Caffeine Crawl 2016 Day 1
4:30 PM
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| Coffee bean mural in Kaldi's Coffee Talk room. |
The Crawl is organized by The
LAB, a beverage-centric marketing company based out of Kansas City. They put on crawls in cities all over the US, including San Diego, Austen, Chicago
and Madison. And, of course, in KC, which gets two Crawls a year – lucky bastards.
This event took us all over St
Louis and included well known places, such as Kaldi’s, Northwest Coffee and
Blue Print, as well as a couple I had never heard of. Both the unfamiliar and
very familiar shops provided a new experience. Many showed off either something
new on the menu or something off the menu, so even long-time STL coffee
drinkers got something out of this event.
The following list doesn’t cover
all the shops, only the ones that made an impression on me. Since the event was
split into two days, I’m using that as an excuse to split my recap into two
posts, so I can take extra space to talk about coffee.
Park Avenue
Coffee
Park Ave has five locations, but
for this event, they hosted us at the roasting facility and café on Southwest
Avenue. It’s a hidden gem on the Hill. Almost everyone I spoke to on the tour said
they had no idea it was there.
We got to take a peek behind the
scenes of the company’s production setup. Park uses a Loring air roaster.
While most in the industry use a drum roaster, Park is trying something
different. Heated air keeps the coffee beans continuously suspended, so they
never touch hot metal. This minimizes the darkening on the exterior of the
bean, which reduces roasting profile flavors, such as smoke, caramel and chocolate.
This allows Park to roast into the medium-dark range, while playing up flavors
more common in a light roast, such as a more prominent fruity or floral flavor.
What was most impressive,
though, is the owner put together a four-part sampler menu of new lunch items
all made with coffee. The highlight was an espresso-rub pulled pork sandwich. I
can’t describe the sweet and spicy goodness of this meat rub. That and the
Clementine’s Coffee ice cream with coffee whipped cream and a chocolate-covered
espresso bean garnish stole the show. Yum.
Kaldi’s
Coffee Roasting
Kaldi’s had two stops on the
route – Kayak’s and its new roasting facility in the CWE. While there was no
river of espresso or lickable wallpaper, I still felt a little bit like a kid in
Willy Wanka’s chocolate factory. It was full of coffee paraphernalia and
artwork, including antique coffee tins, vintage roasters and a mural of the St
Louis skyline made of coffee beans.
The tour began in the Tasting Room,
where the Kaldi’s bigwigs taste coffees to determine if they make the cut. It
looked like a miniature high school science lab, minus the built-in table sink
and Bunsen burner. It had clean white walls and a large black-top island in
the middle. A large window looking into the roasting facility was marked up
with the ratings given to a week’s worth of cuppings.
Against one wall stood the tiniest
roaster I’ve ever seen! It was a 1931 Probat Perfekt and according to Kaldi’s,
the only one of its kind. Not functional yet, but a beautiful decorative piece.
There is also a sample roaster used for tastings. It was a coffee
geek’s dream room.
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| Kaldi's sample roaster |
From
there, we stepped into the spacious roasting area and learned a little about
the company’s roasting method. Here two more vintage Probats stood, these ones
very functional. The main one was a 1937 Probat that survived World War II.
Finally,
we saw the Coffee Talk room, a comfortable conference room with a small bar on
one end and long wooden conference table on the other. We were treated to a
taste comparison of two Indonesian coffees – a Timor and a Java. Both coffees
were prepared as a drip coffee and a cold brew to demonstrate how different
methods and different regions make a big difference in flavor. I learned way
more about the taster’s wheel than I had before. I am inspired to taste various
juices, nuts and dirts to improve my taste buds.
Bissinger’s
We walked to the back of the large, elegant
space, past the tempting display cases of truffles and other confections, to
the espresso machine. We were treated to hot cocoa made with a cocoa powder found exclusively at that CWE shop and not for sale. It was a damn good chocolaty
drink - rich and not too sweet. It was a nice end to the first day.
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