Daniel's World of Coffee

Water, Water, Water

There are so many factors that go into a good cup of coffee that sometimes we forget to pay attention to the main ingredient. No, not coffee. Water.

The water where you live will have a huge impact on the flavor of your coffee. The thing is, if you have lived where you do for a long while, you become inured to your own water. In New York City, the water (from the Hudson River aquifer) is actually quite mineral-heavy. This makes for water that is slightly soapy-tasting and smooth in mouthfeel. Lots of minerals can increase the extraction rate of coffee (that is, make it extract more fully more quickly).

Once I was doing a cupping in a country that shall not be named, and, having received a request for "bottled water" to do the cupping, the man who got the supplies brought in two huge containers of distilled water. Distilled water is basically pure H20, with nothing else inside. Might sound like a good thing, but it's not. If you don't believe me, you can try a little experiment at home. Make one pot of coffee with your tap water, one with some bottled spring water, and one with bottled distilled water. Just be careful to control your other variables, and you can learn a valuable lesson about how water affects taste.

I thought of this post while I was shaving this morning. I use an old-fashioned safety razor (like the baby in the picture) and badger's hair brush with real shaving soap. This method takes a little longer than a can of gel and plastic cartridge razors from the supermarket. But if you do it right, it gives you a much nicer shave. Part of the reason it gives you a better shave is that you are more in tune with the subtleties of the process. You can tell when the blade is sharp and when it needs replacing. You can feel a subtle but definite change in friction when you use a new shaving soap. It even feels different when I spent a lot of time outdoors the previous day versus staying indoors and making coffee.

Anyway, the big change I noticed recently is in the water. In the Seattle area, the water is much cleaner than in New York City. In a way, this makes it harsher. Without those softening minerals in it, it becomes crisp and almost — I know this sounds silly — dry. You notice it when you drink it, and you notice it when you make coffee with it. And you can notice it when you shave. When I pull the razor across my face, it tends to stick and tug more. Not so much that I cut myself, but enough that I feel a touch more raw at the end of the process. In New York, the water tends to add another lubricating layer to your face. In Seattle, it bounces off you like your were a duck.

The great thing about life, and about coffee, is that you will never, ever run out of things to pay attention to. That's the fun of it. There's actually a quality to the climate here that affects coffee quality, but that's another post for another day (anyone want to take a guess what it is?). I might be crazy for thinking about extraction rates when I shave, but I suspect I'm not the only one. Have you ever had an insight into coffee that came from an unexpected source? And what's your water like?

Top 20 Coffees of All Time: The Magenta Orgasm

Talking about my "top twenty coffees of all time" yesterday got me thinking about what, seriously, would be on that list. So I am going to revisit some of those memorable coffees over the coming weeks when the mood strikes me.

The following article appeared on my old, old blog (the LiveJournal one), and my readership has changed quite a bit since then, so I thought it would be fun to repost this. I originally wrote it for the women's website Divine Caroline, so those of you who are coffee experts can forgive the elementary presentation. But I still stand by the general philosophy of this piece. Enjoy!

Papayas, Love Poems, and Magenta Orgasms

COFFEES THAT ARE TRULY ONE OF A KIND

by Daniel Humphries

I’ve got my score sheet right here in front of me. It says, and I am not making this up: “banana, papaya, pineapple, raspberry, mangos... tropical...” (then you can see I am getting a little excited, because my handwriting is more hurried) “so sweet and smooth... astonishing” (then I lose my professionalism altogether): “Velvety pinks and magentas!!”

Would you guess that I was describing coffee? Yeah, me neither. But this is the sort of thing I sometimes come across in my travels: a truly unique coffee. For the skeptical here’s a statistic: brewed coffee typically contains over 800 different organic compounds, compared with around 200 in a glass of wine. Each compound has unique flavor, from the nasty (ashes, mold, animal hide) to the divine (meyer lemon, honey, baker’s chocolate). What marks a great coffee is an intriguing combination of positive attriubtes and a lack of negative ones.

It was in Ethiopia that I found the coffee that caused my little “pink and magenta” orgasm, in the middle of scoring coffees for a national competition. Now, strictly speaking, “velvety pinks and magentas!” is not a technically acceptable term. You might be surprised at the level of detail that goes into scoring these coffees. Coffees are evaluated on flavor, aftertaste, acidity (not always a bad thing!), body, cleanliness (really!), balance, sweetness, fragrance and aroma (not technically the same thing!), and well, you get the idea. If you are interested in what a scoresheet looks like (and if you are interested, my goodness dear, what kind of hopeless nerd are you?!) you can see one version (though not the one I was using) here.

The aroma notes I listed above (papaya, mango) are the kinds of notes professional cuppers will often make on their score sheets, though admittedly those particular notes are quite rare. Writing down colors is less common. It’s supposed to be scientific, after all. Sometimes I have to remind myself. Otherwise I might end up with drawings of race cars for, say, a kick-ass Blue Batak Sumatra; a series of angrily sketched frowny faces for defective commercial coffee from — name redacted to protect the purveyors of defective commercial coffee — ; and Keatsian odes to delicate Guatemalan beauties (“O, thou still unravished Huehuetenango of quietness...”)

Usually, though, I just stick to my numerical scores. I swear. Besides, giving a coffee a 9.5 on aftertase is about the same as writing a love poem to it, considering what that implies about the quality of the coffee.

All this is just to find coffees that people are going to like. Generally we don’t speak of people evaluating their double americanos based on balance and fragrance. But there’s the catch: they are evaluating it that way. They just don’t know it. People know what they like, they just sometimes lack the vocabulary to explain it.

And what do people like? Above all, they like sweetness and a smooth mouthfeel. Market research backs this up. Also: duh. This is why people put cream and sugar (or soy and splenda, natch) in their coffee. People also like a good aftertaste, a pleasing snap (“good” acidity), and an interesting or comforting aroma profile. The fact that they don’t break it down that way doesn’t mean that it can’t be broken down that way.

A truly great coffee will be so sweet and smooth as to not need any cream or sugar or Stevia. (Actually, nothing should ever need Stevia, ever. For any reason. Have you tried that stuff? I don't care if it's "all natural"," it’s like putting the purified essence of the sun on your tongue, if the sun was made out of sugar and post-industrial chemical waste). A truly great coffee will also have something unique about it that no other coffee has, no matter how sweet and smooth.

And this is why we go through all the trouble to taste and score coffee after coffee in the kinds of competitions I’m describing. Trust me, a lot of the coffee is terrible. There are all kinds of defects that can come up on the table. I don’t need to tell you this. You have already had terrible coffee many times. But the search is always worth it. When you find that glittering ruby on the table, you are such a happy little taster.

Lucky for you, dear and beautiful reader, it’s not necessary to go to Ethiopia to find these coffees. Just be discerning. In fact, be a snob. I highly recommend it. If you want to find a coffee like the one that made me start singing arias in Ethiopia, look for coffee that was bought and roasted in small lots or “micro-lots.” Coffee bought at specialty auction is reliably outstanding. Look for “Cup of Excellence” (top coffees from all over Latin America and now Rwanda), “Best of Panama” (top coffees from, um, Panama), “Ethiopia Limited” (where I found my little gem) and the like.

If your favorite roaster or coffee shop doesn’t offer something like this, ask them why not? And as always, let your own taste be your guide. If it makes you want to draw unicorns, it’s good coffee.

(Magenta Square by Nigel Tomm)

Where Does Sweetness Come From? Part Three: Roasting

Coffee should be sweet. Ok, so you have a wonderful, naturally sweet, perfectly harvested green coffee, that was then carefully processed so as to preserve that beautiful sweetness. Now what?

Well, now it's time to roast that coffee. Roasting is a very complicated process. There are hundreds of different organic compounds within a single coffee bean, and every single one of them reacts differently to the process of roasting. The most important process to understand when it comes to the formation of sweetness and other flavors in coffee is what is called a Maillard Reaction. This is the process of amino acids interacting with sugars to form new compounds in the course of applying heat to a food.

One way to think about how roasting affects sweetness is by the analogy of caramelizing sugars. If you have ever sauteed onions, then you know this process. As the onions are cooked further, they become sweeter and sweeter due to the caramelization of the sugars in the onion. This is actually another form of the Maillard Reaction.

Generally speaking, as you roast coffee it gets sweeter and sweeter, up to a point. Behold my mighty MS Paint skills! (click it to enlarge.) So in a very light roast (or cinnamon, or "cupping" roast), fewer of the sugars have caramelized, leading to a brighter-toned, more sour cup. As you proceed darker and darker, the Maillard Reactions continue, producing more and more sweetness in the cup.

However, there are diminishing returns on this once you begin to carbonize some of the cellulose and other starches in the bean. Sometime after "second crack" in the roasting process, dried-out portions of the bean begin to carbonize (turn to char and ash). This process can go on even while Maillard Reactions continue. This is why the best dark roasts can be very sweet without being too ashy. But it must be done with extreme care and skill. Very quickly the ashy bitterness can take over the cup, and carbonization can begin to kill those sugars the roaster was trying to cultivate. To go back to our onion analogy, this is like leaving the onions on the pan until they are black and smoking and dry.

As you can see from the rough schematic graph above, roasting is a balancing act. The graph I drew is extremely basic, and doesn't necessarily apply to all types of beans or machines. But it gives you an idea of how different factors are changing at different rates over time. A skilled roaster has to choose which spot along the curve he or she wants to arrive at (something that is best determined on the cupping table, of course, with many many samples of roasted coffee).

Not only that, but the roaster must choose how to arrive at that point. One cannot simply pick a time and temperature and then walk away. Because different chemical reactions are happening at different times during the roasting process, the roaster must also pick the "curve" he or she will use to reach the desired roast degree. Will it be a fast-ramping curve, a slow-building one, or a complicated S-curve that brings out just the right sweetness while preserving acidity and the more delicate aromatics?

The answer to all these questions would take (and has taken) an entire book to investigate fully. But I hope this little primer helps explain where sweetness comes from in the roasting process.

Our little bean has gone a long way since being planted in the ground at the farm, but it still has a long way to go before it's a perfect cup of sweet coffee...

Where Does Sweetness Come From? Step Two: Processing

This is the next post in a little series that is introduced here; Part One about the plant is here.

For people who can't do it (and sometimes even for those of us who can), latte art can seem like the hardest thing there is to do in coffee. Well, it's the second hardest. The hardest thing in coffee is getting that damn sticky mucilage off the parchment.

I'm talking, of course, about coffee processing. If you don't know what I'm referring to with mucilage and parchment, Wikipedia has a fairly good, succinct introduction to coffee processing.

I want to talk about the origins of sweetness in the processing stage, but it might be more accurate to talk about the preservation of sweetness. Processing has a huge influence on the flavor of a coffee, but most of the time it's a matter of not ruining the coffee. You can put in the ripest, most delicate and beautiful high-grown coffee cherries in one end of the coffee mill and get rotten, spoiled, fermented coffee out the other side.

Geoff Watts, green buyer for Intelligentsia and all-around coffee savant has an amusing and apt analogy for the creation/preservation of quality in coffee. He says the bean is like a cowboy walking down the main street of an Old West town in a shoot-out. It's trying to get from the farm to your cup, and the whole way it's being shot at. The coffee has to dodge many bullets to make it to your cup in good condition. Well, the processing stage is like the saloon where most of the bad guys are hiding out... the coffee's got more dangerous bullets to dodge in that stretch of road than anywhere else.

In the processing stage, the two main goals are to get the fruit off the coffee, and to dry the coffee out. There are too many variations in how coffee is processed to get into it in detail here, but there are some universals. If the fruit doesn't come off cleanly or efficiently, you have problems with fermentation and dirty flavors in general. If the coffee is not dried properly, you have problems with phenolic tastes, mold, and a whole host of other problems. And all during these stages, there is the possibility of contaminating the coffee with unclean equipment and/or storage facilities.

So to sum up, sweetness is not created during processing, it is only ever really destroyed or preserved. Good processing is all about preserving the wonderful sweetness that Mother Nature and the farmers cultivated in the first place.

There is one possible exception to this rule, and that is "natural" processed coffee. (I'll use that term to encompass the varied natural styles, like sun-dried natural, "pulp natural," etc.) In these cases, the fruit is being dried onto the parchment coffee. As you can imagine if you've ever eaten a raisin or a dried apricot, it tends to concentrate the sticky sweet sugars in the fruit. The bean inside this fruit then tends to "soak up" some of this sticky sweetness, resulting in the unique flavor characteristics you get from natural-process coffees.

There's a lot of controversy surrounding natural coffees in the specialty industry. Some consider their flavors to be, by definition, defective. I don't particularly feel like wading into that quicksand right now, but I will say that I happen to adore well-cared-for natural coffees, and some of the greatest coffee experiences I have ever had were with natural coffees. Any discussion of sweetness and processing would be incomplete without mentioning naturals.

In general, though, with naturals as with washed coffee, it's all about not getting shot, so to speak. That bean has a lot farther to go before it ends up in your mouth as sweet, delicious coffee....

Where Does Sweetness Come From? Step One: The Plant

Earlier this week I promised a little bit more on the topic of sweetness in coffee.

First of all, to review, good coffee should be sweet. There are many different stages and processes that coffee goes through on the way to your mouth, and each one can have a profound impact on the sweetness. The first stage is the coffee tree itself.

Coffee is a fruit. What we roast up and brew is the seed of that fruit. Just like any fruit, coffee is sweetest when it's ripe, and the same holds true for the seeds (the "beans"). When fully ripe the seeds hold all kinds of complex organic compounds which would serve as food for a growing coffee seedling, including a complex family of sugars and other sweet compounds.

Some people used to claim that the reason that the Kopi Luwak coffee (you know, the famous "poo coffee") was so sweet was that the civet cat ate only ripe fruit, in a special mysterious civet cattish way that humans were forever ignorant of. Well, that explanation might have flown back in the bad old days. Today, though of course most human coffee production unfortunately involves lots of green cherries still, there are hundreds of quality operations out there that select only ripe red cherries. Humans have proven every bit as reliable in choosing only red as a civet cat could ever hope to be. Come on, humans, cut your species some slack! We're not that stupid.

Speaking of stupid, the first time I visited a coffee farm during harvest, I was so stoked to be eating the fruit that I ate dozens of cherries and later ended up with a severe headache, stomach ache and palpitating heart. Those cherries are caffeinated, too! I just figured that out way too late.

A few more notes on sweetness as a function of the coffee plant itself:

The higher the altitude the coffee was born at, the denser the beans tend to be. This can lead to an increase in acidity, complexity, and yes, sweetness.

Rainfall and sunlight can greatly influence the sweetness of a given coffee, but it's not the case that more or less of one or the other will lead to more sweetness. It's a complex interaction. Coffee trees, for instance, do best in mixed sunlight and shade. The percentages of this shade depends on the latitude of the farm, the altitude, the soil, and the varietal.

I'm not aware of any direct relationship between soil-type and sweetness. Obviously, proper soil for a given plant will lead to healthy, sweet fruit. But I do not know of any correlation between one particular soil type and levels of sweetness in the cup. This kind of thing generally shows up more in the aromatics (the iron tastes in volcanic soil coffees, for example). If anyone has information on the question of soil and sweetness, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

So the first step in sweet coffee is sweet coffee fruit. If you start with green, unripe cherries, even in relatively small amounts, you are sabotaging the whole thing right from the start. But that's only the first step. We still have a long way to go to a sweet beverage.

Next time I will take a look at how processing affects sweetness.

coffee cherry photo by

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bloggle/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Sweetness

All coffee should be sweet.

When I do trainings I always pull some good espresso shots and have the students taste the espresso as I help describe what they are tasting. I'm always careful to point out that the "good" definition means good for that particular coffee. For instance, a good shot of Intelligentsia's Black Cat is going to be dark-toned, chocolatey, syrupy and full-bodied. A good shot of Terroir's Daterra Espresso will be clean, fruity, and with a pipe tobacco characteristic. Trying to make one taste like the other would be a big mistake. There's room in the world of coffee for both, and for many other kinds of coffee, and thank goodness for that.

But they have one thing in common: when properly prepared, they are sweet.

Everyone has different tastes. Different cultures can handle different tastes and different strange foods. But there's not a culture that I've ever encountered that doesn't like sweet things. We've evolved to love sweet things because sugars are one of the most concentrated forms of energy, and because sweetness is a sign that food is ripe and not spoiled.

When people learn what I do, they sometimes say as if by way of apology, "Oh... I drink coffee with lots of cream and sugar. You must think that's terrible." It's not terrible at all. It's natural. You evolved to like sweet things. And most coffee, unfortunately, is not sweet. So it's natural to put sugar or Splenda or what have you in there. Then, once people get used to a certain way of drinking their coffee, they are understandably reluctant to change it up. But as you know, reader, it doesn't have to be that way.

Coffee is a fruit, and the seeds of that fruit (you know... "beans") are lovely sweet when nurtured and cared for properly.

So when you evaluate a coffee, and you need something to wrap your mind around to begin your evaluation — and anchor point for your evaluation — you can start with sweetness. Is this coffee sweet? How noticeable is the sweetness? What is the character of that sweetness?

And if it's not sweet, you should demand better coffee, from yourself or from your barista or roaster. Later this week I will look at the places in the process of growing, roasting, and preparing coffee where sweetness is created or destroyed.

(A very special kind of Sweetness).

Cleansing Your Palate

Like I said, I'm doing a lot of taste-testing this week, and so I have tasting protocols on my mind.

People often ask me what coffee tasters do to cleanse their palates. My answer is: usually, not much!

Coffee (especially non-espresso coffee) is heavily water-based... about 98.7% water in most cases. When comparing just a handful of coffees, all you need to cleanse yourself of the last coffee is.... the next coffee. However, over time and many samples, you will develop some build-up. There's nothing wrong with cleansing, especially if you find it helps you.

The best cleanser in life, in all circumstances, of course is water. When I do tasting, no matter if it's cupping, brewed coffee, espresso, or whatever, I always have lots of fresh water on hand. I like the water to be not too cold, as having really cold water can provide a shock to your senses. Also, it's best to use the same water source as is being used to brew your coffee. That means if your brew-station has a water filtration system, it's best to be drinking water that is similarly filtered. But, really, any old water will do.

Swishing water around in your mouth and spitting is a good practice. It's also a good idea to drink plenty of water if you are going to taste a lot of coffees. Even if you are spitting most of your coffee samples, you are going to absorb a lot of caffeine through your mouth. Drinking plenty of water helps ensure your body will be able to handle it.

When I have a lot of coffee to sample, I will use crackers to cleanse my palate. Choose something neutral, like soda crackers or table water crackers. Make sure to rinse with water after to get all the cracker residue out of your mouth.

Pears and apples are also a common way to refresh yourself between sets. I strongly recommend you stay away from this kind of palate cleanser when you are in the middle of tasting. But if you have several sessions planned, having a few slices of a sweet apple can scrub your tongue a little and refresh you. Again, finish with water.

Finally, espresso is a special case because of all the oils involved. I like to serve people sparkling water when hosting an espresso tasting. Stay away from flavored waters. A good, relatively neutral water like Perrier should do the trick. Swish and spit, and swish and drink. Have some still water on hand, too, as always!

Control Your Variables

I've been doing a lot of taste tests lately, and I've had a few interesting experiences that have reminded me of the importance of strict protocols when doing taste tests.

The whole reason for the ritual of cupping, of course, is to eliminate the variables from cup to cup, so that you know you are tasting the difference between the beans themselves (or, alternatively, the roasts). If more than one variable changes, you lose control of your experiment very quickly. Unfortunately, in my experience, most people have two or sometimes many more variables out of control when they are evaluating flavor.

Controlling your variables is important not just in cupping, but in evaluating your own espresso, deciding which roasted coffee beans to buy, choosing your brew parameters for your home coffee, buying coffee equipment... everything! One must avoid blanket statements that aren't backed up by the real data. The mind is very good at focusing in on one particular factor, to the exclusion of everything else.

For example, you may have a relatively rare coffee, such as a Timor or a Burundi. Someone makes a cup in a drip machine that is under-temperature and which uses a paper filter. Earlier in the day, you had some Guatemalan coffee from a properly prepared French press. The Guat tasted full-flavored, rich, and sweet. The Timor (let's say) tastes watery and flat. "I hate Timor coffees... they are too thin and flavorless!" Big mistake.

In general, in all different preparation and testing methods (from home brewing, to sampling coffee shops, to evaluating your own espresso, to cupping), here are the variables you have to be aware of:

Temperature: All coffee is very sensitive to the temperature at which you brew it. Many home brew coffee is too cool. Aim for 200 Fahrenheit. In espresso, a few degrees one way or another can make a night-and-day difference.

Grind: Inconsistent grinding can force you to choose between very weak coffee on the one hand or bitter coffee on the other, with no middle ground.

Season: If you compare an El Salvador to a Rwanda in September, you are giving the El Salvador a huge advantage (assuming its current crop). Be aware of when certain coffees are most fresh.

Roast: As everyone knows, roast has a huge influence on taste. Don't mix and match light roasts with dark when making comparisons.

Age of Roasted Coffee: As little as a few days can make a tasteable difference as coffee loses its aromatic gasses and the oils start to go bad. And many people are comparing coffees that are months apart in roast date.

Time Since Grinding: If I gave you coffee ground yesterday versus coffee ground 5 minutes ago, I could convince you they were two different kinds of beans.

Dose/Strength: Here's an obvious one... are you comparing coffees that were brewed to the same strength?

Dwell Time: Don't compare a pot made in 4 minutes to one made in 7.

Extraction: Extraction rate is actually highly dependent on all of the above factors, and from a certain perspective is not in the same category as these other variables. But I'm referring here to the evenness of the extraction. That is... if you make two Chemexes with the same grinder, water, dose, etc. but you pour one straight down the sides and the other one in a careful spiral motion, you will have two different tasting brews.

Non-coffee Factors: There are so many other things that can influence your experience that it would be impossible to list them all here. But pay attention to how long it's been since your last cup of coffee (first one in the morning versus after a long day of sampling coffee), what you last had to eat (spicy food? fudge? cheese?), the environment you are in, expectations you had for a given coffee (due to branding, preconceived notions, etc), and other smells or stimuli around you.

I'm sure I'm missing something in this list. My point is: Be careful! Make sure you are evaluating what you think you are evaluating.

Tasting Espresso

When I do trainings, sometimes I have students who don't normally drink straight espresso. But, I tell them, drinking straight espresso is now a part of your job. "You don't drink espresso? Well, you do now!"

Think about it: would you want to eat at a restaurant where the chef created specials that he sent out to the guests without ever tasting the recipe once?

Some people are very sensitive to caffeine, and I understand that. For those people I recommend they try small sips of espresso which they can then spit out into a cup. If you want to be really careful about it, you can follow this up by rinsing your mouth out with water or, even better, sparkling water.

Every barista should be tasting his or her espresso every day, without exception. As you taste more and more shots, you start to build a vocabulary for how to analyze the taste. And you begin to notice correlations between certain aspects of the appearance of the espresso and the tastes that go along with it. And, of course, you can track changes as they happen to the blend over time.

When someone drinks a straight espresso for pleasure, I would never dream of telling them how they should or should not consume it. Personal preference! But if you are sampling an espresso purely for flavor evaluation, I have a couple of pointers.

First of all: understand that espresso is a strong beverage. People often react to a strong-tasting compound by calling it "bitter" without reflection. But bitterness and strength are two different things. Try to "taste through" the initital strength of the beverage. Of course, many espresso are bitter, but we want to be able to separate these from those that are sweet, or sour, or salty. So be brave and keep tasting after that initial shock.

The second pointer I give is to always taste beneath the crema. Good espresso should have resilient crema. It's a sign that the fats have been properly emulsified, lending to a rich, smooth mouthfeel that you only get in espresso. But it can taste radically different than the rest of the brew. Essentially, each cup of espresso is two beverages laying one on top of the other, like a black-and-tan: the crema on top of the darker espresso. The crema is CO2, particulate matter, and oils. The darker liquid is mostly water and solubles, with some oils blended in. They taste very different. Always be careful to poke a hole in the crema by blowing on it or scooping with a little spoon.

And that's it! All you need to know to become an expert taster of your own shots. The best lessons come from real life experience, so get out there and start tasting.

For a bonus, check out this interesting video from former World Barista Champion, James Hoffmann. h/t to Nigel.

Event Announcement: Crop to Cup on the Highline

My friend Taylor now serves his Crop to Cup coffee in (on?) New York City's newest park, the elevated train tracks on the West Side that have been converted into a long, skinny, walkable green park, the Highline.

This Sunday he's having a free coffee giveaway. Crop to Cup is a New York-based company that specializes in Ugandan coffee. Taylor and his partner got the idea for the business while living in Uganda a few years ago. If you haven't seen the Highline yet, here's your excuse....

Taylor's announcement: The “Crop to Cup Free for All” party is set for Sunday, to celebrate the recent launch of Crop to Cup Coffee Co.’s new café up on the Highline. This Sunday, August 16, from 4pm to 6pm, we will lock away our cash box and dish out free coffee and chocolate drinks to all. Revelers will be able to choose from our signature hot and iced coffees, iced chocolate (from our own homemade ganache) and hot or iced mochas (also made with our ganache). All dairy will be from our friends at Basis Farm to Chef and Battenkill Valley Creamery.

As always, Crop to Cup is your NYC-roasted source for the best in farmer-direct single origin coffees and trace-your-impact sustainability. By supporting family farmers in Uganda and elsewhere, as well as sustainability-focused dairy farms in our own backyard, we’re doing our very best to help reinvent the food system the world depends on.

So, please come join Crop to Cup and delicious farm products - from Uganda to Upstate - as we party it up at the super cool Highline park. Our new 29-day café (lasts until Sept 6) is the perfect spot to spend the afternoon, with amazing views of the river, spectacular architecture of the neighborhood’s old warehouse buildings, and of course the beautiful Highline park. Stay for the sunset – our west-facing view over the Hudson is the best in the city!

Details:

• What: “Crop to Cup Free for All” - Free Drinks for All!

• When: Sunday, August 16, 4pm to 6pm

• Where: Crop to Cup Coffee stand at the Highline Park, at the Chelsea Market Underpass (near the Highline’s 16th St entrance).

• Rain or Shine, as we’re sheltered by the Chelsea Market building

• Why? On a hot summer day you deserve a delicious freshly brewed iced coffee or iced chocolate! 1 free coffee or chocolate drink per person

We hope to see you there!