By Sally Tippett Rains
All the holiday baking is finished– or maybe you just need to take a “coffee break.” Rather than just chow down those Christmas cookies, make it more meaningful and sit down with a treasured beverage to enjoy them. What do you like? Tea? Coffee? Milk? It will be more enjoyable if you really savor the flavor by adding a delicious drink and taking the time from your busy day to enjoy it. For many, the drink of choice with a home baked cookie is a delicious cup of coffee.
Other articles focus on the latest trending cold coffee drinks, but this one deals with good old-fashioned hot coffee– the kind that goes great with a holiday coffee cake– or other holiday treat. Speaking of treats, one of our favorite places to find artisan bakery cakes or cupcakes is Patty Cakes in Highland, Illinois.
There are many different ways you can buy coffee. For those shopping at the local grocery stores there are: coffee beans, ground coffee that you brew, instant coffee and even instant coffee made in tea bags. Some people just drink coffee for the caffeine to wake up but there are others who truly love to savor a good cup of coffee.
If you’re going to serve a piece of holiday cake or a home-baked cookie, a coffee drinker will enjoy a good cup of hot coffee with it. Coffee has the ability to prolong family dinners or any dinners for that matter. It’s an excuse to get together– “let’s go out for coffee.” It’s a nice gift for those who like it and of course it helps us get where we are going by keeping us awake.
There are many who for medical purposes only drink decaffeinated, but luckily for coffee drinkers, the trend of bashing it has turned and the Mayo Clinic actually touts some good things about it:
“Up to three, four or maybe even five cups a day of coffee may contribute to a decreased risk of type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, liver disease, liver cancer, possibly heart disease. Decaf or regular are shown to both be beneficial.”
That was the Mayo Clinic and one must consult with their own medical physician about their own use of coffee, but to many, a cup of coffee can represent so many things. Coffee roasters like Jason Haeger of Plano, Texas take their coffee seriously.
“Coffee was always my personal thing,” said Haeger, whose father Henry Haeger was born and raised in St. Louis and went to Lindbergh High School. “I started in coffee in 2005, and by 2006, I had started training coffee houses.”
As a matter of fact, one of his ex-students and fellow baristas is the head of training at Kaldi’s Coffee in St. Louis.
Jason Haeger and his wife, Aline (shown in photo to the left) started AJ Coffee Company and while he is a marketing visionary and systems builder– he builds and runs websites, including STLSportsPage.com– his passion is coffee. And he knows a lot about it.
“It’s terribly interesting,” he says. “The more you get into it, the more complex it gets. There is chemistry, physics, botany, soil science, microclimate, and more.”
Haeger was an espresso trainer and started dreaming of starting a coffee company, not just to sell the coffee, but to be involved in all aspects of coffee roasting and brewing.
As with the famous “which came first, the chicken or the egg?”—In coffee it’s which came first the bean or the cherry? What?
According to the National Coffee Association: the coffee beans that will be roasted are actually the processed and roasted seeds from a fruit, which is called a “coffee cherry” (shown left).
The coffee plant produces coffee cherries, and the beans are the seeds inside. In a coffee cherry, side-by-side, lie two beans, each covered separately by a thin membrane.
So Haeger gets the green coffee beans from an assortments of outlets. It’s not small task to get the best coffee beans he can find.
“I source my coffee almost entirely through a ‘green coffee broker’ based in the UK, with warehouses in Seattle and Texas where I live. I’m on a first-name basis with the people in Seattle.”
He has also sourced coffees in Ethiopia. Haeger explains that he and others like him use brokers because the cost of owning a coffee farm would be cost prohibitive and the broker is a way for him to get the coffee beans so he can roast and package them. He is very particular about the coffee farms and he looks for brokers who have the same moral ethics as he does.
“I’ve been buying from the same place since 2010, and I’m on a first name basis with everyone in their Seattle office. I’ve been using them since their US office was a single individual.”
He enjoys the fun of creating new tastes of coffee, like the Jolly Holiday they have this year. Since it comes in bean form, some may be surprised that it is not the strong scented “holiday” coffees with the artificial candy cane flavors and additives.
“When you have a good quality coffee that is roasted with care, you don’t need all the syrups,” said Carrie Schmidt, coffee reviewer. “A well roasted coffee is good on its own, if it’s good quality coffee.”
Along with the Jolly Holiday blend, which produces a smooth, delicious cup of coffee, AJ Coffee Company has many others to choose from and he continues working on others.
Once the coffee is delivered, time is of the essence. He roasts the coffee beans and then immediately mails them off to whoever is ordering. They put the “roasted on” date on the package. He suggests you grind the beans the day you are going to use them, however you can grind the whole bag up in one day and put it in a container to get out and use every day.
“If you pre-grind everything, two days later, you will notice that the coffee you brewed will be significantly worse off compared to the day you ground it.”
That is an expert talking. If you buy a pound of coffee at the grocery store it has been ground and sitting in the container for quite a while. The average coffee drinker thinks their coffee is as fresh as it can be if they make it that morning.
A seasoned expert has trained his taste buds to be very discerning when it comes to taste and his nose to the aroma.
“When we sell ‘specialty coffee’ we are selling aromatics, primarily, which, combined with the essential taste sensed by taste buds and the memories of the taster’s history of flavors, are how complex tastes in coffee are perceived.”
Buying coffee beans and roasting them yourself can be cheaper than buying roasted coffee. Many times ordering the coffee beans – including the postage—is cheaper than buying a pound of coffee at the grocery store. If you do it right your coffee will be fresher too.
“I have been asked if we sell ground coffee,” Haeger said. “It has been suggested that we should at the very least offer ground coffee for coffee lovers who don’t have a grinder at home.”
He says they want to sell coffee up to a certain standard and to grind the coffee compromises his standards. There is no way to know how long it will take for the ground coffee to get to the consumer’s coffee maker and selling the fresh beans is precisely why his company is such a success.
Actually a coffee grinder can be bought very reasonably and is easy to use. A coffee grinder and a bag of coffee beans would be a great Christmas gift for that coffee drinker on your list. You still have time to get your order in (if you order today Dec. 19) to the AJ Coffee Company. To see their choices, CLICK HERE.
The one to the left was only about $18 on Amazon
This author wanted to get the freshly ground coffee experience at home so bought the Jolly Holly coffee and put it in the coffee grinder the first day it arrived in the mail.
The Holly Jolly beans run through the grinder and cooked in a coffee maker was a rich, full taste. For those who choose to try this way of drinking your coffee, there are two ways you can do it. You can grind it all up the day you open your bag of beans and store it in a container– like the pickle jar full of ground coffee shown to the right. If you store it in a container be sure you label it– and use it so it stays fresh.
Haeger advises for the freshest cup possible to grind the beans for each day when you make the coffee. Of course those with limited time who choose to grind it all at once will still get a much fresher cup if used in a timely manner than the ones in the plastic or tin containers that have been sitting on the shelves of the grocery store for weeks.
Carrie Schmitt is an expert in coffee and her expertise lies in tasting. She is a coffee reviewer and agrees that freshly ground coffee is the best there is. In the photo, left, she is holding a glass from her favorite coffee shop, Teleo.
“They are my number one favorite!” she said. “Teleo in Kirkwood truly embodies what a local coffee shop is. They have local milk, honey and coffee beans, tables made locally and they support local non profits with their ‘Love Your Neighbor’ latte.”
Teleo starts with beans and grinds them to give a fresh taste.
“When making my morning coffee at home, however, I do not grind my own beans only because I use a Nespresso coffee maker,” she said. “It is a coffee machine that uses pods; and each cup of coffee comes out with a layer of foam. It’s a is delicious coffee.”
For her reviewing when she goes to coffee shops she much prefers the fresh coffee ground from beans on the premises.
These days there are so many different ways to make coffee.
“Chemex is a type of pour-over coffee brewer invented in 1941,” said Haeger, who still likes to use this technique today. “Like any other coffee brewer, you grind your coffee first, then brew.”
“With its sleek design and manual brewing technique, the Chemex brewer has gained popularity among coffee enthusiasts for delivering a clean, pure, and full-bodied cup of coffee.”
A website called LowKeyCoffeeSnobs.com (yes there are coffee snobs all over) says: “The glass material of the Chemex coffee maker has a positive effect on its heat retention, too—the carafe transfers heat at a slower rate than, say, metal. Since coffee tastes best hot (sorry, cold brew lovers!), this is a great perk. ”
Coffee in the kitchen has come a long way from the percolators on the stoves that made the pots of coffee in the 1960’s.
In the 1970s, Mr. Coffee made a splash on the coffee market with their drip brewing, plug-in coffee brewer. According to NPR, by Christmas 1977, department stores were selling more than 40,000 Mr. Coffees a day and many gave credit to for the success to their longtime pitchman, former New York Yankee Joe DiMaggio.
Many other companies came out with similar electric coffee pots.
Keurig has been popular since it was introduced in the late 1990’s. Like the Nespresso it has a contained pod that is already ground when purchased.
TasteofHome.com says, “Though Nespresso vs. Keurig machines both make brewing coffee easy, neither one is better than the other. Select a machine based on your personal tastes and daily routine.”
“Between Keurig and Nespresso, I chose Nespresso because I tried it once and it was the best coffee made at home that I’ve ever had,” said Schmitt.
With all the various ways to make coffee and how to get the freshest coffee, the choice is up to the consumer.
This brings us to the local coffee shops. Starbucks starts with coffee beans and grinds them each day.
Schmitt is a coffee shop connoisseur and says she has been to “30 of the about 50 local coffee shops.”
“Locally to St. Louis I know that Revo Cup in Olivette grinds it and serves it fresh,” she said. “Actually when I called to verify that they grind just before making the coffee, the owner said ‘Is there any other way? They all should do that’”.
Her review of Revo Cup: “It is an Ethiopian coffee shop. It has such a chill vibe and they pay the farmers well who harvest their coffee beans.”
Our Food/Travel editor Suzanne Corbett weighs in with a good place in St. Louis for a cup of coffee: “Goshen Coffee in Soulard. It is a delightful place.”
Coffee drinkers love their coffee and a plus is when it is in a unique destination.
One coffee shop we like is Webster Gardens Café, which is music to our ears– literally. It’s a coffee shop that’s a music destination. Webster Gardens Cafe survived the pandemic because they have such a great following in the music community. On any given night there might be a concert outside or a singer performing inside.
Owners Mandy and Gary Schoenberger are both musicians. Mandy plays upright bass and sings. Gary, a singer/songwriter, regularly performs in and around the St. Louis area and occasionally at the Cafe. They both perform with their band the Perfect Strangers, and in 2017 they released an album “Broken.”
Schmitt’s review of Webster Gardens Cafe is “a quaint little coffee shop with both delicious coffee and pastries. It’s a cute little place to meet friends and then take a walk to the amazing shops in Webster Groves.”
Webster Gardens Cafe has various coffee options including good old drip coffee, many types of lattes, cold brews, frappes. They also grind their own beans.
“Mandy has developed her own blend of coffee that folks seem to really love,” said Gary Schoenberger. “We grind and sell whole beans. We have light, medium and dark roast.”
Schmitt is a podcast host at Beautiful Tragedy Podcast and is the CEO and Founder of Love Like Jackson and she does a blog. Love Like Jackson, is a charity to help bereaved parents that she started after she lost her son Jackson to childhood cancer. She is shown in the photo, right speaking to a group about her foundation, which along with coffee is a passion to her.
Her love for coffee actually came from her cancer journey.
“Before Jackson died, I would go to Starbucks a lot and getting coffee was a treat. For that little bit of time, I felt a little joy when I was otherwise in sheer agony.”
So when the pandemic was over and Starbucks opened she would order online and pick it up. Getting her coffee always gave her a “pep in my step.” One day the manager said, “thank you Carrie” and she was so surprised he knew her name, but then he reminded her “you come her everyday.”
Both he and later his replacement were a bright spot in her day. After they both left Starbucks she set out to find small coffee shops.
Buying from small local coffee shops or family -owned businesses like the AJ Coffee Company is good for the economy and is a win-win for both the consumer and the business owner. Family-owned business are generally more helpful and they care about the product as well as the the person buying it.
“We are committed to providing the best artisan roasted coffee for your drinking pleasure,” says Haeger. “We do our best to meet or exceed Fair Trade standard and we care deeply for the well-being of the people who we have to thank for our raw materials. We roast our coffee one small batch at a time for maximum quality control to meet the consumer’s high standards. Coffee is seasonal, and our stock is limited with an ever-changing supply. After all, we are artisan coffee roasters.”
Coffee aficionados like Carrie Schmitt appreciate the time spent roasting and grinding the beans for a good savory cup of coffee.
“I’m always on the hunt for better coffee and I have a great time finding amazing locally owned coffee shops.”
To follow Carrie Schmitt on Facebook: @Carrie Chick-Schmitt.
To follow AJ Coffee Company: @AJ Coffee Company
———–
Now that you have your coffee figured, check out our cookie article:
Buttering up Santa with cookies, how to host a cookie exchange and Suzanne Corbett’s holiday cookie-baking tips: https://stlsportspage.com/2023/12/03/buttering-up-santa-with-cookies-how-to-host-a-cookie-exchange-and-suzanne-corbetts-holiday-cookie-baking-tips/
