 As I was brainstorming about this weeks blog and thinking about what I would write about, I look up at my wall and see the framed piece of paper with my name that says "Master of Education" which immediately makes me smile. The reason I smile is because its a reminder of how much I love teaching. Education and teaching, along with music and coffee are great passions of mine. As a new school year approaches and I get ready to enter my 14th year as a public school educator I thought why not put some of my passion of education to use and open up a conversation about coffee to discuss the word roastery and what exactly are we creating in our new space on Maine Street!
For todays class we will start with ----Chapter 1 - Is "Roastery" even a word? Well to start my spell check does not recognize it as a word which led me to look it up in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Nope not there. Really! Go check if you don't believe me...I was also amazed that a word my 6th grade teacher taught me how to spell and was supposedly supposed to be the longest word in the dictionary was not there either! Antidisestablishmentarianism. You can check that one too ;) What is going on? Chapter 2 - What exactly is a roastery? Simply put it is a place where coffee is roasted using a commercial drum roaster. Roasting coffee transforms the chemical and physical properties of green coffee beans into roasted coffee products. The roasting process is what produces the characteristic flavor of coffee by causing the green coffee beans to change in taste. Bonus Fun Fact:The word came from this movement of producing high-quality coffee, and consider coffee as an artisanal foodstuff, like wine, rather than a commodity. That movement is referred to as Third Wave of Coffee. (1st wave being: Growing coffee consumption exponentially, and 2nd wave being: the defining and enjoyment of specialty coffee.) Chapter 3 - Electric Fountain Brewing Coffee Bar & Roastery - How are we different? With all that being said and how Electric Fountain Brewing is different than any other coffee shop in Quincy (including all name brand big coffee chains) is that EFB will be the home of Quincy IL's only roastery! We will roast all of our own coffee beans in house at our location at 6th and Maine! All restaurants have to source their coffee somewhere. Majority of the businesses around the area are having to purchase roasted coffee from roasteries in St. Louis, MO. Electric Fountain Brewing is unique to Quincy because we will be the only local roastery within a 110mile radius of Quincy! The closest ones being in St. Louis, MO, Columbia, MO, and Springfield IL. Chapter 4 - How do we find the farmers and the best green beans all over the world? I am thrilled to have a small team that I collaborate with located on both east and west coasts that do the traveling for me! They travel around the world finding the best organically grown coffee beans that DO NOT use pesticides or chemicals when growing their beans. We pride ourselves in paying those farmers a fair wage and sometimes as much as three times the amount of "fair trade" prices and other coffee companies. We primarily focus on finding "single origin" coffee farms where it is coffee grown within a single known geographic origin. Sometimes this is a single farm, or a specific collection of beans from a single country. The name of the coffee is then usually the place it was grown to whatever degree available. Single-origins are viewed by some as a way to get a specific taste, and some independent coffee shops have found that this gives them a way to add value over large chains. Once we find a quality bean the team works out the details of getting those beans into the US and shipped to Quincy. From there I take the green coffee beans and roast them to different flavor profiles ( with our 2 small commercial drum roasters) based on where they are grown to bring out the best taste for that region. Life is too short to drink bad coffee especially coffee that is mass produced with the help of chemicals and pesticides. So support your local organic roaster, support the work that goes into farming chemical free, support our effort of bringing the best chemical free beans from around the world to downtown Quincy for a tastier, healthier, cleaner cup of coffee. Our mission is to provide you with "a cup of coffee that you can feel good about. " Vocab List 1. Roastery 2. Antidisestablishmentarianism 3. Third Wave Coffee Shops 4. Single Origin 5. Organically grown  This week we say farewell to the original location of Grown-N-Gathered! The little guy has got to big for its 729 Hampshire pants and is moving this Sunday to the new home at the new building at 601 Maine Street!! (At the bottom is a retro pic of the new building at 6th & Maine back in the day!) Woot woot! The new space will be 3 times the size of the original location plus a full smoothie bar and wine bar. Yes Wine bar! Fun fact: Grown N Gathered has always had a liquor license and served packaged beer and wine to go....and even has a fun barrel of wine on draft that will all be going to the new location as well! So that means events like Blues in the District you can stop in and fill up with one of GNGs refillable wine bottles or your own cooler with GNG's selection of brews on your walk over to the park or if you run out you can walk a block to 6th & Maine and fill up again! Michele W's - Grown N Gathered will be the first installment of the 3 business venture going into her new big building on the corner of 6th & Maine! Next up is her Quincy Yoga studio Yoga7even, followed by my new startup Electric Fountain Brewing Coffee Bar & Roastery! Again we will miss and are thankful for the little incubator space on 729 Hampshire owned by Austin Properties where GNG got its start and where the first bags of Electric Fountain Brewing organic coffee were first sold but we are even more excited about the opportunity to expand and be in the heart of "The District" in downtown Quincy! If you haven't stopped into Grown N Gathered yet you should definitely stop in and say hi, grab some groceries, a smoothie, a bag of EFB coffee beans, or just check out the GNG part of the building. Construction will continue in the other parts of the building as GNG continues business as usual in the new location and I look forward to some "pop up coffee bar" days in GNG until the Electric Fountain Brewing Coffee Bar & Roastery part gets complete! So "Live Like a Local" and come see us at 601 Maine Street in the heart of "The District" in downtown Quincy! |
Ryan ChristianSmall-batch specialty coffee roaster in Quincy IL that offers artisan organic fair trade coffee. Archives
January 2017
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