Now Roasting: Kenya Kibugu

When Ethiopian and Kenyan coffees begin to land in the States, all of us around these parts get pretty excited. Hopefully you got the chance to try (or at least read about) our Kayon Mountain from Ethiopia, but now we are pleased to bring you our latest coffee: Kibugu from the Embu region of Kenya. 

Much of the reason for Kenyan coffee quality has to do with practices at the farm and washing station level. The soil is rich from historic volcanic activity on Mount Kenya, farmers are well-educated at best practices for cultivation and harvest, and community washing stations play a huge role in putting a final note on quality through their meticulous washing, fermentation and drying practices. Thus, even when you get a blended lot from many small farms that's been sorted for screen size, you end up with a 90+ coffee with huge, mind-blowing acidity.

So, what about this particular coffee? This year’s choice, coming from the Kibugu Farmer’s Cooperative Society, is as delicious as any we have tried in recent years. Grown in the ideal soils of Mount Kenya and processed with meticulous care, the coffee is bold, bright and exploding with lively flavors, just like a great Kenyan coffee should be. The Gikirima washing station, where this coffee was processed, is working with small farmers in the region to increase transparency, improve agricultural practices, and increase annual coffee production. This coffee has so much to offer after just a few trail runs with it: Grapefruit, melon, and hibiscus with a juicy blackberry body, not to mention hints of licorice and blood orange. In short, it's bumpin.

Go to the product page.

Now Roasting: Ethiopia, Kayon Mountain

Ethiopian coffee has a special place in our hearts at Quills, and for good reason. Coffea Arabica is indigenous to Ethiopia and the country is still home to over 95% of the coffee's genetic diversity. These heirloom varieties produce a flavor profile like no other. The best examples have a distinctive floral aroma with complex citrus acidity. Our baristas and customers alike look forward to Ethiopian coffee season year round, and we're pleased to release our latest offering. 

Kayon Mountain is an estate farm owned by Ato Esmael and his family. Located in the Guji zone of Ethiopia, this estate utilizes many biodynamic farming practices, including organic fertilizer and crop diversity. Their attention to detail is evident in the consistency and quality of this lot. We taste orange cream with a lavender bouquet and soft black tea-like tannins. It's a complex, dynamic cup of coffee that is as intellectually stimulating as it is enjoyable. We're also pleased to be serving Kayon Mountain on single origin espresso this month. 

When brewing at home, don't be surprised if your brew times are a little longer than other coffees. But don't be concerned: you're going to want to extract as much of this beautiful coffee as possible! 

How to Make Your Own Cold Brew

Designed by Bailey Hunt  

It's been brutality hot in Kentuckiana this month. Thankfully, we have iced coffee. Cold brew is one of our biggest summer sellers, though few people realize how easy it is to make at home. Lucky for you, a couple of our baristas put together an illustrated guide to making cold brew at home. So pick up a bag of our fresh, seasonal coffee and get brewing! 

Quills to Open New Roastery and Café on East Main St.

Quills is excited to announce we will be opening our new roastery and company headquarters on East Main Street in Louisville. This flagship store will be housed in a turn-of-the-century firehouse, first built in 1897, along with a barn that sits immediately behind the firehouse. The space will feature a new café and barista training lab in addition to housing our company offices and coffee roasting facility. The coffee roasting facility will quadruple our current production capacity along with streamlining our production with more efficient bagging equipment.

It's hard to believe it's been five years since we started roasting coffee. Over that time we've been happy to see our weekly production steadily increase as we've opened new cafés, seen existing cafés grow, and built wholesale relationships with coffee shops around the nation. As our volume has reached a certain scale we've been able to source better and better coffees, become more involved at a origin level, and participate in some national competitions. Meanwhile our New Albany roasting facility has been bursting at the seams. Furthermore, the distance between our production facility and our offices above our Baxter Ave. café have led to numerous inefficiencies. We recognized we needed a space where we could increase our roasting capacity and house all of our administative staff in one place. 

More importantly, we wanted to have a space where our production facility was accessible to a larger number of people. We envision people grabbing a cup of coffee at the café and then grabbing a seat on the patio, which will connect the café to the roastery. Taking a cue from Kentucky's Bourbon Trail, we plan on offering roastery tours with a curated coffee tasting at the end. 

We're also excited to join the vibrant culinary community in Nulu. So many of our future neighbors are leaders in their respective fields. With world-class breweries, distilleries, and bakeries just blocks away, we're excited to bring coffee roasting to NuLu. 

Now Roasting Colombia, La Lomita and Guatemala, Waykan

We're excited to welcome two fresh crop coffees to our line up. 

Colombia, La Lomita

It's no secret that we buy a lot of Colombian coffees here at Quills, and this beautiful offering from the Urquina brothers is a great example why. The Urquina brothers farm in the Acevedo region of Huila on adjacent parcels of land named La Lomita and La Calera. Like most producers in the region, they grow Caturra, Castillo, and Colombia varieties.  Although their farm is at a relatively low 1300 MASL, we encounter rich tropical fruit flavors in their coffee, well complimented by a deep sweetness and a big body. It has the complexity that coffee nerds love while remaining approachable and immensely drinkable. The similarities and difference between La Lomita and our other Colombia, Los Naranjos, make for a fun side-by-side tasting. Both coffees are available on our webstore. 

Guatemala, Waykan

When it comes to sweet, complex coffees, if there's one country in the Americas that could give Colombia a run for its money it's Guatemala. We're pleased to share a coffee with you from our favorite region in Guatemala: Huehuetenango. This lot is composed of some of the best coffee from numerous small producers across the region.  Although it's not traceable to a farm level like some of our other coffees, the Guatemala, Waykan is a sweet, complex coffee that can compete with the best microlots. We started our single origin espresso program with a coffee from Huehuetenango last year, and we're pleased to feature our Guatemala, Waykan as our single origin espresso for the second half of June into early July.  Expect flavors of crisp apple, pastry, and nuts. 

New Chocolate in all Quills Cafés

It's hard to find a more natural pairing than coffee and chocolate. The similarities between the two are striking. Both are the seed of a fruit that only grows in tropical climates. Both are harvested, fermented, and roasted before taking the shape we're most familiar with. They're also delicious. 

At Quills, we work hard to source and roast the best coffee possible so that you enjoy your morning cup all the much more. We value transparency, traceability, and quality. As such, it only makes sense to buy chocolate from companies that share our convictions. After blind tasting samples from a dozen different chocolatiers, we landed on three bean-to-bar brands to serve in our cafés: Ritual from Park City, Utah, Parlimant from Redlands, California, and Omnom from Reykjavik, Iceland.  

Admittedly, we're not chocolate experts, so we digitally sat down with Matt Caputo of A-Priori Distribution to ask him some questions about craft chocolate. 

How would you define bean-to-bar chocolate? 

This is an important and somewhat nebulous terminology that is often abused. My definition is fairly straight forward. To be bean-to-bar the chocolate bar must be produced from raw cacao beans all the way through each production step at a factory owned by the brand in question. This does not mean chocolate like Idilio Origins or Original Beans, which is not produced by them is not absolutely special and worth supporting. Having Felchlin produce it for them with really special beans is smart and makes for high quality. Just not bean to bar. How is it different from the mass produced chocolate we all grew up eating? Bean-to-bar should not necessarily be equated to good. There are more bean-to-bar chocolate makers producing terrible product than there are making great chocolate. Sure most of the elite brands are bean-to-bar, but not all. Bean-to-bar should simply indicate you are talking to the artist in the flesh. Doesn't mean you will like their art. Unfortunately, there are so many brands that lie or at the very least stretch the truth about their bean-to-bar status. So many. 

How is it different from the mass produced chocolate we all grew up eating?

Bean-to-bar should not necessarily be equated to good. There are more bean-to-bar chocolate makers producing terrible product than there are making great chocolate. Sure most of the elite brands are bean-to-bar, but not all. Bean-to-bar should simply indicate you are talking to the artist in the flesh. Doesn't mean you will like their art. Unfortunately, there are so many brands that lie or at the very least stretch the truth about their bean to bar status. So many. 

 What I think you are trying to get at with what makes bean to bar chocolate better than big chocolate we all grew up with is this. It should be about highlighting cacao beans of excellent provenance. Big producers do not. They use very poor beans and then use techniques (dark roast aka burned) and ingredients (too much extra cocoa butter and loads of vanilla) to create a flavor, rather than coaxing the flavor intrinsic to the beans out.  

Just like wine is about honoring very special grapes grown in very special areas, so is chocolate with cacao beans. Most large chocolate producers make what I like to refer to as "vanilla flavored candy." Despite meeting certain technicalities of being called dark chocolate, I think it should be illegal to call it the same as what most bean-to-bar chocolate makers are doing.

What sort of flavors can we expect from craft chocolate? 

Certainly a huge array of flavors. Just as many as you can from coffee, wine or cheese. In fact, chocolate shares a lot in common with terroir and production elements of all three of these fermented foods. All of the base flavors (sweet, savory, bitter, salty, acid) and a huge array of aromas (everything from chestnut tree blossom to horse blanket). In order to know what to expect, you need to know who made the chocolate as all chocolate makers have a "style" which is often the easiest thing to blind taste test and identify. You would also need to know the origin of the beans. Beans from the Sambirano Valley of Madagascar are always expected to exhibit tangy (acid) flavors and notes of citrus, red berries, etc. Beans like those from Camino Verde farm in Ecuador lack all acidity, are more earthy and savory with notes of fresh bread, brewers yeast, and cinnamon graham cracker. So what to expect is very broad, but certainly a journey through craftsmanship and terroir. 

Do you recommend any coffee and chocolate pairings? 

Absolutely. My primary recommendation is do not pair a coffee made with specialty beans and roasted responsibly with "vanilla flavored candy." Likewise, do not pair chocolate made with excellent cacao with coffee exhibiting symptoms of having been roasted on the surface of the sun. Beyond this, I do have some experience, but need to conduct more research! I will say since the two are such a natural fit the results of using my rule of thumb regarding matching the quality of the two have always been really enjoyable.

Now Roasting Honduras, San Miguel

We're excited to welcome a new coffee to our lineup. Our latest coffee comes to us from Co-op RAOS in the San Miguel region of Honduras.  This collective of 250 small producers is producing coffee that far surpasses most of what we've tried from the region. A crucial stage for preserving coffee quality comes during processing when the fruit of the cherry is removed from the seed. Any number of processing errors can lead to unpleasant cup characteristics but thanks to a central wet and dry mill, Co-op Raos is producing coffee that is sweet and clean without any hint of defects. 

In the cup we encounter milk chocolate, toasted pecan, light hints of citrus and a full body.  This balanced coffee pairs well with breakfast or dessert and is a great option for fans of lower acid coffees.

New Spring & Summer Menu at Quills

The flowers are blooming, temperatures are rising, beach bods are being worked on. Spring is in full force in Kentuckiana and we have a brand new seasonal menu to prove it. These fun, coffee-based signature drinks are guaranteed to take the edge off the heat while giving you that caffeine-induced boast to get you through the day. 

The first drink on our Spring & Summer menu is the Blacksmith Cream Soda. Made with our signature espresso blend, this fizzy treat is an homage to the soda parlors of yesteryear. We expect this decadent drink will be a real crowd pleaser. 

The second drink is slightly edgier, made for the more adventurous coffee drinker. The Espresso Tonic is a riff on everyone's favorite summer cocktail. Made with Fever Tree Tonic, this drink isn't afraid to accentuate the natural bitterness of coffee or enhance the citric acidity with a orange garnish. The Espresso Tonic is a barista favorite, and we think you'll see why if you give it a try.