Hitch Coffee

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Hitch Coffee

13 Sep

The summer concert season is slowly coming to an end, though, and I’m finding that a few things got neglected…like writing blog updates in a timely manner. OK that usually gets neglected, but summertime events that I never thought would happen have only made the problem more acute. I’d visited this mobile coffeehouse back on September 3rd, you see. Oh I assured the folks at this particular coffee shop (Hitch Coffee in Elizabethtown, PA) that I’d be a few weeks late in posting. I saw this issue coming a mile away as I scrambled to transition from summer to fall in terms of weekend priorities. Thankfully, I didn’t have to travel far for this particular brew.

Hitch, you see, is a food truck. I don’t even think they have a brick-and-mortar coffee shop as of the time I’m writing this. I found them during an event specifically advertised as a coffee gathering here in Harrisburg. Called the Star City Coffee & Arts Festival, it was a block party sponsored in part by a group called Capital Renewal, which is apparently doing a lot of actions like anti-bullying campaigns. I’ve lived in Harrisburg since forever, and I don’t remember anyone calling it “Star City” before this. That is some straight-up Mandela Effect wackiness.

The coffee itself was local. It was from Maquina Coffee, located out in Coatesville, which in turn is part of the larger Philadelphia countryside. If you’re familiar at all with the area, you’ll recognize it as a hub of coffee culture. The venerable Milkboy comes to mind immediately. The particular roast I had was a Brazilian. Brazilian coffees tend to be nutty and sweet with a low acidity. This one was surprisingly non-nutty, but it did have the characteristic smoothness that often comes along with low acidity. I wasn’t expecting that from a breakfast blend; indeed, despite it being 9 AM, this might not have been a breakfast blend at all. I was glad for that. Too much acid and not enough caffeine makes me a sad panda. I was also pleased that they had multiple sweetener options. Nothing says ‘artisan’ like glass bottles of something, and there’s nothing simple about simple syrup. Hitch gets that.

I’m going to keep this entry short because there just wasn’t much coffeehouse to review. That’s not a complaint. Food trucks are supposed to get you fed and then get you moving. Hitch has a ton of potential, and I hope I see them at other events and that they get their own shop sometime soon. The festival itself was subdued and intimate. That’s the polite way to say nobody was there. OK, I was there early, so it likely improved as the morning went on, but this was clearly a mere prelude to the gigantic Kipona celebration that same weekend. Kipona, meaning something like “sparkling water,” is our annual riverfront end-of-summer extravaganza here. Let’s be honest, it’s hard to compete. Still, this was a fun little gathering that brought a bunch of us out on a beautiful summer morning for that most important of purposes…coffee. Until next time everybody, stay caffeinated.