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Monthly Archives: September 2024

New Cumberland Apple Festival! Much Coffee!

Remember when I said sometimes the trail of this coffee journey would depend greatly on the festival circuit? The New Cumberland Apple Festival, located near where the mouth of the Yellow Breaches Creek empties into the mighty Susquehanna River near the capital city, proved on a rainy day in September to be the perfect storm of coffee.

Coffee culture isn’t a static thing. Arguably the most important part is the art of the brew. Sure, the venue is paramount. The coffeehouse itself is the institution we’re journeying to, so the quality of that space is crucial. That’s part of the art, though. I’ve rarely found a cafe where the one did not reflect the other. Either there’s good coffee and lovely surroundings, or both are phoned-in. Art tends to be present or absent. You can make art anywhere.

One place you can make coffee art is in a food truck. Wherever there’s a fall festival, you’ll usually find food trucks. These days, though, an increasing number of coffee carts are hitting the trail. It’s worth mentioning that roadside coffee has been popular for a long time on the West Coast. In the Pacific Northwest, roadsides are dotted with small coffee stands with little more than a cart and some chairs and tables in the great outdoors for thirsty travelers.

Those mostly wooden constructs are no less artistic than an indoor coffeehouse. Food trucks differ only by not being static. Instead of you coming to the coffee, the coffee comes to you. I could see three coffee stops here at the Apple Festival, and all were doing a brisk trade. That wasn’t surprising given the number of attendees. There were over a hundred seller’s tents, a full band under a giant gazebo, and an entire street was filled with food. There must have been thousands of people in attendance during the day.

The first little impromptu cafe I stopped at was called Revival Coffee & Espresso. You have no idea how hard it was to conduct an interview with the barista as the maddening crowd formed a line behind me. Even so, we managed, and I discovered they were from New Oxford, PA, and had been around since 2015. They were a machine; clearly, they had prepared for plentiful customers. The quality didn’t suffer at all, though. Their beans, after all, are roasted right here in Central PA. I was given a medium-dark mixture. The flavor was right at the border of leguminous and nut-like. It wasn’t overpoweringly so; there was more of a pervasive earthy aroma mixed with a piquant but mellow acidity. I’ll be keeping an eye on New Oxford!

Continuing down that row of foods and beverages, I walked past another coffee truck. It was literally a hundred feet from Revival and was called Quinn’s Coffee Bar. I had no time to stop. Actually, I had no remaining hands! One was full of coffee, the other had a bag of apple dumplings. I did take a parting (camera) shot of the truck so I (and you) can remember the name. Help me out. If you know where these people are from, or where they’re going, give me a heads-up.

As I made my last rounds, I finished one coffee and prepared for another. Thankfully for my stomach, it would be my last. This time, it was coffee for a cause. The cause was The Link 4 Youth, a charity formerly known as Medard’s House. It’s located in New Cumberland, and the operation offers life skills and empowerment to young people in need. They raised funds at the festival by selling coffee graciously donated by Lancaster County Coffee Roasters. There were two blends available: Witches Brew and Pumpkin Batch.

I got the Witches Brew. I was told it would have an apple flavor, and I thought since I’m at an apple festival with an armload of apple pastries, I might as well go all-in. I’ll be honest, given the festival setting (and the age of the coffee pourers), I thought I’d be getting a face full of coffee-flavored apple juice. I should have known better. Lancaster County Coffee Roasters produced a subtle work. Sure, it was enzymatic like all fruity coffees, but that’s all it was. Nobody added sugar or bogus flavoring. Those little baristas-in-training kept the quality on point, too, and they resisted the urge to dilute.

And with that last coffee drunk, I left the festival in the now-misting rain for the long walk back to my car. I felt bad for the everyday person trying to navigate New Cumberland on festival day. Parking was ‘anywhere you can find it,’ which meant a few harrowing moments of navigating the backstreets of town. Residents were making the most of the crowd, though, with many having yard sales that day. In that way, the festival was extended from the borough park to the entire town. I love that kind of civic pride and hope to see more of it as the Journey continues outward over the next few weeks.

Until then, stay caffeinated…

tents and more tents…

the first truck…

the call to action…

i feel ya, lady…

the charity…

option one…

option two…

now we’re on the trolley…

musical accompaniment…

thank you borough park…

The Breeches Cafe

21 Sep

Mere days remain until autumn as of this writing…officially. It’s still warm and sunny here in Central Pennsylvania. I’m of two minds about that. On the one hand, the end of summer means no longer being pressed into the pavement by the relentlessness of summer weather here. On the other hand, it means the countdown to short and frigid days.

Pennsylvania’s weather is unique and extreme. Summers feature a combination of humidity without rain, heat without wind, and sun without shade. Winters are the exact opposite of all those attributes. In between those extremes lies a veritable paradise. Spring and autumn in Pennsylvania are three to five weeks of epic beauty and perfect temperatures. As fleeting as they are, they’re worth anticipating.

Now that summer is ending, I anticipate more coffee runs. The Breeches Cafe in Boiling Springs, PA, is a good place to end summer (or kick off autumn) in that regard. You might remember our Coffeehouse Journey journeying to Boiling Springs before. That was to visit Caffe 101. That cafe is still there. The Breeches is located just outside the town proper at Allenberry Resort. Allenberry is locally famous for having a variety of performances take the stage at Allenberry Playhouse, located in the main complex of resort buildings. As resorts go, Allenberry has everything, from posh spas to fly fishing.

The Breeches looks like a ‘resort’ coffeehouse. It’s trendy and modern but infused with a massive amount of rustic charm. I considered not reviewing The Breeches because it’s a ‘resort’ coffeehouse. They’re too corporate, right? They fall under the category of chain coffeehouses, don’t they? Little deep conversation can take place in an establishment created just to cater to the transient needs of transient people. I know that’s what you’re thinking. That’s what I was feeling at the outset.

The ‘rusticness’ is a little staged, with just the right colors and precisely the right amount of bric-a-brac on the walls, but let’s remember, Allenberry is very much a stage. There is literally a stage. When you go to a resort (whether you admit it at the time or not), you want your expectations to be catered to. You want the idealized version of the setting you’re immersing yourself in. The Breeches is the ideal of a mountainside, trail-town cafe. I felt like relaxing on those comfy couches following a long hike in the forest. It embodies that particular feel to an even greater extent than Caffe 101.

Here’s the big confession: I don’t think that’s bad. There’s nothing wrong with artifice. That’s what all art and crafting is: attempting to bring a form, a thought, into the physical world. Follow the logic, and you’ll probably conclude that the world could use more staging, not less. Intent. That’s the word I was looking for. Consider how in a Hallmark movie set, where a perfect small town is built to inhabit if only for a while, there’s the intent here to recreate a worthy ideal. The idea itself is beautiful. I am a Hallmark movie apologist, and as beauty and innocence suffer attacks in the name of ideological gamesmanship, I become ever more so as time progresses.

We want the virtues of a thing like The Great Outdoors without the flaws. Ergo, creating a place that reflects that aim can’t be bad. The coffeehouse is part of an enterprise striving to embody the paragon of a certain notion. That’s honestly wonderful. There’s nothing less than artistic about the performance art that happens here. I think people are inspired by this space. They’re definitely well-fed. There was a plethora of bready pastry treats available.

The coffee was as much of an emotional roller coaster as the aesthetic was. The beans are sourced from John Gross & Company. That’s a rather massive food services supplier from nearby Mechanicsburg. It’s local. But, it’s not local…right? JG is a large distributor. You might guess I was worried at this point. A coffeehouse with big-store coffee. What could go right? The answer: a lot could go right. A lot did go right. Let me explain:

The roast I had was the ‘Signature Blend.’ That could mean anything, obviously, so I was bracing myself for the standard astringent diner-coffee fare. It was not that at all. There was only a hint of that taste. The rest of the flavor palette was a sumptuous nuttiness smoothed with an even acidity. Well-balanced, I mean to say. I don’t know whether the ‘Signature Blend’ is truly that good, or if the barista making it was just that adept. She was clearly one of those engaged people who knew her job and cared. Care matters. Care is the arm of decision in the coffee world.

Before this experience, I had never been to Allenberry, either the resort or the playhouse. After this, I’ll certainly return to experience one or both (and hopefully both). That’s the thing about Allenberry and places like it. They end up offering exactly what they aim to. Someone like me who needs to escape to a place on the exciting ontological borderlands of Nature and man will get exactly that. We’ll get good coffee, too, if this visit was any indication.

Note: The frequency of posts on this site should probably pick up quickly over the next few weeks. There is a slew of new coffee spots emerging around here and beyond. Additionally, the weather is nigh ideal for heading north into the Wilds and northwest into the deeper Appalachians. That’s right: Certain new coffee spots in non-Lancaster Amish country could use a little publicity and patronage. We’ll be tending to them in October and November, along with a few small coffeehouses associated with certain rural Pennsylvania universities.

And with that, I’m off to a poetry night downtown. No, I don’t have the poem done yet. Or, maybe I do. I might do the poem and then come back to finish the rest of this blog entry. That might render it less organic in the process. Oh, well. Freeform is overrated. Intent matters, and I intend to write a ton of words, by hook or by crook.

Until next time, stay caffeinated.