A unique process makes for a marvelously magical flavor!

If you’re looking for a good way to wake up and fight the summer heat, pick up a bottle or six of this super tasty, very special Cold Brew from the Coffee Company. More and more people have told me they keep it regularly stocked in their fridge to pop open for their morning drive or to wake up and cool down on a hot afternoon. Steve Mangigian, Managing Partner at the Coffee Company, spent years working to perfect this recipe. It’s allowed us to do a cold brew of our coffee, one that doesn’t need refrigeration while it’s sealed in the bottle.

Matthew Bodary, who’s worked in the ZCoB for 11 years now (and served as one of our first Staff Partners) shares:

I have seen over the last few years that some switch to cold brew and never look back! We have folks who in the dead of winter and an inch of ice coating everything still come in and get a large cold brew or nitro cold brew. For some, it’s about the big caffeine hit (I count myself among the guilty on this point) but for others, it is about the different taste you get through the cold brewing process—overall smoother, fewer natural acids (which some perceive as “sourness”) and less bitterness. For those sensitive to the sharper, more intense flavors in coffee, cold brew, especially with a bit of milk, can be a more rounded, smoother experience. 

All of Steve’s hard work has paid off in the form of a great product. He says:

Many companies make cold brew to get rid of beans that they can’t use to brew hot. We have been making it for the entire history of the company and so have always used only our high-quality single origins as the basis for our brew. I think when we say, “You really can taste the difference,” it’s very true here. Many simply sell cold coffee that’s been brewed and call it “cold brew” but naturally it has not gone through that long steeping process which is what hooks people.

What makes the Coffee Company’s taste so good? For starters, using better beans. A lot of packaged cold brew work is done to use up subpar offerings that might not make it on their own. Steve selects with the idea of making the cold brew one of the tastiest things we offer. And using a higher proportion of coffee to water. Many cold brews can be a bit pallid—the Coffee Company’s is much bolder, ready to be poured (if you want) over ice or have cream and sugar added, without ever losing its identity. More than a few have started concocting cocktails using the cold brew as the base! Since it’s shelf-stable, there’s no reason not to stock up a lot of it! Why run the risk of running out right? It could just be one of those small things that takes your quality of life to the next level!

You can get the Cold Brew at the Coffee Company, Deli, Bakeshop, and Roadhouse! We’re happy to ship you some too!

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A beautiful brew that can turn any day into a holiday

If you’re thinking about what to drink when you dive into a nice bite of pie from the Bakehouse, this seasonal brew from the Coffee Company is the perfect pairing. We’ve been doing an annual Holiday Blend for over a decade now—the 2021 vintage maintains the tradition of marvelous flavors while still bringing its own personality to the flavorful fore! This year, Steve, Matthew, Chris, and everyone at the Coffee Company have put together a trio of terrific beans: half Espresso #1, and a quarter each of our Peru Corral de Piedra and our Costa Rica Willows Special Reserve. Matthew says:

When we developed this year’s Holiday Blend, we paired two of our favorite estate coffees from Hacienda Miramonte in Costa Rica and Daterra Estate in Brazil with beans from the ASPROAGRO co-op in Peru. We have been sourcing each of these coffees for many years and are proud to have shaken hands with the producers. These relationships will last many more years to come—the attention and care of the producers are reflected in the flavor of each cup! This blend is rich, layered, and silky smooth with hints of cocoa.

The 2021 Holiday Blend has been tasting terrific in every form I’ve tried, but I was particularly happy with the Chemex brewing method. The “dark chocolate” in it came out nicely and it made for incredibly smooth sipping. However you prepare it, I feel confident that you’ll be happy to have some of this year’s Holiday Blend! Here’s to good things to come!

At the Coffee Company, Deli, Roadhouse, and Mail Order!

When we stand in our kitchens, bleary-eyed with coffee pot in hand, it’s unlikely that we’re reflecting on how this beverage—which we ritualistically consume—is made. Perfectly understandable, given that most of us don’t have any synapses firing until after the stuff hits our lips.


So, right now, in this very moment, we’d like to invite you to reflect on the laborious process and lengthy journey that those tasty, life-giving beans endure. From seedlings tended to in a nursery, to a ripe red cherries expertly plucked and processed, carefully stored and shipped across oceans. The many hands, many moons, and many miles involved to get the coffee stateside.

And that’s just the start! A coffee guru lovingly roasts those green guys into something delightfully drinkable, and packages them just so to preserve the flavor as long as possible. Then, finally, it’s yours.

Perhaps, like me, you find the long, laborious journey that coffee takes to get to you humbling, and want to introduce care and expertise to your role in it. Or, you simply have an interest in knowing the inside scoop (pun intended) on keeping and preparing your coffee so it’s as fresh and tasty as can be! Either way, read on.

As you may have gleaned, freshness starts with your friendly neighborhood roaster (hey, that’s us!). Coffee is a perishable good, so, fresh coffee equals good coffee. Coffee flavor peaks mere days after being roasted, and definitely should be consumed within a month of its roast date. Does the coffee you buy have a “best by” date as opposed to a “roasted on” date? Buyer beware! This can be totally arbitrary and result in purchasing a coffee that’s stale—lacking the aroma and depth of its formerly fresh self. 

In addition to the roasting, how a coffee is packaged makes a huge difference. If your coffee is vacuum-sealed, it was likely aged before being packaged – this is because coffee releases CO2 gas after being roasted (in a vacuum-sealed bag, well, it would go ka-boom!). One-way valve-sealed packaging is the way to go, as it lets gas from fresh coffee out, but no oxygen in.


And what about the beans themselves? Do you buy them pre-ground or whole? Pre-ground coffee loses its freshness much faster, given that more surface area is exposed to oxygen and moisture, elements that are none-too-kind to coffee. Some coffee folk say that pre-ground coffee starts losing its freshness within 30 minutes of being ground! Compare that to whole bean, which will stay fresh for nearly a month.

Your local roaster will likely grind your coffee beans for you if you don’t want to invest in a home grinder. Grinding your beans at home, however, is not only a great way to tell if your coffee is fresh or not (if the coffee aroma fills the kitchen as you grind the coffee, it’s fresh. If not, it’s stale!), but it allows for you to properly calibrate the fineness of the grind needed for your particular brewing method(s), and to get the freshest possible coffee. We recommend getting a grinder that uses burrs rather than blades, because burr grinding produces more uniform coffee particles, and improves the quality of flavor extraction you get from your grounds when you brew.

Here in the café, we sell the Rocky Rancilio Grinder, which, unlike many home grinders has replaceable burrs. It’s ideal for espresso, but can be set to accommodate a full range of brewing methods. We also carry the Bodum Bistro Grinder which, conversely, is not ideal for espresso but accommodates all other brewing methods. Furthermore, this grinder crushes beans between stainless steel conical burrs rather than slicing them. This preserves the bean’s intrinsic flavor and aroma while providing a consistent grind.

Whether you buy pre-ground or whole bean, how you store your coffee is an important aspect to maintaining freshness as well. Again, light, oxygen, and moisture are enemies of coffee! If you can’t keep your coffee stored in a pantry, make sure it’s in an opaque container. And, regardless, air-tight storage is ideal. We also don’t recommend freezing your coffee. Thawing and refreezing coffee can cause freezer burn, affecting flavor. If you have a lot of coffee on-hand and and want to keep vibrant for as long as you can, make sure to divide it into pre-portioned bags before putting it away in the freezer. This way, you’re taking the coffee out of the freezer just once!

Finally, when is the last time you cleaned your coffee gear? Coffee oils can build up on your equipment, and minerals from hard water can form scale deposits that can affect how your equipment functions. We carry coffee equipment cleaning products in our cafe. If you are curious about what cleaning your gear needs, come chat with us!

We know you love (or at least need) your morning cup o’ joe, and would like to invite you to consider the preparation and storing of the stuff to be as much a part of your daily ritual as brewing and drinking it. Our coffee is a labor of love from around the world, and its journey ends in your hands!

For the past few years at the Zingerman’s Coffee Company, we’ve offered several different ways to have us brew your coffee. Each method, as you’d probably expect, will produce a coffee with a slightly different flavor and texture. While we’ve known all about these methods, we’ve unintentionally kept them a secret from you. But those days are over—the brewing-method bonanza is all out in the open now!

We’ve got the Big Brew Board up and mounted over the counter so you can see the brewing options for yourself. Better still, we’ve spent multiple hours of brewing, testing, and tasting to match up what we think are the best combina- tions of brewing-methods and beans.

Pourover
This is a very simple, and very tasty way of making coffee. We grind the coffee of your choice to order, pour hot water over it, which then drips down through a standard paper filter into the cup. Pourover brewing generally produces a balanced cup, and the light filtering removes some oils while retaining body. The Pourover is one of our most popular methods.

Clever
A relatively recent addition to the 
world’s array of brewing methods, the 
Clever is sort of a combination of a 
French press and a Pourover. Originally
invented in Taiwan for making tea, it 
quickly took the coffee brewing world
by storm. Hot water is poured over, and 
into the ground coffee, which is then sus
pended in the hot liquid during brewing.
Then, like the Pourover, it releases the liquid coffee from the grounds so it doesn’t over-steep. The Clever makes a very well rounded cup of coffee without the density of the French press, and it works well with almost all coffees.

Chemex
Chemex is comparable to the Pourover, but uses a heavier paper filter to make for a cleaner, more ‘refined’ cup. This is Allen’s favorite way to make drip coffee at home. The name is derived from its development by German chemist, Dr. Peter Schlumbohm, PhD, back in 1941, and it’s certainly one of the most visually appealing of the alternatives. The brewing vessel looks a bit like an hourglass, and the top part holds the Chemex paper filter (originally laboratory filter paper). Hot water is poured through it into the top half of the glass, and the brewed coffee fills the bottom. Because the filter is thicker than most, we often use a slightly coarser grind than a regular cone drip. After brewing, the filter is discarded and the brewer is used as a server. The Chemex makes for a very clean cup of coffee.

French­press
The French press, or press pot, was invented in France in probably the late 19th century. Freshly ground coffee and hot water are mixed in direct contact in a glass carafe. The glass has a plunger screen mounted on a moveable post. After the coffee has steeped for about 3 minutes, the post is pressed down to hold the grounds to the bottom of the carafe. The filter is a relatively coarse wire mesh with less filtration than paper, leaving more oils and a bit of coffee solids suspended in the brew. French press definitely makes for a bigger-bodied coffee. It reminds me of eating unfiltered olive oil; it leaves a bit more of the “bones” of the coffee in the brew.

Aeropress
Invented in 2005 by Alan Adler, the same guy who came up with the Aerobie disc that took the Frisbee to a new heights. The Aeropress uses a tight fitting plunger to force the brewed coffee very quickly through a filter at high pressure. It produces a small, intense cup of coffee fairly quickly.

Siphon
Other than the espresso machine, this is
 the most elaborate brewing mechanism we
have. Depending on whom you ask, it was
developed in Germany in the 1830’s, or by Robert Napier in 1840. Either way, it was very much a product of its era. Scientists were messing around with their relatively new understanding of vacuums, and improved coal furnaces made quality glass much more affordable. The siphon pot uses two glass globes connected by a small glass “neck.” The initial process of water rising from the bottom globe to the top globe is driven by steam pressure created as the water approaches boiling. Once the water has been pushed into the top globe and steeps with the coffee, the heating element is removed, and the vacuum created in the bottom globe uses negative pressure to draw water down through the fine mesh filter. It produces a cup that has some of the benefits of a press pot, but with a little more filtration. We’ve found the siphon is particularly successful for coffees that are bright and fruity (it’s the staff favorite for our Ethiopian coffee). The siphon pot brewing does take a bit longer, so this isn’t one to order if you’re in a big hurry, but if you’ve got a few minutes it sure does make for pretty marvelously clean cup.

Espresso
Probably the best known
of the bunch today,
the espresso process was developed
in Italy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Espresso brewing forces hot water
under pressures through a small bed of coffee in very short, intense burst—about 25 to 30 seconds. The pressures and temperature produce a small amount of thick crema. The crema is an actually an emulsion of aromatic oils that form a mesh of oily bubbles on the surface. This method tends to magnify the oils, sweetness and acidity that are in the roasted coffee. We typically like coffees that are sweet and lower in brightness because of this.

SMELL IT!
As much as 70-80% of what we perceive as taste comes from our sense of smell. Most of us here at Zingerman’s are familiar with this idea, as Ari’s been telling us for years to “smell it” as a key step in identifying great food. Here’s a fun exercise we do frequently in Zingerman’s Coffee Company classes to get people thinking about what they are smelling:

Give everyone a slice of orange and have them hold their nose closed and while they bite or chew the orange. Then, reminding them to keep holding their nose, ask them what they taste. Finally, ask them to let go of their nose. I’m not going to tell you what happens next, but I encourage you to try it and let us know. Oranges work well for this exercise, but you can also use anchovies!

COFFEE AND FOOD PAIRINGS FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Not sure what coffee to bring someone for the holidays? We teach a coffee and food pairing class for the public where you can try all kinds of ideas and combinations. You can also give the class to someone as a nice holiday gift!

Here are a couple of good pairings to get you started. As Steve and I are fond of saying, “there are no absolutes in coffee.” These are pairings that we’ve tried and we’d love for you to share some of your favorites.

Holiday Blend and Cranberry Walnut Pie
These two were made for each other, as they both have a nice balance of bitter, sweetness, and tart fruit. We were originally thinking of Hungarian tortes when we created the Holiday Blend this year, but I tried this pairing as an afterthought last week. I kept alternating between a forkful of pie and a sip of the coffee. Granted, I’ve been known to do this with most pies, but this particular combination was special. The Holiday Blend accentuates the flavors of the pie while moderating its sweetness. Very nice!

Sumatra and Zingerman’s Wowza Dark Chocolate Bar
Our high-grown Sumatran coffee is one of the darkest we roast. It’s flavor is earthy, wild, and dark. So how do you tame something like this? You get a good dark chocolate. I especially like it with a Wowza Bar from the Zingerman’s Candy Manufactory. (Thank you Charlie!) In general, dark chocolate works well with dark roast coffees, but WOW! This just pops!

Want to learn more about brewing coffee?
Take our Brewing Methods Class at the Zingerman’s Coffee Company. Sunday, December 16, 1-3pm.
Details here.