Drakes Coffee » Coffee

Increase in Coffee Prices

admin — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 02:14:41 +0000

Everything seems to be more expensive. Since mid-summer green coffee (pre-roasted) has increased 40-60%. Since 2004 when we began our roasting business our price has been $12/lb for all our selections except for the exotics. We have no choice but to increase our coffee prices. There are two options: keep our weight the same and increase the price or keep our price the same and decrease the weight. We are choosing to reduce the weight to 12 oz bags and holding the price – this results to a 25% increase.

Thank you for your support – John

Estate Grown

admin — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 01:43:11 +0000

We have selected estate grown coffee beans exclusively (except for Espresso blend). We have found exceptional quality from estate grown beans. We believe this exclusivity comes through in the cup based on the pride a single farm has compared to joining other farms in the region which most likely diminishes the beans characteristics. The specialty grade coffee has become very competitive with more estates bringing their product to market in this direct way. Even a small roaster such as ourselves are able to establish direct relationships with growers to learn more about their product as well as to purchase. Availability of estate grown coffee is growing and we are excited to provide them in our listing.

Welcome to the new site!

admin — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:53:28 +0000

Welcome to our new web site.

There are two primary purposes of our new web site. One is to provide you with current coffee selections on the front page – allowing you more convenient shopping.

The other purpose is an opportunity for me to share with you what’s happening in my world of bicycles & coffee.

I happen to have two interesting jobs. My bicycle job is owning & operating BikeWorks. My wife (Joan) and I started BikeWorks in January 1988 with the intention of providing the Toledo area top-level bicycles and equipment with genuine service. To accomplish this it is important for me to evaluate these world class bikes and such, so that my opinion has some sort of creditability. Certainly this part of the business is a real pleasure.

My other job is roasting coffee beans. We (my wife) started Drake’s Fine Coffee Roasting in January 2004 by purchasing a Diedrich roaster. This was more or less a selfish indulgence to provide me with unlimited fresh roasted coffee. After months of learning very basic principals of roasting I began serving our BikeWorks customers free coffee while watching their facial responses and listening to their comments. This feedback was very helpful for me to adjust my roasting profiles. Five years later I still have much to learn in the world of roasting and challenge myself to educate my palate to the nuances of tasting coffee.

The other half of roasting is establishing relationships with growers that not only produce premier quality beans but also operate their farms with passion and fairness. So as you will see by our coffee offerings most of our beans are estate grown. Estate grown beans typically have very small yields that allow small roasters such as myself to purchase directly from them. This relationship is typically not available to the mega size companies as their consumption is beyond what the farm can supply.

So, riding state of the art bicycles, hanging out in a bike shop, roasting and pulling shots is not a bad way of spending ones time. I hope you will enjoy our new design.

Thanks and looking forward to satisfying your desires in cycling and/or a quality brew.

John Drake