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I’m not hip. I’m not exciting. I’m not ashamed, either.

Few people read this blog. Grammarly bombards me with AI suggestions regarding ‘clarity’ and ‘conciseness’ in my writing. Prospective employers probably read it, laugh at my lack of simple workaday wordplay, and never give me a second thought. My style isn’t readable, apparently. It isn’t trendy. It’s not too cool for this school, and, in fact, it’s considerably uncool by the estimates of any school. I’m beyond caring. No stock turns-of-phrase or apt similes flood the noosphere from my keyboard, and you won’t get the impression that I’m a sophisticated tech-head with degrees out the proverbial wazoo, because I’m not one. .

That matters less than it ever has, if it ever has.

What matters is our odd little passions. Coffee is one of my passions. So is writing. Philosophy is another, especially rationalist philosophy. So is observational astronomy. So is paraphysics. So is beat poetry. All of those things bore most people, but for those of us who occupy those existential niches, life is fascinating in a way those outside the ‘loop’ don’t know. Somewhere, someone is engaged in a hobby I find wholly uninteresting but which, for them, constitutes the very spice of life.

Cyclists. Cyclists are doing that. From my childhood, I had no interest in riding a bicycle. I can’t balance on them; I’m afraid to try, and my feet serve me perfectly well, thank you. My cousins, on the other hand, live for powering their shiny aluminum beasts over the next mountain just to prove they can do it. They biked all the way to our family reunion on several occasions, over 50 miles of steep ridges and humid valleys. I get the distinct impression that most of the customers here are like my cousins: hardcore.

Veloccino has been here for around ten years. I never knew. I should have known; I mean, it’s fairly close to the interstate, and I’ve made the trip to Baltimore fairly often. Readers might recall my trip to Red Emma’s coffeehouse in downtown Baltimore nearly a decade ago. Even so, we’ve all seen that something as simple as making a right-hand turn off the main drag can take you into undiscovered country. That’s what happened to me.

I can see why there’s an avid bicycling culture here. Low, grassy hills seem to roll forever. That’s another thing I should mention: We’re no longer in the Appalachians. We’re in the Piedmont. The countryside north and west of Baltimore (in which this cafe and its town sit) takes some time to merge with the Appalachians again in the western portion of the state. Until then, the farms and lowland forests make a gentle tapestry across the landscape. Small stone buildings and old barns are everywhere. There’s a lot of history here.

The town of Butler is…small. It’s a tiny village, really. The photo shows almost everything there is to see, except a smattering of suburban homes. Right in the center of it, though, is Veloccino. As soon as you pull into the parking lot, the focus becomes apparent. A massive bike rack abuts a covered picnic area. It must be a welcome sight for anyone who’s pedaled dozens of miles in the cold winters and sweltering summers that near-coastal Maryland sees.

The flavor of the shop may be local, but the coffee’s flavor hails from far afield. Stumptown Coffee Roasters is a product of Portland, Oregon. Wow, Grammarly even has an issue with how I wrote that last sentence. AI can bugger off. Oh, right, the coffee. The coffee I got was their Holler Mountain Blend. It’s a mix of several bean types, as evidenced by the idiosyncratic flavors. I was meant to taste caramel, chocolate, and citrus, which implies a blend of several continents’ worth of coffee. The citrus hints were quite muted, with the cocoa and nut aspects propulsively forward. Holler Mountain was deeply savory. Having an expert barista on staff helped; she clearly knew what she was doing and took the art of coffee seriously.

That’s an interesting thing in and of itself. The worlds of ‘bicycling’ and ‘coffee’ can apparently meld seamlessly. I wonder how prevalent coffee culture is within the cycling community. The marriage makes sense. You need a lot of energy for such a stamina-focused sport. Cyclists also enjoy exploring, traveling, and experiencing new things with new company. Sounds familiar.

Our trip through this part of rural Maryland is far from over. In the next week or two, I’ll be featuring another odd stop along the winding backcountry roads of Civil War country. From there, I’ll likely be branching out to other Maryland locations, or I’ll simply follow the summer festival circuit wherever it leads on a weekend.

Until then, stay caffeinated!

the village…

the entrance…

the bike racks…

the coffee side…

the cycling side…

the merch…

the brew…

Here we are, in the heart of the Wilds. Folks from Potter and Tioga counties might dispute that. Truth be told, when I was planning this leg of the Journey, I was aiming for a coffeehouse in Tioga County. It was located in the tiny town of Liberty. It no longer appears on a map when I search for ‘coffee’ in that vicinity. I can only assume it has closed. Thus began my search for alternative coffee in the wilderness, which ultimately took us into forested Clearfield County.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that the initial coffee target had vanished on me. Whenever I did a search for coffee in any part of the Wilds, including around the town of Liberty, I needed to push the ‘minus’ sign on the map function a few times. Coffeehouses are few and far between out here. Oh, there are plenty of places to get coffee. Dunkin’ Donuts is immensely popular. A few family restaurants double as coffee spots, including a cute one in Liberty. But in terms of a ‘coffeehouse’ as we’ve come to think of it on this blog (a place that considers coffee an art while making space for other arts), that’s vanishingly rare here. That’s because the Wilds is often a place people drive through on their way to somewhere else. Route 80, for example, runs directly south of Kylertown, winding its way through endless forested hills and farmed valleys. Shockingly, Kylertown also has a small craft coffeehouse to call its own.

Kylertown is only a few miles south of the vast Quehanna Wild Area. Once you’re out of Centre County, the ridge-and-valley system gives way to a rolling, green plateau. As you can see in the photo below, a belt of farmland surrounds the gathering of homes and small stores constituting the town. Interestingly, The Gathering Grounds isn’t in Kylertown proper. To be fair, there isn’t much of a ‘Kylertown proper,’ and we’ll get to that later.

Instead, The Gathering Grounds is in a small plaza just off Route 80, directly south of Kylertown. On the outside, Gathering Grounds looks like an especially cozy section of a small travel plaza. Inside, it’s keeping coffeehouse culture alive. It looked like an art space, or at least the beginnings of one. The interior was a bit spare, but a comfy couch and a wall festooned with crayon-drawn pictures, Bible verses, and fun pictures gave glimpses of a local love of art finding expression here.

After talking with a barista, I know I’m not far off on my estimation of this cafe as the beginnings of an art space. Gathering Grounds has only been in existence since November. The barista told me she was trying to start an open mic night, but ran into problems this winter due to the extreme cold. Indeed, Pennsylvania had been hit with a few polar vortices driving temperatures well below zero. I don’t think she’ll be giving up, though.

The coffee came from a surprising place: Aegis Coffee of nearby DuBois! DuBois is a pretty large town for the Wilds (one of the reasons I purposely avoided it and Bradford…we needed a taste of the deep country, after all). I got their signature blend. There’s no telling what’s inside because it’s their signature blend. It’s proprietary. Here’s another coffeehouse sourcing coffees from a professional roaster and requesting a specialty roast. I surmise it was a Central American blend. The nutty notes advertised on the label of the coffee bag came off as more of a caramel to me. It was smooth and refreshing, an excellent fuel for the ride home.

I didn’t just come all this way for coffee, though. I came here for context. What’s the town like? Who lives here, and why? A short trip up north via Rolling Stone Road takes you into Kylertown. I looked in vain for a definable ‘downtown’ here, but the town simply sprawls through the isolated valley it’s nestled inside. A little league field, a senior center, a Presbyterian church, and a meeting hall were all I could find, and they were spread out apart from each other. Even so, the backdrop of rolling green hills makes me want to park somewhere and learn where the good hiking spots are. There have to be a lot of them here!

I’d have loved to have learned its history. Someone had to have founded Kylertown. If there’s a senior center, it means people are living their entire lives here (or else moving away and coming back). If there are active farms, people make, craft, sow, and harvest. It’s not a decaying coal town. I could live in a place like this, but only if I met my true love or found my perfect calling. Maybe they have. Now I definitely want to hear the stories that make Kylertown what it is: Unknown to most. Dear to a few.

This puts a few fascinating aspects of the coffeehouse in context. For one, the background music playing in the coffeehouse was almost certainly Christian. We’ve seen that before, though. Country culture makes its own peace with the modernity intrinsic to the coffeehouse as a phenomenon. This coffeehouse looks quite modern inside, though not thoroughly so, and it’s not as urbane as the one in Phillipsburg. There’s a feel of potential energy here. It’s waiting to happen. I think these people can make it happen, whatever the ‘it’ of this cafe’s future might be.

Regarding the last, I wonder what the artistic underground is like in this area. Who showed up to the attempt to have an open mic? What did they want to get off their chests in verse? Were their thoughts innocent or edgy? In a world of institutionalized edge and government-sponsored revolt, by all sides, against all sides, innocence is avant-garde. Authenticity is a function of the assumptions and ideologies it rejects, not the ones it condones, since any a priori (presupposed) belief system insists upon itself as complete fact, and thus it brooks no dispute. Coffee culture asks the questions. It’s carried the torch of truth for five hundred years. Reasoning minds finding truth wherever it lies is the only real rebellion. Those thinkers can be found everywhere.

On the way home, I was struck by the contrast between Clearfield and Centre Counties. The Penn State machine touches everything in Centre County. Massive buildings and cranes can be seen as you crest the hills surrounding Happy Valley. I’m more certain than ever that Phillipsburg is touched by the cosmopolitanism thrust upon it by the flood of college students into what is otherwise wilderness. Clearfield County borders Centre, but they’re far apart in culture. From lifestyle to architecture, Clearfield has kept its bucolic, backwoods nature intact.

This is not the end of the Journey: Far from it. I’ve been doing this for about twelve years now. I see no reason to stop. When we set off on the all-day round-trip into the Wilds, I couldn’t help wondering: Is this the beginning of summer, or is it the end of winter? The date of this expedition was April 21st, and cold was just giving way to warmth. Trees were just going from totally brown to slightly green, the verdure creeping up mountainsides as the days wore on.

Upon reflection, this day wasn’t the first or last of anything. It was just another day in a string of them. So, now that this segment is formally at a close, we find that it really isn’t. The Journey goes wherever we want it to as long as there’s gas in the tank and caffeine on the horizon. Tomorrow is sooner than you think.

Until then, stay caffeinated.

the endless trees…

the place…

the logo…

the seating…

the tunes…

the beans…

the farms…

the town…

the centre county boom…

the last snow of winter…

I don’t even know how to begin this post. It’s been a long time coming. For months, I’ve been promising a deep delve into the Pennsylvania Wilds, and for months of inclement weather and other sidetracks, I’ve been forced to delay. Now, at long last, we head deep into the woods on this Journey and visit the true backcountry of Pennsylvania.

If you tuned in about a month ago, you probably read about the trip to Williamsport, PA. Yes, that city is the showpiece of the Pennsylvania Wilds region, with a deep history and singular culture. It still doesn’t give a proper impression of what exactly the Pennsylvania Wilds region is all about culturally. Williamsport is cosmopolitan and industrial. It’s urban, and it’s hip. Much of the PA Wilds is none of those things. It’s removed from the bustle of that world. That’s the Wilds I had to embrace, and it will take two blogging segments to do so. Here we go.

Phillipsburg happened almost entirely by accident. I’d planned to visit here originally, but visiting became less likely as my plans took shape. First, it’s geographically close to my second target. Also, I wasn’t sure if this was just a catering business or a true coffeehouse. On a whim, I re-inserted Phillipsburg into the itinerary. That was the best decision I could have made.

This town doesn’t look like much on a map. It’s located in the Wilds portion of Center County, roughly encompassing everything north and west of the Black Moshannon State Park and multiple game lands along a wide, rough ridge of highlands. That ridge separates the manic development of Happy Valley (home to Penn State University’s flagship campus and world-famous Beaver Stadium) from the true wilderness of the Appalachian Plateau. That’s an important point: Beyond Happy Valley, the ridge-and-valley system of the Appalachian Mountains’ folds and the Alleghenies to the south gives way to the high, rambling terrain of the Plateau.

As we drove in (my Mom drove me up here, which definitely earned her a coffee), I was struck by how self-contained Phillipsburg was. It was very…town-ish. A lot of towns here are blink-and-you-missed-it villages spread out amidst farms in a lowland between forested mountains. We’ll visit one of them soon. Phillipsburg was not this. Old stone buildings and a well-defined downtown made it look like a mini Carlisle (much as Williamsport looked like a big Carlisle). A railroad ran through massive edifices, and construction workers labored away on the street. As it would happen, a whole crew was tearing up the street adjacent to the coffeehouse. That’s when the cursing started.

I had no idea how we should even begin to get past them to the coffeehouse. It was 11:45 AM. The Brown Dog closes at noon most weekdays. After shouting a few expletives, my very calm mother parked the car, activated the blinkers, and I tore up the road to the cafe. Some construction workers personally vouched for our questionable parking action. I thanked them and kept running. I was assured that (ahem) makeshift parking actions were the norm in Phillipsburg.

I arrived just in the nick of time. A lone neon sign (a dog, ironically blue, not brown) hung above a drab stone front. There was nobody else in the shop besides the barista. I breathlessly explained my mission to her, and this sweet lady enthusiastically told me the story of Brown Dog. Technically, the full name is “Brown Dog Catering, Coco’s Coffee House-The Kitchen @ Brown Dog.” The name has an interesting story:

This operation began in 2017 as a catering business, providing coffee and such on request at pop-up events. Then, in 2020, a fire devastated the business. From the ashes arose this beautiful coffee shop. Seriously, look at the photos below. Inside are walls of memorabilia and rows of elegant tables. I couldn’t describe many coffeehouses I’ve visited as ‘elegant’ in the classical sense. Hip, definitely, but not traditionally graceful. This coffeehouse is. It looks more suited to high tea than Bohemia. There’s a reason for that.

There are dinners here. Fancy ones, by all accounts. The woman who greeted me, Erica, explained that beautiful dinners of 8 to 12 courses take place in the spacious dining room, offset slightly from the coffeehouse portion. That’s not all. They also have a vast array of pastries and similar fare for casual dining for people who just want to sit and people-watch through the windows. In a way, the coffee seems almost secondary to the main focus: food and bringing people together over food. On second thought, I can’t call the coffee secondary because great care was taken to source it.

The coffee came courtesy of Standing Stone Coffee Company of nearby Huntingdon. That’s in the Alleghenies. Remember how that was the town other than Altoona we didn’t get to during the Alleghenies portion of the tour? Well, now we have, in a way. Standing Stone prepares professionally curated blends for coffeehouses like this one. Everything is personalized and proprietary; I wasn’t even told what the blend was. I got their Coco’s House Blend, which was clearly some kind of South American mix. Watch, the makers will comment in the comments section that I’m totally wrong. That would be fun, actually.

Anyhow, it was immediately obvious that the Standing Stone people are experts. I found strong, flowery, fragrant notes with a bit of berry, layered atop a mellow acidity. There was the creaminess that normally characterizes South Americans, which is why I’d be willing to wager that such beans are at the very least a major component of whatever they were doing here.

Brown Dog was pure urban sophistication at its best…and I found it in the wilderness. Or maybe, sophistication is universal, and it’s to be found anywhere you can find it. I think that’s the takeaway. An appreciation for the finer things suffused the very bones of this cafe. An appreciation for art leads to connoisseurship in a slippery slope of the best sort. They closed minutes after I left, but I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on them from distant Harrisburg. For now, it’s time to go deeper into the countryside.

Our next stop is to the north, just to the south of the village of Kylerstown. It’s in the adjacent county of Clearfield, but it felt like a hundred miles away. Stay tuned for the last chapter of the Wilds portion of the Journey soon. Until then, stay caffeinated.

the road into the wilds…

the wilds…

the park near phillipsburg…

the downtown…

the blue dog of the brown dog…

the setting…

the tables…

the roast…

the rest…

Happy Easter, Passover, and more! If you’re a Pennsylvania resident, you can probably guess why I haven’t made my way into the Wilds yet: The weather hasn’t cooperated. The past three weeks have been a labyrinth of postponed beer festivals, downed tree branches, tenuous power grids, and winds strong enough to blow cars off the road. In Carlisle, the gusts were at least 60 miles per hour. None of this is conducive to travel. Nor was the lake-effect snow that fell across the Wilds!

Then came Easter, and I didn’t feel like leaving home during it, so I resolved to make the trip at some point in the two weeks or so after the holidays and before festival season begins in earnest. Good news: As I’m typing this, I’ve just returned from The Wilds, having visited two new coffee shops. Those will be coming soon, but this Zimmerman’s segment needed to be done.

One of my Christmas presents had been coffee from Zimmerman’s Nuts & Candies. That’s a candy shop, but so much more in addition. It’s full Willy Wonka. Zimmerman’s holds shelf after shelf of not only candy but local farm goods, including raw honey, homemade ketchup, and (yes) several varieties of coffee. So, in need of coffee before my trip to the wilds, I headed off to Zimmerman’s to search for a few interesting roasts to tide me (and my readers) over.

Zimmerman’s has its own proprietary coffee roasting operation called Rose Garden Coffee. Zimmerman’s is proud of the fact that they roast it Continental Style. Continental roasting heats the beans to slightly higher than the norm for a medium roast. The roasting process is halted when the desired color is reached for the beans by quenching them with water immediately. This leaves the beans with a lovely sheen and often a characteristic caramelization. It’s a bit less dense and rich than a high roast (which uses an even higher temperature). The House Blend (which I got for Christmas) is emblematic of a continental roasting style. It’s rich and buttery; exactly what I tend to favor. Thus, I was curious to see what variations on that theme were available, and got two new roasts.

First up was the Colombian. It was ground coffee rather than whole bean. Right out of the proverbial box, I knew this roast would be different. Upon opening the bag and smelling the grounds (this was a ground coffee), I made out the unmistakable signature of citrus or a floral bouquet remarkably close to citrus. That’s rare among Colombian coffees. There was also a robust chocolate quality, which is far more characteristic. After brewing it, the citrus notes dissolved into a barely-there fragrant quality. I could taste virtually none of the fruity power (or even the chocolate) present in the scent. Instead, the brew left me with a creamy, almost malt-like quality. That’s a quality consistent with what I would call some of the most drinkable Colombian roasts. I brewed it twice to ensure that this wasn’t in my imagination. It was not. What an odd effect! One caveat: Use a lot of it in the filter. Ground for ground, it’s lighter than I expected.

Next came a pure Guatemalan. The presentation here was almost the complete opposite of the previous roast. It was a whole bean coffee, and I could hardly smell anything distinctive. It smelled like…coffee. I ground it for 15 seconds (perhaps not enough), and heaped the grounds into the filter. Even without adding cream, a distinct smoothness accompanied a clear and present nut-like taste, or perhaps a caramel. It was less enzymatic than the Colombian and more classically Central American, but in a somewhat muted form. Fun fact: Milk doesn’t usually wash out the caramelized palette of a continental roast. That’s why continental roasts often find a home in lattes and other drinks meant to be as creamy as possible.

Both of these roasts make fantastic breakfast blends. Both are undoubtedly mellow. That was unexpected, given the power and forwardness of the house blend…a blend that might just be my favorite bagged coffee thus far (tied with Appalachian Mountain Coffee to the northwest). Both the grounds and beans were lighter than I’d expected for a continental roast, so I think they might have erred on the side of caution here and reined themselves in a bit in pursuit of general drinkability. I get that. Most people prefer a more delicate flavor, especially in their morning coffee, and especially if the roast is part of a fancy drink like cappuccino. In that case, the delicate caramel notes would bolster the chocolate.

Bottom line: I enjoyed both coffees, but their glorious House Blend takes my prize for everyday drinking. Note: These craft-roasted brews are nine dollars and change for a practically bursting bag. That’s amazing. Not getting wrecked at the cash register by coffee costs is a new experience. Let’s hear it for local roasters like these who put people first.

Prepare for several new posts over the next two weeks as I digest my epic trip into The Wilds. At some point soon, I might add several more pics of Zimmerman’s on this segment. Until then, stay caffeinated!

the first brew…

the second brew…

the shop…

This has been a long time coming. I’ve been teasing for some months that we’d be taking this Journey into the Pennsylvania Wilds, and here we are: Williamsport, PA, the unofficial capital of the Wilds region. As much as Pittsburgh is often termed the ‘Paris’ of Appalachia, the city of Williamsport truly stands on its own amidst the grandeur of one of Appalachia’s least-tamed regions.

The Wilds takes up 25% of Pennsylvania’s land area but contains a mere 4% of its population. Even that figure is deceptive. Much of the population is concentrated in a few small areas of the Wilds, such as Williamsport and the string of large towns clinging to the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, separated from one another by its tributaries. Lycoming County is Pennsylvania’s largest county, housing over 110,000 people. That’s far less than half the population of Dauphin County (containing the capital), which is less than half its size. Here’s another telling figure: The Wilds is home to 2.1 million acres of forest and counting.

To get to Williamsport from Allenwood (which we visited in our last segment), simply head north over the mountains. They were still brown when they filled the windshield of our car on its approach to the final pass to Williamsport, but they looked no less alive for that. State game lands, farms, and many things bearing the name “White Deer” fill the valley immediately south of the ridgelines (which were unnamed, as far as I could tell…though if you know their names, please fill me in). Just north of the ridges is the sprawling cityscape of Williamsport. As one crests the ridge, there’s a pulloff spot ideal for looking down on the skyline, nestled against the broad, gray-green waters of the Susquehanna River.

Make no mistake, this is a ‘real’ city in the sense that Baltimore or Seattle are, albeit smaller. Williamsport houses less than 30,000 people, but this figure marks it as the largest settlement in the Wilds and the second largest in the PA Appalachians (after Altoona to the west). It doesn’t look like much until you get across the river, but when you do, immediately you’re confronted with the surprisingly tall buildings of a dense and bustling downtown.

Parking was surprisingly easy to find (and cheap compared to Harrisburg parking). Here’s where I should mention that my mom bravely drove us. Don’t worry. I compensated her in coffee. We’re both caffeine fiends, and neither had been here for years. Far more of the traffic was on its feet than on its wheels. Curio shops mingled with official government buildings set along tree-lined streets. Williamsport is walkable, in other words. I hadn’t expected that, given the size of the city.

Alabaster Coffee had been recommended to me by some Amish coffee makers far to the west. That happened several years ago, but it has taken me until now to wind my way this far to the north. I’m kicking myself for the delay. Although Alabaster is a significant coffee roaster up here, with several locations, the flagship shop truly stands out. Remember how I said Williamsport was a true city and not just a large but diffuse village like many other Pennsylvania locations? That’s on full display here.

The coffee shop is spacious and elegant. It’s not just elegant; there’s a specific type of sophistication here which leaves the impression that the space was constructed as a destination. The apportionments (like the seating) are artistically rendered in hardwood and spotlessly clean. The old coffee roaster was displayed in an adjacent room. ‘Presentation.’ That’s the word I was looking for. It carries a sense of care for aesthetics that can typically only be found in an urban setting. Oh, you can find beauty in a rural location. Crafts in a rural home can be beautiful in ways that deliberate design can never be. Nonetheless, it was a curated design on display at Alabaster, and curated with a deft hand.

The coffee was produced at the level one would expect from a professional roaster. One of my favorite qualities was displayed: savoriness. That shouldn’t be surprising since this brew was South American. What I remember most fondly from this blend was balance. That’s what stayed with me. An almost vegetal almond note seemed evident to me, and although there was some heft to it, there wasn’t much earthiness, just that airy, wispy freshness characteristic of very fresh roasts.

After coffee, we went down the street to a brewery called Bullfrog. The walk was as refreshing as the beer. Below, there’s a photo of a stunning mural painted on the sides of several adjacent buildings. That’s the urbanity I was mentioning before. In a way, Williamsport reminds me of a very large Carlisle. Like Carlisle, there’s a serious arts scene and an upsurge in civic pride. The ‘city’ feel isn’t a result of population, but of that pride. Wherever artists and artisans concentrate, you’ll get the beautiful heterogeneity that makes a place truly metropolitan. Since this isn’t a beer blog, I forewent adding pics of the brewery, but if there are any requests for them, I’ll gladly add them. I might do so anyhow at some point in the future.

Speaking of the future, the tour of The Wilds is not over yet. To get a representative sample of the land and the culture, I want to visit Center County (split in half into wilderness and Penn State halves) and fundamentally rural Clearfield County. Look for that sometime in April. After that, there’s no focus until we return to The Wilds in a few months. Prepare to visit wildly divergent coffeehouses as we journey through the Maryland and Pennsylvania festival scene. But first, the rest of the Wilds. Until then, stay caffeinated.

the beginning…

the city…

the downtown…

the ambience…

the merch…

the woodwork…

the old roaster…

the culture…

the art of a city…

It’s finally happening: The segment I teased long ago is coming to fruition. The Coffeehouse Journey is finally headed into the Pennsylvania Wilds region. As I’m writing this, it’s been nearly two weeks after the trip to experience the PA Wilds coffee scene. A lot of preparation went into it, but, this brief series will only scratch the surface of what the region offers. There were multiple towns I wanted to visit but won’t have a chance to, at least not in this series. There will undoubtedly be another at some point in the future. Another series of Into the Wilds, that is.

As it stands, summer concert season is approaching too rapidly to take in the entire Wilds region before I embark upon different paths. In the name of consistency, I picked a small and varied selection of coffeehouses located in representative urban and rural areas of the Wilds. Yes, there is a metropolitan region in the Wilds, and we will get to that later. We’re starting, though, with the small town of Allenwood. That’s because, if you’re traveling north from Harrisburg, this town marks the precise border between the Wilds region (beginning in southern Lycoming County) and the Susquehanna River Valleys region (starting in northern Union County).

Allenwood makes an excellent border town between the two geographical and cultural regions. In most ways, it’s a typical rural Pennsylvania town. Blink, and you missed it. There is no ‘downtown’ to speak of. No, I should say, the downtown consists of a single church, gas station, and restaurant. That’s normal for small Pennsylvania towns, especially in this area. They don’t need more than this, and these towns are a product of their needs. Agriculture isn’t a hobby here, as I’ve said before. The logic of the farming world drives the infrastructure options. This town just happens to have a cool coffeehouse in addition to the norms.

We’ve visited a Wagging Tail location before this. There are several of those. The one we looked at previously was in Watsontown to the south of the Wilds. That was the flagship location. This is a drive-thru version. It doesn’t look like a drive-thru. Apparently, that’s a popular format for coffeehouses in the Pacific Northwest, and it’s catching on in Pennsylvania. With the amount of vehicles crossing the Susquehanna River valleys, it only makes sense to adopt that expression of coffee culture.

Interestingly, it has little impact on the aesthetic or feel of the location as a proper ‘coffeehouse.’ It still looks like one. There are still tables and chairs, albeit outside the cramped brewing and serving station. It felt almost like the building was attempting to be a traditional ‘coffeehouse’ despite its being a quick-serve establishment. There were even pastry treats, but it never felt like fast food. Somehow, coffeehouses seem to extrude the quality of ‘the coffeehouse’ into whatever space they occupy. That’s an idea worth exploring more in the coming weeks.

The coffee I was given was in Americano form. If I didn’t want to get something fancy, espresso was all they had on hand. I’m not surprised; this location must go through an incredible amount of inventory. Route 15 North runs through town. That road is the only (major) road north. Back to the coffee: It was Wagging Tail’s proprietary roast (they are a roaster). I wanted their house blend, but this one substituted finely. There was a mellow nuttiness to calm down the frenetic ‘roasty’ quality and bitter astringency characterizing espresso generally. Granted, a nut or chocolate flavor constitutes the base flavor palette of espresso. I did catch some of the stone fruit taste oft beloved by espresso lovers. All told it was a nice little roast.

Here’s how we’ll do this. Next week, I’ll detail my adventures in the upcoming location we visited in this ‘Northern’ portion of the whirlwind tour. A few weeks later, I’ll have completed the ‘Western’ segment and will cover that in detail. It has to be broken up because there was just too much to see and do for a single post. Like the coffee in my gullet, these words and deeds need time to be digested. Until next time, stay caffeinated.

the town…

the place…

the beans…

the industry…

Today, I put my hat and gloves in the closet for the first time in months. It felt good. The temperature felt better, reaching almost 60 degrees today and dropping hints of the impending Spring. I know it’s not going to last. March almost always features as many snowstorms as bright blue days. I will have to go back into that closet soon and pull the hat and gloves back out for another round of winter. Even so, a symbolic or temporary victory is still a victory.

Such was the case regarding my latest coffee adventure. On Saturday, February 22, the two weeks of insane cold that had gripped Pennsylvania was just loosening, and a festival was in the works at Allenberry Resort in Boiling Springs.

Sound familiar? We’ve been there before on this Journey. A few months ago, I visited the small cafe gracing the foyer and lounge of the main building in the resort complex. This past weekend, that same building (along with the entirety of the resort) played host to what appeared to be the first festival of the season. I’m sure there had been others elsewhere; snow festivals, ice fests, and what have you. This just felt different. It felt like Spring. It felt like everyone waking up.

As it turns out, some of that buzz might have resulted from Warrior’s Son Coffee, based in nearby Mechanicsburg. In operation for only about a year and owned by Angel DeJesus and his wife, the name of this ambitious startup is an ode to his father, who came from Puerto Rico in 1950 and served in the Army. This hit home for me since my own father is a Vietnam veteran. When I saw the name of the coffee company, I had a bit of an inkling that this would mean an homage to someone proud of someone’s service. So it was (and is).

There is no coffeehouse yet. Angel’s setup was a temporary one for the festival. It looked professional, though. As usual, my instincts didn’t steer me wrong. Within minutes, the aforementioned owner and I were deep in conversation regarding the benefits and misconceptions surrounding various roasts. We also pined for the festival season to begin in earnest and hoped that maybe this festival marked the beginning of that trend. Everyone who shares a passion for coffee shares more than that: there’s a temperament; a delight in art, of which coffee is only one powerful expression.

Angel gave me two free samples. The first was called Ranger’s Roast. It’s a medium, but he billed it as a morning blend. I like that. It’s good to give morning people options besides lighter fare. I got a definite fruit flavor in that first sip, though it was blended with a rather earthy presentation. It was molasses! That’s what I was tasting. I have no idea what origin resulted in that flavor, but that was exciting. Even better was the citrusy ending. I don’t really care for citrus flavor in coffee, but this hit right on the back end of the palette, so it was more a statement than a manifesto. Very artfully accomplished.

My second sample was of the Angel’s Blend. Now, this was more my usual style. The blend was deep and robust from the get-go. There wasn’t as much citrus in this as there was in the last, but it was still there, only muted. The full force of this blend was displayed in the grounded richness, including more chocolate along with unmistakable (in retrospect!) caramel and umami notes.

Unfortunately, the bean sources and roasters are proprietary, so I couldn’t get too many details about the ‘secret recipe’ behind these blends. I’m truly looking forward to seeing what this little family outfit has in store for the burgeoning Appalachian coffee world. I’m also interested if they’ll be attending any more festivals. When I arrived at around 1:40, attendance at this event was already well over 700. That’s massive for a festival so early (and far from any urban centers). I hope that’s a sample of what’s to come as warmth and sun increase.

Our next stop is probably Williamsport, but it’s so hard to keep up with the proliferation of coffeehouses in the urban countryside(s) and the valleys of Amish country. Until next time: Stay caffeinated!

the festival…

the main building…

the beans…

the additional beans…

the first sample…

the second sample…

the coffeemaker and the coffeehouse guy…

Big Valley, Kish Valley, the last valley before Happy Valley. It’s almost the Pennsylvania Wilds, but not quite. Kishacoquillas Valley has many monikers, but the feeling you get when you hear the words is the same. At least that’s true if you live in central Pennsylvania. It’s a main center of Amish culture, in some ways just as much as Lancaster, if not moreso.

I say ‘if not moreso’ because Kishacoquillas Valley is home to no less than three of the more conservative Amish groups in the state. These are the Byler Amish, Renno Amish, and Nebraska Amish. The latter is the most conservative of the three, embodying many of the commonly imagined archetypes of Amish life. Many don’t even paint their barns, and electricity use is kept to a minimum. Not even lawnmowers are allowed, though some shockingly have cellphones. It makes sense: Use technology, but don’t base your survival on it. That’s a good habit.

Pine Ridge Cafe is another institution that really exemplifies a balanced approach to the complications of modern society. So does the town it’s situated in, called Belleville. Belleville is hard to find. What I meant to say was it’s hard to situate. The town of Belleville is laid out like a large village, with only a minimal ‘downtown.’ There’s a historical society in the town center. Otherwise, there’s no sign of gentrification. The town is all business, and that business is agriculture.

Look below in the photos section, and you’ll see how, although the region is bucolic, it’s also a food machine, plain and simple. Even in the ‘wilderness’ of Pennsylvania, if an industry does exist, it will be farming. It won’t be like the ‘hobby farms’ you’ll find in other states. This ain’t a hobby, here. It’s life.

In that context, Pine Ridge is a bit of an apparent outlier. It looks like the trendy coffee shop of a town in the Philadelphia countryside. The establishment is both new and old. It used to be called Taste of the Valley. The latter was a fixture of the region for years, and it was only within the past year and a half that it changed to its new name and mission. Although I have no idea what it looked like in its original iteration, the newer business is clearly coffee-focused. It’s also obviously a product of Mennonite roots, with a straightforward interior absent of kitsch. There were a few nods to outdoor culture, notably the names of some of the coffee blends offered. Bigfoot Blend, Ridge Runner…someone likes the great outdoors.

The coffee really threw me for a loop. I took the Ridge Runner as an homage to my love of the Appalachian Trail. A Ridgerunner is either a person who lives in the high mountain regions of the Appalachian ridgelines or works directly for the Trail in some capacity. That’s often describing the same background. Ridge Runner the coffee was a dark roast; a mix of Ethiopian and Sumatran. True to form, it was intensely earthy. I picked up hints of pipe tobacco and deep smoke. This probably got roasted for a long time, and no, that’s not a ‘defect’ unless you consider deviation from the light roast trend to be heresy. Nutmeg might have been there, too, but I can’t be sure. It was quite smooth on the front, even as the back end revealed those complexities.

Point of fact: The coffee is also their own. That’s right; it’s Pine Ridge Coffee, roasted by the Yoders, Trent, and Leah (who I must speak to sometime!). The website says it was started back in 2022. That would jive with what we’ve seen during this Journey lately; rural coffee roasters cropping up and turning hard times into great opportunities.

That’s the American spirit, though. Or maybe it’s just the best of human nature. I hold that the ideals of the American Revolution tend to bring out the best in people, so I suppose I take both sides. Kind of like this region does. On the way through town, I saw an unexpected rainbow flag on a house. That just goes to show that nobody and nothing is simple. I wonder what we’ll find as we plumb the depths of the Pennsylvania Wilds. Until next time, stay caffeinated.

the valley…

the coffeehouse…

the brews…

the lowkey amishness…

the setup…

the ville…

the lifeblood…

the pride…

Happy New Year! It’s been a hot minute (Millennials used to say that) since the last post. I had a great series of trips planned to acquire coffee and adventure. Then, the check engine light came on. Then, the polar vortex hit. Now, it’s about to snow. Thankfully, Christmas yielded no less than five spectacular coffees, gifted to me or found at markets. It’s an amazing haul and should hold us over until next week when the air warms back up and my jalopy thaws.

Let’s save the best for first. Regarding coffee, I don’t believe in standing on ceremony. This blend, called Rose Garden, was an unexpected joy; unexpected because it hailed from several blocks away from my house. A local candy shop called Zimmerman’s is a local mainstay. I go there a few weeks before Christmas with my mom to get various specialty foods annually. This year, we also found coffee there. It’s their own blend, and it’s fantastic. Dense and leguminous, it was practically a meal. There was no indication of whether it was a medium or dark roast, or if it was primarily Guatemalan (my best guess), or Sumatran (also a contender), and it didn’t need one, because the blend stood on its own as unique. The package reads: “Roasted to please particular people.” I am, and it did.

hometown brew…

The next offering was the St. Remio bio-organic house blend. This was really interesting in that it tasted a lot like Turkish or Greek coffee. Intensity was promised, and intensity was delivered. There was a bit of an acrid taste to the otherwise full-bodied profile; a bitterness emblematic of that particular category of coffee. There’s an oddly specific reason for this: over-extraction. The coffee was extremely fine-grained, almost a powder, and when that happens, the coffee interacts with water rapidly, with organic compounds rapidly giving an astringent and almost rubbery flavor. It’s not a sign of bad coffee; it’s a niche taste that some aficionados prefer. It’s not normally my cup of tea (heh), but sometimes I’m in the mood for a touch of the exotic. I’ll freeze this for when I’m in a Mediterranean mood.

taste of the Mediterranean…

Hue. That was the name of the third roast I sampled. It came courtesy of BKG Coffee Roasters. You might remember them. They’re a small batch roaster out of Brooklyn, NY that we sampled over a year ago. Hue is a dark roast, but there’s no harshness here. In fact, I drink it specifically as a neutral force when I’m not in the mood for anything niche. The package advertises dark chocolate, molasses, and cherry notes. A quick whiff of the whole beans reveals the cocoa long before it hits your taste buds. That said, it wasn’t overpowering in the mouthfeel; when taken in its entirety the roast was quite mellow.

back to bkg…

Coffee number four was a pure Costa Rican ground coffee courtesy of Adventure Awaits Coffee Roasters, distributed by Great Lakes Coffee Roasters of Buffalo, New York. This was much more a traditional Central American medium roast. Hue’s rich chocolate and brown sugar were nowhere to be found here, replaced with that characteristic nut flavor coupled with an odd (but welcome) vegetal quality. This is a coffee I could drink daily. That’s oddly ironic for a coffee roaster called “Adventure Awaits,” but I’ve concluded that it’s tailor-made for the adventurous sort.

a new adventure…

Have you ever had a dark roast that drank like a breakfast blend? Me neither, until now. It was Third in the Burg. It’s an event every third Friday of the month in Harrisburg, PA. The focus is on art galleries and curio shops; they’re open that night throughout the midtown and downtown areas and often hold free events. The famous Broad Street Market is also open and is mostly a space for food and drink. Today, however, there was coffee.

The company I’d never heard of before. Misty Mountain Coffee is the name, and they’re from Richland, PA. That’s way down the road towards Reading (‘the road’ being Route 422). The town sounds familiar. Oh, now I remember! This is near Timber Creek, a coffeehouse featured on this blog months ago. I love the eastern countryside of Pennsylvania. Endless fields and small towns with deep histories create a tapestry. Misty Mountain’s roast room is in Richland itself, and they pride themselves on sustainably sourced coffees from Central America.

The woman selling their beans at the Market (along with some other wares) told me a fascinating story. She spoke of Jamaican coffee being offered by them. In fact, one of them was called “Jamaican-Me Crazy.” I opted for the dark roast, and interestingly enough, it felt way more like a breakfast blend, even as the first sips betrayed its deep, dark Central American roots. Even so, I wondered how such a naturally inherently earthy and aromatic variety was made to yield such a supple mouthfeel. Clearly, a trip to Richland is in order.

That’s all for this round. See everyone in either late January or early February when (let’s hope) there’s a break in the deep freeze and I can get back on the road, heading back into the Wilds! Until then, stay caffeinated, dear readers…

That was a mouthful. As it turns out, so was the coffee. So were many things at Lower Paxton Christkindlmarkt last Saturday in downtown Linglestown, PA. A bit of background is in order here. Around this time of year, we start preparing for the holidays and begin shedding festivals. The second part of that sentence is the bothersome one. There isn’t much to do out and about after autumn and its pumpkin spice glories have passed. Cold weather and soaking rain keep people indoors. Then, the snow comes.

I, for one, would be thrilled to attend an outdoor event in the middle of winter. A beer tasting in a snowy field on a crisp clear day sounds like heaven. Give a band some heaters, and we have a plan. There is a festival near here like this in some respects called Ullr Fest. That happens in early December at Ski Roundtop. Vikings lighting a bonfire combine with endless food in a Yule extravaganza. But I want a summer festival in winter. I want tents and vendors and food trucks. I want beer, wine, and free samples of everything.

Enter Lower Paxton Christkindlmarkt. Scroll down to the photos, and you’ll see what I mean. Over a hundred vendors crowd the main drag in the middle of winter for one long day of shopping in a winter wonderland. I waited all year for this festival. I thought it was huge last year, but this year they outdid themselves. The fire hall housed an awesome craft beer far, hot chocolate was plentiful, and extra tents spread well beyond even last year’s expedient expansions. Also, there was coffee. Good coffee. Independent Ground Coffee.

We’re getting in on the ground floor of something very new here. Independent Ground has only been in operation since September. Apparently born of the Rational Republic podcast, Independent Ground Coffee is a homegrown institution in the making for Linglestown. Linglestown is (of course) already known for successful coffee operations. I’ve made no secret that my favorite coffeehouse, St. Thomas Roasters, is also here.

Thankfully, Independent Ground offers something entirely different from St. Thomas, giving the business a role in this otherwise crowded market. First, they’re not technically a coffeehouse…at least, they’re not a coffeehouse yet. Operating out of a building in downtown Linglestown, they ship their coffee everywhere, with free shipping for local deliveries. The various roasts are sourced from a diverse array of roasters all across the county. That’s apropos since Independent Ground fills a specific niche: They’re overtly and proudly patriotic.

That’s not unknown in the coffee community, though it does position them as outsiders given the nature of coffeehouse culture as an institution. Traditionalism is often shunned or reduced to aesthetics in favor of embracing headlong change in all its forms. Not all coffee culture is quick to discount historical cultural expressions, though. Black Rifle is another famous patriotic coffee outfit. They’re well known for opposing certain postmodern policies and supporting police and the military, for example. It’s not as if the past and future are incompatible, though some believe them to be.

Independent Ground is a bit more mellow and universal in its patriotism, mentioning up front on the website a desire to unite people. Ironically, recognizing a common core of humanity beyond tribal identity used to consistently be the heart and soul of a progressive worldview. That’s a discussion (a rant, rather) for another time. Let’s let the beauty of this day and the pure joy of this Hallmark-esque event transcend the manufactured banality and absurdity of politics.

After all, the spirit of the Enlightenment, born as it was in continental coffeehouses, was nothing less than a revolt against ideology itself; a rebellion against both unquestioned/unevolved tradition and unreasoning desire, all in the name of the fact that objective truth (moral and physical) by definition unites us regardless of religion or heritage; the true nature of E Pluribus Unum. Food for thought.

Speaking of consumables, the coffee I had this afternoon was called (appropriately) the Small Town Brew. Unlike most coffees, it blended dark (Columbian), medium (Costa Rican), and light (Guatemalan). Normally, a roast that falls into one category will venture into the next to offset some of its more distinctive characteristics with additions from an adjacent kind. A dark roast will be blended with a medium roast to add balance and nuance to an otherwise bold profile. Blending three together is a little perilous.

It was also delicious. An ambitious blend like this could have gone incredibly bad or very good. In this case, it went splendidly. What happened was (as near as I can tell) the addition of a light roast permitted the flavor of the original beans to shine while the dark roast added hefty acidity which was then balanced by the inclusion of the creamy medium. Whew! It’s nice to be on a roller coaster that doesn’t make me sick. I’ll be looking for this blend again. A few were being offered and I didn’t have the chance to try them all. Something tells me there’s much more to come from these fine folks in the future. For now, it’s back to holiday shopping for me.

I’ll return to the road after Christmas, assuming the car survives repeated freezing and thawing. Until then, I wish all my readers Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Yule, Solstice, etc. The magic of this time of year, after all, is universal. Savor it.

Until next year, stay caffeinated.

the crowd…

the endless tents…

the coffeehouse…

the spread…

the coffee…

the extra coffee…