Author Archives: coffeehouseguy80

Inertia is a bastard. Between my trip to Liverpool and here it’s been a month of my subconscious mind finding excuses not to get out of bed or do things other than work. Which I also do from bed because I’m a writer. Finally, a Thursday ago, I ran out of reasons. The day was gorgeous; 65 degrees and sunny in the middle of November in the middle of Pennsylvania. I felt like God was prodding me to get on the road, so that’s exactly what I did.

The town of Middleburg, Pennsylvania is nestled two valleys north of the valley containing Liverpool. It’s up in Snyder county, not far off of 11/15, smack in the middle of the Pennsylvania that few travelers ever see. Warning signs for Amish buggies abound, and the mountains rise in folds around you. Is the name of this town familiar? It should be. I reviewed a coffeehouse here years ago called Middle Creek Cafe. Since then, the coffeehouse culture in Middleburg has grown. Given the proximity to the college town of Selinsgrove, this isn’t too surprising. In fact, the tendency of coffee lifeways to spread laterally to more isolated towns from ones more connected to the world at large is a theme I’ve been taking note of.

Sweet N’ Savory, also known as Brooke’s Cafe Baking and Catering, is a very recent addition to the community. They opened during what was arguably the worst time in a century to open a business: October of 2020. Yikes. The fact that they managed to not just survive but to carve out a niche alongside another coffeehouse in the same small town is impressive enough. What’s even gutsier is their expansion plan. By next summer they hope to have their patio finished and bands coming. Now, that’s the kind of relentless commitment to progress I like to see.

Here’s an interesting thing: the coffee itself seems to take a backseat here to the baked goods (which did smell rather delicious). OK, so the coffee had the familiar tang of diner fare. That’s because it was. In a certain way. My drink was a gourmet craft diner-style coffee called, quite appropriately, “Donut Coffee.” The taste can only be described as an elevated version of the kind of coffee that one usually does encounter at a donut shop. There’s little subtlety on display but plenty of boldness, leading me to think that the origin company used pure Arabica. The point of making this kind of coffee is to complement the food you’re serving without overpowering it; to let the beauty of the baking shine through while getting the taste buds charged with warm refreshment on a cold day. Yes, coffee-and-food pairings are definitely an art, just like wine and cheese. I’ll need to come back here, but with an empty stomach next time so I can see this tactic properly on display.

Stopping here was not the end of my journey today. In fact, the threatened rainstorm was holding off, so I looked at the hill to the north of me and thought: Why not? Why not continue on to the next valley and see what the coffee there is like? The sign said it was only nine miles to Mifflinburg, a larger rural town adjacent to college-town Lewisburg. Would the pattern I was starting to see hold? I’ll post my next installment in a few days. Until then, stay caffeinated.

the signage…

the bakery…

the coffee…

the best kind of corner…

And so it continues, this little tour of the valleys of the Susquehanna River and their coffeehouse culture. Yes, they do have one, and you’re about to see it. This journey is going to be a bit disjointed, I’m warning you. The “Valleys of the Susquehanna” is a named region in Pennsylvania and doesn’t include nearly half of the ridge-and-valley terrain that makes up so much of the state. Sometimes I’ll be exploring outside of the defined region, especially since some really impressive coffeehouses are found in the tiny villages of remote “hollers” far from the Susquehanna and its tributaries.

Shine Coffee Company, on the other hand, is located right at the southernmost edge of the official Valley region in the smallish town of Liverpool. I did some counting on the maps, and it’s actually the second of a series of small valleys heading north along the river. Hunter’s valley is the first, but contains little besides a picturesque winery and some farms. Our Liverpool does look very much like a British town, especially one of those northern towns that often takes the shape of a line of multicolored homes and shops lining the shore of a river. Shine opened in late 2020, moving into an historic building in the center of town overlooking the river. That alone shows the spirit that went into this operation and the burgeoning market for not just coffee but artistically done coffee in the region.

OK, first interesting thing: There was Christian rock playing on the radio. Not typical for a coffeehouse in Harrisburg. I had to ask if this was a Christian coffeehouse specifically. It’s not; it’s just run by Christians who clearly use their spirituality as a motivating to succeed and create. I normally don’t review religious coffeehouses or chain coffeehouses, or really any coffeehouse with some kind of mission other than coffee, but I would have made an exception here if one had to have been made. I’ve only done that once before (with the incomparable and unfortunately long-gone Hagia Sophia coffeehouse of Harrisburg, if you remember). As it turns out, the music was from a local Christian music group that partnered with the coffeehouse to showcase their tunes. They were quite good, and God is certainly a good reason to sing. Apparently, some holiday events are in the works, and this is a truly gorgeous venue for events. Rustic without being cloying is a hard balance to strike, but the design team sure did manage it.

The coffee they served me was craft brew, obvious from the outset. It tasted especially fresh (fitting, since I got the first of a newly-brewing batch), and there was a sort of mineral quality to it that I still can’t put a precise name to. I thought at first that it was an effect of the cream, but no, this was unique to the roast or the bean itself. Then I realized something. This is Denim Coffee! Again, dipping back into history here, I reviewed Denim long ago at their Shippensburg headquarters. Their coffee is becoming something of a local institution. This particular roast was their Sol Naciente, a Colombian. It was lighter than I’d expected from a Colombian! Probably because this one was “hot off the presses” so to speak and also it was breakfast time in the country where light fare is de rigeur.

On to the next cup! This place makes a timely stopover for people heading north from Harrisburg towards Sunbury and Williamsport. Again, I have to point out the fact that there was no coffeeshop in this town, in spite of its pretty houses and used bookstore, until just last autumn. Communities are starting to see coffeehouses as a space that they need; a gathering spot for everyone. Ah, well, enough reflection. Until next time, stay caffeinated.

the front…

the cozy fireplace…

the patio…

the town center (centre?)

the secret ingredient…

Just try not to get run over while taking a picture in the village of East Prospect, Pennsylvania. I dare you. This little town has far more traffic than one would expect, especially given that there’s one main street and…well, not much else. OK so there’s probably a lot else actually, but I hope that my ignorance is quasi-understandable given the hurry I was in. This morning (actually the morning of September 25) was the York Pagan Pride festival, happening eight miles from this tiny burg, and looking quite out of place among the massive number of Bible churches.

Now, yours truly doesn’t follow any single religious ‘path’ per se. In fact, I consider myself an old-fashioned perennialist. That is to say, I support the idea that spiritual and moral truth is universal and thus reason can seek it out, so when multiple religions agree on a tenet, such as the golden rule, they’ve probably latched onto a deeper and more transcendent truth. Yes, this is yet another good idea that gestated in the cafes of the Enlightenment era. And so I find myself often at metaphysical festivals of all stripes, seeking fellow seekers.

But right now I was seeking something else: coffee. East Prospect houses exactly one coffeehouse: Rustic Cup. The cafe is aptly named in the extreme. The road that leads to it from the main drag in town connects only to it, a pizza shop, and a row of houses before ambling off into the rolling hills of York County. The exterior, all wood with a fading sign, didn’t seem out of place. The interior was an amazing departure.

Now, I have a theory regarding small Pennsylvania towns. They all have about a squad’s worth of progressives milling about. There’s the teacher and her husband. The town historian and his wife, the aging hippie couple who may or may not be one of the aforementioned couples, and the half-dozen emo kids, young artistic souls and meandering crust punks who hang out in the alley pretending if only for a moment that it’s somewhere off-Broadway. The owner of this shop, Chris, certainly fits the image of an artistic soul out of place (I would know) But perhaps he’s in exactly the right place. I don’t know, because I don’t know him, but the way he’s positively filled this space with creative work made me want to know him and his vision.

Turns out this is only one stop on his journey. He’s already formulating a plan to move to Red Lion when the building purchase gets settled. The current Rustic Cup is cozy but not cramped. The new place will likely have a rooftop…something. He mentioned something about music that made my ears perk up. Red Lion is closer to Harrisburg which makes me happy/sad because I love home/traveling.

The coffee itself was as innovative as the space it dwells in. The house blend was literally called House Blend and Chris informed me that it was proprietary (I didn’t needle him with more questions even though I wanted to). It tasted…proprietary! I mean, if I had come up with this blend I’d certainly keep it to myself and monetize it. Beautifully balanced is the phrase I’d use here. It was clearly (I say ‘clearly’ while going in blind, mind you) a South American coffee of some sort, having the exceptionally creamy mouthfeel of a good Latin bean. There was also an unmistakable mineral quality to it that I’m still trying to nail down. The coffee itself was roasted to order by Alabaster Coffee Roaster & Tea Company up in Williamsport, PA. Williamsport has been on my list of places to take this tour for some time, so now it looks like I have a definitive target. To Alabaster we go!

And to home, I soon went. The festival was a bit slow and I was all shopped out and hungry. When I got back I encountered the best surprise of the whole outing: My Mom had made me some of her own proprietary turkey noodle soup and just left it there warm for me. How she had known that I was thinking about soup while sitting in two traffic jams on the way into Harrisburg is something which will have to remain a mystery. At least my next coffee stop shouldn’t be a mystery: I’m planning a trip up the Susquehanna to Liverpool.

the signage…

the enticement…

the globe…but flat…

the various arts…

the inordinately hazardous traffic…

The Ragged Edge. This is a blast from the past. I’m taking a bit of a detour from my stated objective of checking out coffeehouses to the north, especially to the west of 11/15. Actually, it’s technically not too much of a detour since the town of Gettysburg is indeed to the west of 11/15. I was in this most famous of towns not to explore its deep/painful/beautiful history, but to attend a yearly bluegrass concert. On the way home, I thought I’d be remiss if I didn’t take in the town itself while I was here. It was then that I recalled The Ragged Edge.

This coffeehouse was one of my first introductions to the art and poetry scene. Let’s dial it back to the heady days of 2002. I was in college at Shippensburg U, experimenting with dangerous, stupid things like postmodernism, and feeling homesick for the city. Unlike my very diverse high school, here you only had a few cultural options. Not being much of a line-tower, I fell in with the poets and goth kids. I still came home a lot, and after one Saturday night at a hangout called The Why’re in New Cumberland, found myself the next weekend at an awesome poetry reading here at Ragged Edge, a longtime epicenter of Southern Pennsylvania’s bohemian culture. It was awesome coming back and walking up the stairs to the exact room where I drank coffee, read poetry, and gawked awkwardly at the elegant brunette who’d been the real draw for me to make the trek that evening. Those were the days.

Oh and I suppose you want to know about the coffee. The coffee here was spectacular. A few of my reviews recently have been a bit ‘meh’ I know, but really, not everyone is going to be a standout. This coffee was, and I’m not just bending for the sake of nostalgia. The mingling of the various citrus and flower flavors didn’t hit me immediately, but when they did it was a nice little symphony. I had to do that slurpy aeration thing with my tongue several times in a row as I walked down the street (looking odd to passersby I assume) just to get the full impact. I swear I caught hints of hibiscus and lime. This was a light-to-medium Ethiopian, and more full-bodied than its stated attributes and source might suggest. Ragged Edge is its own roasting company, and partners with nearby 82 Cafe where it’s prepared. This is all fair trade coffee and apparently it’s sourced in the most direct fashion: the owner of the coffeehouse physically visits the farms. The degree of care is most evident.

I don’t know when I’ll be back in Gettysburg. The next coffeehouses I visit should be somewhere up north as I’d planned. That being said, there’s a beer festival I might go to in Lititz late in the month so there could be a coffeehouse in the works there. I’ve heard that Lititz is one of those up-and-coming small towns in PA, so it might be worth a look. That being said, I do like finding art in unexpected places. Either way, it’s the journey that matters. Until next time, stay caffeinated.

the sunlight…

the seating…

the art room…

art everywhere really…

the garden…

Perry County, Pennsylvania is a land of contradictions. It’s right next to Dauphin County, which is home to the capital city of Harrisburg. It’s also one of Central PA’s most rural counties. The Appalachian Trail runs right through the rolling mountains and dead-quiet backroads that make up most of the county’s land. On the other hand, it’s one of Appalachia’s most economically successful counties, with a growing population and burgeoning arts scene. The young, progressive townsfolk rub elbows with the overwhelmingly conservative farmers of the countryside. The opposites play on each other unselfconsciously, with both sides often crossing the line from archetype to caricature. But the lure of identity is strong in a rootless world, and so Trump stickers and rainbow flags can both be found plastered to the cars lining 4th Street of Newport, PA where Buffalo Brew is located.

In that context, I didn’t know quite what to make of Buffalo Brew. It didn’t seem to take a side in the culture wars, and it this part of the state, that set it apart to the degree that I wanted to learn more about it. After all, the fact that I want to learn instead of shill ideology seems to set me apart these days. Perhaps I’d find a few kindred spirits here. When I walked in, what I found was a very neutral space. There were community bulletins aplenty, but little of the avant-garde art (or attempts at it) that typically crowd the walls of a coffeehouse. The simple tables and chairs could have belonged to an agronomist or an artist. The only kitschy object of note was a toy buffalo sitting on a comfy couch in the corner. Note: Everything around here is buffalo everything. Buffalo Ridge, Little Buffalo Creek, etc. It’s all named after the buffalo that were thought to once roam the area. Evidence seems to come up scarce.

There’s plenty of evidence for a strong coffee culture here in Newport. I counted no less than three on the town square alone, one of them close to Perry County Council of the Arts headquarters. The coffee itself wasn’t too strong; I got the tail-end of the breakfast brew I think. It was a Colombian Sur de Huila coffee, an Arabica bean, and it did have a nice, characteristic nut flavor to it with an airy bit of citrus. The chocolate wasn’t as noticeable to me as the packaging made it out to be, but I’m starting to think I’m the only person who likes a nice chocolate aftertaste to my coffee. That can’t be true, can it?

The muscular gent who sold me the coffee questioned my motives for taking photographs of the place. We live in skeptical times, and people around here are still pretty insular. Rivers have always been highways, but mountains are walls, and we’re surrounded by them up in the center of Perry. I reassured him that it was for blogging purposes only, and the prospect of free advertisement seemed to win him over. On my way out of Newport I almost got lost. I’m thinking that’s a testament to the fact that Newport, although barely registering over 1,500 citizens, is a spot of growth surrounded by townships that are slowly losing their citizens to nearby cities. Like those brand-new Newporters (Newportians?) I came here for a reason. I came here because I need a balance between the city life and the country. Between the liberal and the conservative. Between the political and the apolitical. Between needing art in my life and needing nature. Let’s hope that the center holds in this little town, or that it at least remains a place of many voices. After all, isn’t that what coffeehouse culture is all about? Until next time, stay caffeinated.

the signage…

the view…

the seating…

the beans…

It’s arguable that no man in American history was as committed to the cause of freedom as John Brown. A radical abolitionist who met his end at the end of a hangman’s noose for organizing a daring raid against slaveholders in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. As I drove through Maryland this weekend, rather aimlessly after missing a crucial turnoff on the beltway, I spied the John Brown Coffee sign at a random intersection outside Cockeysville and just had to stop by, even though I was already well-caffeinated by that point.

I have no idea to this day whether the name referenced the hero or another John Brown. The website offered no clue, and as I stood there in the middle of Civil War country, I kind of just assumed. I’m sticking with that assumption because the cause of freedom for all was just one of many ‘radical’ notions discussed in coffeehouses across Europe and beyond during those heady days in which humanity was evolving by leaps and bounds in terms of consciousness. What could be more fitting than a coffeehouse named after the great abolitionist himself?

The cafe itself is beautiful. It’s a brown stone building within a complex of several other brown stone buildings which seem to collectively be part of a park. You order from a window and sit outside at one of several tables, and I could see a few travelers taking advantage of that shady little spot they concocted. Boy is it necessary in a Maryland summer! Apparently they’ve been there since 2017, serving the massive number of tourists who come through on their way to Baltimore and points south.

They also find their beans locally. Well, local-ish. John Brown Coffee gets their coffee from Pipe & Tabor Roasting Company from Germantown, New York. These folks in turn source their actual beans from Red Fox Coffee Merchants, which is known for working closely with local farmers. The particular coffee I ordered was a Kenyan. It absolutely had the citrus quality for which African coffees are known. The floral/fruity was immediately evident when I took a sip before putting the milk in, and that’s not generally my cup of tea (wait, I mean coffee), but you know what? This worked because of the complexity. The floral flavors had a range to them that I’d call a veritable bouquet. I wanted something special and new and I got it. The point of all this is to have an adventure in each cup. Capital job!

I hope that anyone traveling through Maryland gets as lost as I did. You might just run across this little outpost. As for me, I’ll be heading North for my next exploration. Technically northwest. Remember how when I was reviewing Susquehanna Coffee, the land to the west of 11/15 was like another world? I’m going back to that world. Until then, stay caffeinated.

the outside…

the inside…

the…cow?

Welcome back, hypercaffeinated readership. And yes, Google is telling me that hypercaffeinated isn’t a word vis-a-vis the red line of death beneath it. To heck with that. Heck I say! Language evolves for the same reason everything else does. Nature set progress on autopilot billions of years ago, and the only time it stops is when people make the absurd choice to stop it. In the interest of not turning this blog into a liber querulus, I’ll leave that at that.

My home city certainly appears to be evolving. That would be the city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This is actually my first time looking for coffee in Harrisburg itself since sometime in 2019. What can I say, sometimes you miss things that are right in your backyard. I almost failed to mention this fact, for some reason assuming that people who read this blog know by now that I’m from there, even though I’ve kind of been everywhere over the course of this project. As I drove down Walnut Street I noticed this new cafe out of the corner of my eye, sitting pretty in a building that had been abandoned during the chaos of 2020. I would later learn that owner Lakshmi Tanniru and business partner Liz Albayero  opened in October of that year. I love when the owners of a coffeehouse are as bold as their brew.

Ms. Albayero clearly strove to bring Latin flair to her little corner of the American dream. As a matter of fact, this is the first Latin-American owned coffee shop in Harrisburg. Although they do have a Salsa night apparently, most of the overt cultural infusion seemed to be reserved for the coffee, and it really shines through in the quality. Yes, my bias is showing. Readers probably know by now that I’m a fan of Latin coffees in particular. You tend to get a not-quite-earthy richness from them, at least in the ones the roaster cared about. The roaster obviously cared here. I learned that the owners source their coffee directly from El Salvador. The blend I had was a Guatemalan-Salvadoran. It was indeed rich but balanced, just like a Central American coffee should be, the flavor (with a near-floral aftertaste) still clearly evident in spite of my adding too much almond milk to the mix. In my defense, I don’t think anyone can actually get almond milk right.

In the end, it seemed I missed the lines. From what was written in a recent article of The Burg magazine, there was a crowd here that early-autumn day when it opened. Like I said, we coffee lovers are a daring sort. May we always be. If you’re in the Burg and need a fix, consider The Fix. People who fight this hard for what they love deserve respect (and patronage). As for me, I’m off to another corner of PA to look for some more prime brew. No hints this time; I’m going where the wind takes me.

the street…

the luxe seating…

the art deco…

the art…

the hamsa…

I’m actually in the middle of nowhere, but you can see it from here. OK, that’s hyperbole. But south of Carlisle, PA it certainly feels like that. It’s where the Appalachian Trail crosses into the Cumberland Valley, and you can see the first of many big green foothills of South Mountain which connects to the rest of the Appalachians stretching from here to Georgia. It feels like you’re ready to travel somewhere, even if you’ve just come for a quick breath of fresh air…or to try some new coffee.

The Java Junky isn’t actually a stand-alone coffee shop. In fact, the owner, Barb, doesn’t stand alone at all. Rather, her store is part of the Carlisle Country Market, which is run as a co-op. There is literally a store in every corner of that market (and there are far more corners than a building of that size would suggest), with most of them containing everything from candy to country artisanry to antiques. If it hadn’t been a very early morning those stores might have been open, in which case I might have left a bit lighter in the wallet. As it stood, I quickly bellied up to the bar for some much needed waking-up.

Now the coffee itself was something interesting as well. It was called Market Street Blend and constituted a mix of Costa Rican and French-roasted Arabica beans. Not a common combo! The roaster (which I think was Lancaster County Coffee Roasters, but Barb left me a mystery there…) is located right in down in Lancaster, which surprised me. It actually shouldn’t have; Carlisle has a nice little underground coffee scene wherein local roasters take center stage. Barb also described herself as extremely picky when it comes to coffee beans. Gave poor Starbucks a tongue-lashing. You know what else hit my tongue right away? That classic Arabica acidity. If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ll know that Arabica is quite a gamble. It’s more expensive than the common Robusta that makes up the lion’s share of coffee in the US. It has more acidity but it also a more complex profile than less pricey coffees. That means it’s easy to do right and wrong. Barb did it right. Yes, there was a little bitterness but only a little, and it was mellowed out nicely with some buttery smoothness. That’s how you can tell that both the roaster and the brewer actually care.

I’ll be heading out more over the next few weeks. The big question is whether I’ll be going north or south. South is the REI store in Timonium that I have to go to for a backpack fitting. There will be a plethora of coffee in the outskirts of Baltimore. On the other hand, north is where the unique small towns of the Susquehanna valley and Alleghenies lie. I think we’ll agree that there’s something unique about those small town coffeehouses. After all, they have to exist in a place where it’s hard to survive on art. But they do have to exist. I’ll write more on that later. For now, in spite of tremendous odds, Barb and her cohorts keep existing. You’ll be grateful for that if you’re ever heading into the hills in need of some extra energy.

the approach…

the stash…

the sentiment…

the market…

the copious seating…

the obvious…

the mountain beyond…

OK so…do you remember how I said there would be a big announcement coming up? Come on, sure you do, it was on the last post before the last post. Two posts ago. I swear I alluded to something. Anyhow, here is is: I’m starting a new blog. No, I’m not getting rid of this blog. I’m merely starting a second blog on a completely unrelated topic. That unrelated topic is…the paranormal! Last year, something unprecedented happened…the Navy admitted that it chases UFOs. They even released video of them doing it. It should have been the big news of the year. It wasn’t the big news of the year. Stupid nature. Anyhow, that revelation coupled with a lifelong interest in both science and and the vanguards of science inspired me to start a blog showcasing the weirder side of life.

The blog will be called The Mangey Bear. It’s an allusion to a famous photo of a bizarre four-legged creature caught on a trail camera. It looked like a goblin or werewolf, but of course the skeptics declared it to be simply a bear with mange. Of course nobody knows what it really was, as a full investigation was never done. But that’s the point of this new project of mine. People who theorize about the paranormal tend to fall into two camps: There are the believers in everything and the acknowledgers of nothing. In my blog, we’ll look at things from a more rational angle, peeling back the mythology encrusted upon the paranormal, while setting aside the ideology of Skepticism. In other words, we’ll be looking for the truth.

I’ll be starting the blog up sometime in June, and I’ll be sure to let you know here. I’ll also let you know about some more good coffee starting in the middle of May when I have a bit of an expedition planned. Until next time, caffeinated ones.

When is a coffeehouse not a coffeehouse? Well, I’m really not sure. What exactly is the Platonic ideal of the coffeehouse if you had to gather an image to mind? At the start of this blog, I laid out some basics of what I think makes a ‘real’ coffeehouse. Now, I expect to be accused of engaging in a bit of gatekeeping there, but I stand by the idea that ‘the coffeehouse’ is something authentic and specific: both an aesthetic ambience and a perpetuator of the Enlightenment zeitgeist of making art and asking questions. If that’s the case, then Appalachian Mountain Coffee exists in a sort of borderland. The coffeehouse spirit exists here but it exists in potentiality only. A coffeehouse waiting to become.

Perhaps a bit of introduction is in order: I learned that this roasting company existed due to a chance encounter at a small, outdoor market back in August of last year. I wasn’t even looking for coffee at the time, just enjoying the fact that there were people doing a thing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a makeshift stand bearing the name of a coffee roaster I’d never heard of. Now, I’ve been buying coffee for a long time and I thought I knew about every operation there was to know in these parts. I was quite mistaken. It turns out that Appalachian Mountain Coffee is a geographical oddity. Look them up online and you’ll swear that Google Maps is drunk. They’re not in a town or a village or even one of our many ‘census-designated places’ that pockmark the Pennsylvania countryside. Appalachian Mountain Coffee is in a small building on a small hill in the middle of a large, farm-blanked county. A red dot at the end of a long blue directional line that winds west from Port Trevorton on the Susquehanna River, along one-lane roads (yes, one) up into the hills. That’s why I hadn’t heard of them previously, and also what drove me to learn more about them. I felt like I was in on a secret. That, and the fact that their coffee turned out to be utterly phenomenal.

I’m not entirely sure how Merle does it. That’s the name of the owner and mastermind behind the coffee crafting here. As I drove up the long, narrow road to the home that houses both his family and his coffee, I noticed that there was precious little in the way of infrastructure. After greeting me at the door in his overalls, fresh from dinner with the family, he led me to the little store attached to the roasting room (and the dining room) from which he sells his bags of coffee. He assured me with much pride that his operation was entirely off the grid. It is entirely off the grid. Local water, local power, and absolutely no computerization involved in the production process. You have to understand, this is Amish country. People who live here choose to meet modernity on their own terms, not the world’s. Let’s just say that the last year has endowed me with a certain empathy for that position. The quality of his coffee makes a good selling point for his lifestyle as well.

The only coffee that I actually tried in-shop was the nitro cold brew, which was creamy and fantastic even without milk added. It had an almost liqueur-like quality that was sublime. That was the only coffee available in a glass; everything else was sold by the bag, either whole-bean or ground. I got two bags of ground coffee, a Colombian and a Sumatran French Roast. I tried the Colombian when I got home, and it was just as smooth and refined as the cold brew had been. The only mistake I made was not putting enough in the coffee maker; it really is a medium roast and is a bit more subtle than commercial Colombians tend to be. Note that I said subtle, not weak. The lack of punch was no doubt a deliberate price paid for intricacy of aroma. Good choice. The Sumatra really is a very bold dark roast, as he had warned me…though I let him know forthwith that this was a selling point to me, not a warning. The Sumatra looked as black as soil in spring and was every bit as rich. It’s worth noting that you can smell both of these coffees right through the sealed bags; there’s that much abundance of flavor.

As I left (with a few free samples added into my bag by the far-too-generous Merle), I addressed the elephant: the fact that this place isn’t a coffeehouse and few people even know it exists! Well, there is an online presence, run through a friend of his apparently. The cost of coming down to Harrisburg can be prohibitive…but then again, so can the logistics of coming up to this area. That seemed to be the main issue; he expressed a bit of skepticism regarding how likely people would be to come up to his forested little hill amidst the hills just to visit a coffeehouse should he open one. Two things counter that notion: The coffee alone is clearly worth the hour-long trip from southern Dauphin county, but the bucolic beauty of the region in which it sits is the real draw. Remember how central it is to the coffeehouse experience to induce contemplation in people? Places of peace are becoming all too rare in this world. This is one of them. It may not draw all people, but it would draw the right kind of people. Ones who care less about fleeting fashions and trendy locales and more about getting back to the roots of things. Until next time, stay caffeinated.

the home on the hill…

the beans…

the coldbrew…

the accoutrements…

the view…

the long road home…