact, of the 11 or 12 people present, only one had previously attended a cupping.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with what goes down at a cupping, you smell the beans, smell them once ground, then the hot water enters the mix and you wait. Then you smell the “brewing” coffee…then once the excess grounds are scraped off the top, you taste. You insert your spoon, get a bit of coffee and slurp it as quickly (and loudly) as you can….

Here are a few notes–
Cup 1: I found it to be very mild, fruity and it’s aroma made me think of toast. The taste was tart, crisp (like a green apple) and most everyone found it had tart, crisp fruity notes.
*Cup 1 ended up being a Burundi Mwurire from Africa, and is described as being similar to a Kenyan. I really liked it. The group all liked it and this was the one most people wanted to get their hands on and have available to purchase.

Cup 2: I found it to smell fruity as well, but more spicy, and even a bit floral. It was more subtle. Its taste I found to be like black tea; you know the dry mouth feel black (hot) tea can leave you with? I got that from this coffee. Many also found it to have a ripe red cherry flavor.
*Cup 2 ended up being a St. Augustine from Columbia, and I liked it as well.

Cup 3: This was the big surprise. Once it was ground and I bent to give it a whiff, I jumped back in horror. This coffee (to me) smelled exactly like black walnuts. This would be fine if one likes black walnuts, I can’t stand them. (to me black walnuts have a strange sweet smell and flavor that doesn’t jive w/ my tastebuds). I was hoping once it was brewed it wouldn’t taste like black walnuts. It did. All I could taste were black walnuts. Many others in the group found it to ahve blueberrry or other fruity flavors, which I get, but the black walnuts overpowered any other flavors and I obviously didn’t like it at all.
*Cup 3 ended up being a Sidamo from Ethiopia. I understand this is a very popular coffee; if you hate black walnuts however, proceed with caution.

All in all, it was a very fun experience; to be able to taste things side by side, then discuss, was a fun way to learn about coffee and also about what you like, don’t like, and about how to recognize different flavors in the coffee itself. Good times!

Tom Billionis of The Coffee Ethic explaining the procedure...we were all supposed to keep our comments to ourselves until the end so as not to influence one another. It was also a blind tasting- we didn't know what kind of coffee we were tasting until the end--again, no preconceptions.

Coffee cupping table set up at The Coffee Ethic

Getting closer to the actual tasting...Tom Billionis pours hot water over the grounds here and then we wait several minutes before breaking the crust and giving a good sniff to each cup.

Waiting to break the crust on the cupping coffee brews

Local coffee drinker Taylor Baldwin works on getting the full aroma...

Scraping the bulk of the grounds out of the way so that we will be able to taste without too much grit...

Tasting....

Aftermath after everyone has tasted...

The event was hosted by The Coffee Ethic in downtown Springfield, Missouri, and was sponsored by PT’s Coffee, a coffee roaster out of Topeka, Kansas, and Brown Derby.  Several coffee shops in the area, including Dancing Mule Coffee, The Hub Bikes and Beans, and Hebrews Coffee, came together to create an event that supported the local coffee community and gave the baristas a chance to show off their skills.  Plans are in the works to host future events at the other coffee cafes in Springfield as well.

Dancing Mule Coffee and Hebrews Coffee had the most entrants with 3 baristas each.  The Hub had two contestants, the Mudhouse sent one barista down the street to compete, and there was also a contestant from Latte Land in Kansas City.  The Coffee Ethic and Kaldi’s Coffee rounded out the entries.  Hosting the event was Tom Billionis, one of the owners of The Coffee Ethic, and the judges were Teresa Blondo of the Springfield Foodie website, Taylor Baldwin, and John Vaughan of our own 417Coffee.  A good sized crowd of at least 30 people was in attendance to watch and cheer as well.

The night began with a warm up round to give all the contestants time to work on the machine and get a feel for the equipment while the judges did a sample run to make sure they understood all of the criteria.  Then the contest began in earnest.  Each contestant had 3 minutes behind the machine, could pull as many espresso shots as they needed, but only got one picture of milk to steam and pour.  As each entry was produced, a photo was taken and the cup was taken to the judging table and ranked based on 4 criteria that took into consideration the balance and symetry of the art, the color and definition of the image, the use of the cup in the presentation, and the overall impression of the latte art.

At the end of the first round after all 13 contestants had submitted their entries, 4 contestants, representing Latte Land in Kansas City, the Coffee Ethic, The Hub, and Hebrews Coffee, were moved to the final round.  Each finalist made one final entry to be judged.  After the numbers were tallied, the winners in order were:  Dave from The Coffee Ethic in first place, Joe from The Hub in second place, and Kevin from Hebrews Coffee in third.  Latte Land’s first entry won the first round, but the final round entry didn’t place in the top 3.

The winner — David Soper — received one half of the entry fees, totaling a whopping $32.50.  The other half of the entry fees will be donated to coffee charity Coffee Kids.  All in all, the event was a huge success.  Photos of the event can be found at the 417Coffee Flickr site and at SpringfieldFoodie’s Facebook page.

Keep reading 417Coffee and we’ll keep you posted as more local coffee events and barista competitions are announced.

The contest is open to anyone who has experience with espresso preparation and the equipment used to do so. In addition, to compete, you must have experience pouring milk-based beverages.

Sign-up begins at 7:00PM by way of an announcement. 7:30 p.m. will be the cut off time. If a person is not signed up by 7:30PM, then they will not be able to compete. At the sign-up, each competitor will give their name, and be assigned a number, and will pay their $5 to compete. Competitors may not bring their own espresso or milk — everything will be provided. Competitors can bring their own cup or mug of choice so long as it’s close to 12 ounces, or they can you use a mug provided.

Competitors will have 3 minutes behind the espresso machine to work their latte magic. They can pull as many shots of espresso in that time as they need. They will only be given one pitcher of milk and will only be allowed one opportunity to steam their milk. All latte art must be free pour — no etching will be allowed, and the only ingredients allowed will be milk and espresso.

Drinks will be judged in 4 categories:
1. Balance & Symmetry
2. Color Infusion & Definition
3. Use of Space
4. Overall Impression

Each of the 3 judges can award up to 6 points in each category, giving the possibility of a perfect score in a category being 18, and a perfect score in all categories being 72. In the case of a tied total score, the competitor with the highest Overall Impression score will be declared the winner.

That’s the general idea of the contest. I’m looking forward to some good competition. Hope to see you there!