Many of us start our mornings with a classic "cup of joe" and we’re no exception. We have three different coffee makers in our break room. Our love for coffee doesn’t stop there either. We offer custom branding on traditional mugs, metal travel mugs, and even a mug made of recycled coffee grounds because we think you should be able to drink it in style! So whether you’re a classic coffee drinker and your go-to is Folgers in a coffee pot or you prefer a natural processed Ethiopian Wush Wush through your pour-over, we can all agree that coffee is pretty amazing. And so it's history! The coffee industry can be broken down into three waves, each representing a different era of coffee.
First Wave
First Wave coffee is where we get those big store brands such as Folgers and Maxwell House. This coffee is designed so that consumers can take it out of the bin and put it in their coffee makers. No grinding, no origins, no hassle.
Second Wave
Second Wave coffee emerged as a response to the First Wave world of "instant coffee". Companies like Starbucks or Dunkin entered and brought consumers terms like latte, cappuccino, espresso, and french press. Origins started being put on bags of coffee and there was a push for the cafe experience. Shops wanted you to come to them for your specialty coffee.
Third Wave
Third Wave coffee is where we started seeing small local coffee shops and small-batch roasters enter the industry. There is a greater emphasis on origins and processes, with a shift from Ethiopian coffee to Ethiopian Worka Sakaro Natural. Roasters begin by listing regions, varietals, processing methods, and tasting notes.
A Shot of Inspiration
No matter the wave of coffee you find yourself a part of, there are some great ways to use your leftover coffee instead of just tossing it in the garbage. We got inspired by our friends at Spector & Co after they showed us their recycled coffee grounds travel mug (linked below) and wanted to find other uses for our leftover grounds. A great use is composting. Whether you have a large composting area in your backyard garden or a small bin in your kitchen, tossing your daily dregs in will help get all those other things breaking down. But maybe composting isn’t your style. It can be a little messy for sure. If you have house plants, coffee grounds are a great thing to add into the soil along with some fertilizer! The grounds will add a little boost of nutrients for the plants to take in, hopefully helping the next time you forget to water them.
Home Brew
Who would we be, talking of coffee and not providing you with some of our favorite homebrew recipes! So grab your favorite branded mug and warm up the kettle!
Pour-Over
- Bring your water to 204 F and pre-wet your filter.
- Weigh out 20 grams of freshly roasted coffee, within the last three weeks is best, and grind it to the size of kosher salt. (Ethiopian and Guatemalan coffees are great in pour-overs)
- With the ground coffee in your filter pour 40-45 grams of water, this is called the bloom, and wait 30 seconds.
- Now you’ll pour until you reach 120 grams.
- At the 1-minute mark, you’ll pour 100 more grams and repeat this every 30 seconds until you reach 320 grams (This is a 1:16 ratio; 1 gram of coffee bean per 16 grams of water).
- Wait for the remaining water to drain through the coffee grounds and enjoy a delicious cup of coffee!
Drip Maker
- We’ll be sticking with our 1:16 ratio so convert based on the number of cups you’ll be making (128 grams equal 1 cup).
- Grab another freshly roasted coffee and grind it similar to sea salt (Colombian or Honduran coffee is great for drip makers).
- Now you’ll slap that brew button and wait for that amazing coffee.
- Once it’s brewed, grab a travel mug from Spector & Co made from recycled coffee beans and take on the world!
Psst…Here are some of our favorite coffee shops/roasters!
Oaks Coffee House: Chattanooga, TN
Cadence Coffee: Chattanooga, TN
Be Caffeinated: Chattanooga, TN
Mad Priest Coffee Roasters: Chattanooga, TN
Valor Coffee Roasters: Alpharetta, GA
K Brew: Knoxville, TN
Mahalo Coffee Roasters: Knoxville, TN
