DOMA CoFFEE ROASTInG cOMPANY
Over the last few years months we’ve tried to come up with some clever ways to get information out to everyone on some of the new and exciting things going on here in domaland. Needless to say, we’ve tossed clever out the window and decided just to plow forward with some information on the latest and greatest.
Hopefully most of you know about the new roaster we installed in January. It’s called a Loring Smart Roast. The best things about it are we’re roasting better coffee and it uses 80% less gas than a conventional roaster. Oh yeah, the exterior is made out of stainless steel so it’s shiny, which we think is also pretty cool.
NEWS FLASH. THIS JUST IN …………. DOMA COFFEE ROASTING COMPANY is now the newest member of COOP COFFEES. This is very exciting news for us and something we’ve been working on for a long time. We’ll be getting a bunch of new information out on what this means to all of us, in the meantime know that you’ll be getting better quality coffee that is fairly traded and sustainable. Check out their site at www.coopcoffees.com.
New COFFEE. It’s a big world out there and we’ve found some great new coffee. At the top of the list is our new Ethiopia Harar. For those of you that like blueberries, this is your coffee. Probably one of the best Harar coffees we’ve had in the last few years. We’ve also got a new Yirgacheffe and Sidamo on the way that are pretty spectacular as well.
We’ve got a new Rwanda. This coffee comes direct from the farm (and our new best friends at COOP COFFEE). Fair Trade, Direct Relationship. Sweet and fruity aroma with a full body and good acidity. We’ve had great luck with this coffee as a drip or press. Really excellent.
For those customers interested in a DOMA dark roasted coffee, you can now try Virgil’s Blend. We’ve tried our best to satisfy the dark lord lovers among you while maintaining a bit of our integrity as roasters.
Right now (while you’re reading this), we are cupping a couple of new Brazils. We hope to come up with a coffee that is an excellent drip coffee and also works really well as a single origin espresso. Our goal is to have something ready to go by the first of June, so realistically it will be June 15th. I mean July 1st. These coffees are from real small farms and the availability is quite limited but the quality is exceptionally high.
By August we’ll be introducing a new Guatemala. The Trapichitos has been a good coffee, but we now have an opportunity to buy an even better Guatemala direct from the farmer. We cupped this coffee a few weeks ago and it was outstanding, so we are hoping to see it soon. Right now, it looks like we will be purchasing the entire crop (believe me, it’s not that much coffee). We’re pretty excited about the fact that we’ll be the only ones offering this coffee although it remains to be seen if a statue of St. DOMA will be erected in the town square.
The Colombians, Sumatra and a new coffee from Mexico show promise. For those of you that have been using the Mexico Zaragoza, by the time you read this we may be out. We were scheduled for some new arrivals a week or two ago, but the coffee seems to be having trouble finding it’s way out of the country. It could be two or three weeks before we have anything. Oh but wait. One more bag of Zaragoza has magically fallen out of the sky, so it looks like we will be able to offer it again starting the week of June 16th. That’s magic for you.
Although most of these coffees are offered as single origin, they also find their way into our blends. The last few weeks we’ve spent countless hours and many sleepless nights continuing to refine things. As these new coffees work their way into the lineup, we think you’ll notice the improvement.
If you’re interested in coming by and tasting some different coffees, give us a call and we can set something up.
Jim Hottenroth, our staff chemist and roaster guy recently attended the SCAA show in Minneapolis. Our primary goal was to attend some meetings (parties) put on by Coop Coffees and meet a number of the farmers that we buy coffee from. As a rule, we’re not fond of joining groups, but we want to be part of this one. It’s a cooperative buying group and offers what we feel are the most sustainable buying practices available. It’s like fair trade squared. Organic, Fairly Traded, Sustainable, Quality. We’ll get to work directly with the farmers and that’s a better deal for all of us. You can read more about it at www.coopcoffees.com. Kind of a repeat here, but in case you missed it the first time, it’s worth a look.
We had hoped that Jim would make it by a record store as well, but it wasn’t meant to be. If you are reading this and have any vinyl, let us know. No Foghat. And to the person that dropped off 3 Barry Manilow albums - I know who you are and I will get even. Seriously, we need more vinyl. We buy a lot (but not enough) from Unified Groove Merchants. Check your garages, or better yet, check your parents garages. Jazz, Soul, R and B, Rock, Ska, Reggae and Punk accepted.
In our continuing effort to green DOMA, we have been participating in the following programs:
Avista Buck-A-Block Program. We buy lots of extra blocks each month for everyone here at DOMA in the hope that it offsets our usage at work and play. It’s a good program and allows us to invest in wind power and other more sustainable energy sources. Until we get a wind turbine on the roof, this is a good way to go. And speaking of roofs, we’ve had a University of Idaho senior architect student doing his thesis on a green building design for us. We’ll have pictures and more details when Scott gets back from a well deserved vacation. We are now officially looking for grant money or an investor.
TerraPass. This “pass” offsets the driving we do to deliver coffee. We’d like to deliver by bike (even just a few accounts), but until then ……….
www.terrapass.com
Village Bike Project. We run this program through the Moscow Coop and we contribute 10% of coffee sales to the VBP. It’s a worthy cause and we’re glad to be a part of it. You can read more at these sites; www.pcei.org, www.pcei.org/vbp/ and www.moscowfood.coop.
Kootenai Environmental Alliance. A similar program to that of the VBP, only different initials. KEA. 10% of sales go to help support the great work that KEA continues to do in the area. We work with Pilgrims Natural Food Market on this.
www.kealliance.org
As always, we’ll continue to reduce/reuse/recycle. For us though, that’s just not enough. All new print material will be on 100% recycled material using vegetable based inks. Our cleaning materials and paper used for other stuff is all 7th Generation products. We try our best to recycle and compost all other things. Our bags that we get coffee in are used in gardens and we’ve got some bags currently being made into messenger style bags and a “I’m going to the farmers market” type bag. There will be pictures of these bags on the blog soon.
We continue to look at how we pack our coffee. The foil bags other roasters use look neat on the shelf, but from an environmental standpoint it’s not such a “neat” way to go. The kraft style bags are better, but we’re working on something that we hope will be even better. More on that later.
UPCOMING and ON GOING EVENTS
DOMA helps sponsor a number of bike related events throughout the area. These include the following;
Bike to Work
Knobby Tire Mountain Bike Series
Tour of Pain
Village Bike Project
And some really BIG road races in the Boise area.
EVENTS of MAY
Bike to Work
Screening of Black Gold in Richland, Wa., with our friends at Barracuda Coffee.
This event has come and gone and boy are we impressed. We had a great turn out for the movie and coffee tasting. This is one of the nicest laid out shops we’ve seen and these folks are making excellent coffee drinks. Equally impressive are their recycling efforts - they produce 1 bag of garbage per week (ok, it’s a 55 gallon), but everything else is recycled. They bag all their grounds for customers in the empty 5 lb bags (grounds are good for your garden) as well as recycle all milk containers and syrup bottles.
JUNE BIG EVENTS
Lindamans 5th year DOMA Month Long Anniversary Party and Celebration. A 5 year love affair with DOMA. Be sure and stop by and check out the events.
Slow Food Event at DOMA Coffee Roasting Company on June 22nd. Live music, fresh, local food, coffee and other beverages. Details soon. Here’s a detail. We’re bumping this event a month. I underestimated the party planning time consuming thing.
our turntable needs some new vinyl
