Ironbound Cold Brew Coffee…let’s just say it has taken off! We, at WB Law Coffee, did our research and the #coldbrewcoffee craze is more than a trend…it’s an everlasting fixture in the coffee marketplace. Sales of cold brew coffee have skyrocketed to the tune of $7.9m, a 115% increase between 2014 and 2015. Both sales and enthusiasm for this cold coffee beverage are on the up and up. With 66% more caffeine we have coffee lovers swooning. But we didn’t make just any old cold brew. We put in the time. Ironbound cold brew coffee by WB Law Coffee in Newark.(Aaron Houston, NJBIZ) We took courses on brewing, safety standards, cold beverage storing and shipping. We outfitted space, right here...

SPECIALTY IS BREWING Around the same time as the Beatniks, a Dutch-born gentleman named Alfred Peet moved to the United States. His family owned a coffee roasting company back in Holland. He moved to San Francisco where he struggled to find a stable career. His coffee background allowed him to see an opportunity to go against the grain and start producing GREAT cups of coffee. In 1966 he founded a company called Peets Coffee and Tea in Berkley, California. Peet then mentored three gentlemen, Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker, who wanted to start their own café chain on his style of roasting. In 1971, these three men moved to Seattle and opened up a shop called Starbucks. A...

THE DARK TIMES “The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry.”(Brooks in The Shawshank Redemption, 1994, Darabont, Frank) This is a perfect quote to summarize the U.S. during the 1900’s, especially post WW2. The post-war economic boom was referred to as the Golden Age of Capitalism. $200 billion in war bonds matured, and GI’s were given the opportunity to go to school through the GI Bill. With this educated workforce and the expansion of labor unions, wealth in our country grew. With the country in such a boom, nobody was stopping to look around and smell the roses. As a result, coffee became just a “commodity.” By 1958, most instant coffee contained about 50% robusta coffee (Pendergrast,...

JAVA: UPDATED The early 20th century brought advances of electricity and gas utilities revolutionizing the coffee industry. Natural gas could now be piped into large commercial coffee roasters, doing away with roasters powered by coal and wood. My grandfather told me stories about how his father had wanted to convert his roaster to gas, fighting with the gas company to make the conversion on their property in Dunellen, NJ. Gas lines also enabled many large urns in the 1900’s to create the flame to heat the coffee-holding vessels. Today, you can still see propane-powered urns in lunch trucks and even some old diners. The coffee industry saw another development in San Francisco around 1900 when a company named Hill Brothers Coffee...

BREWING OFF THE GRID Now, if you’ve had the opportunity to travel deep into coffee growing regions, or even simply to go camping, you will have encountered conditions where electric and running water are not readily accessible. To roast green coffee and brew a cup is no simple task; For Colonists however, that was everyday life. So how did they make coffee without digital scales, timers, precisely calibrated espresso machines, or even ELECTRICITY!?!? And as they pushed westward, which in the next couple hundred years would become ground zero for a coffee movement, how did settlers roast, grind or even brew coffee? Early on, Colonists would buy green coffee beans from the local general store and put them in a...

Our own David W. Mendez, Vice President and 5th Generation Coffee Professional, provides a deep dive into coffee…from where it began, all along its journey to where it is today. America’s favorite hot beverage, coffee was discovered in the 8thor 9thcentury by an Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi and his “dancing goats.” His attention was drawn to these cherries, because after his goats would snack on them, they would become excited and start dancing and playing around. But how did these little coffee cherries journey from Northern Africa to the United States? And how did they become a $32 billion dollar a year industry (SCAA) and America’s second most consumed beverage? It’s a long story riddled with war, politics, and...