Which beer did we hide our coffee in this week?
We had the good fortune to collaborate with Side Project Brewing on their Derivation #5 release. The details of the release are on lockdown. All we can say is that it will happen soon at Side Project Cellars. It will be in bottles, but for consumption only on site in the Cellar. We will be there with Side Project brewer Corey King to say a couple of words on the coffee. Beyond the preceding teaser we can only say the beer is big – bring some friends to share it with.
(photo courtesy of Matt Piva / instagram:@pivasan)
Why only in the Cellar? The coffee notes – especially the aromatics – in these stouts fade quickly. Consumption on site is done to create an optimal drinking experience so that the full compliment of both the coffee and the beer can be enjoyed at the peak of their prowess.
From our side, we can go on ad infinitum about the coffee. To be respectful of your time however, we’ll just say the coffee is Colombian in origin and comes specifically from the regions Peindamo, Morales, Caldono, Torbio and Cajibio; which are all within the Cauca Department of Colombia. The coffee is the result of fewer than 100 small farmers who contribute to the Cooperativa Multienicia y Pluricultural de Pequenos Caficultores del Cauca or COMEPCAFE for short. The bulk of the harvest season is from March to June with a smaller ‘fly’ crop in November to December. COMEPCAFE is FLO (fair trade) certified. The coffee was grown at an elevation of 1500 to 1900 meters above sea level. The coffee varietals in this lot are Castillo, Caturra, Colombia, F6 and Typica. We source the green coffee through Café Imports in Minnesota.
What follows are a couple of fun St. Louis specific fact about the coffee and beer for your entertainment. Both Perennial Artisans Ales and Side Project Brewing used the same coffee in their stouts this year, Perennial in their non-barrel aged, non-variant Sump Stout released in January of 2016 and Side Project in Derivation #5. However, both used different coffee extractions (Perennial used a toddy and Side Project used the whole bean) to get the coffee in the beer. In addition to this upcoming release, Side Project created 5 different coffee stouts on draft using coffee from 5 different roasters for the Maplewood Caffeine Crawl that happens on April 2nd. Side Project’s draft from Blueprint uses coffee from the same COMEPCAFE cooperative from which we sourced our contributing coffee. It’s a big world, yet a local phenomenon.
We hoped you enjoyed all the beers we were lucky enough to collaborate on this during the 2015-2016 season. If you enjoy beer we couldn’t think of a better city to be in than the STL and we’re honored to collaborate with some of St. Louis’s best.