Peace Coffee Blog
Ride the Peace Wave
Introducing a microwavable bean roasting system! I noticed a bag of beans sitting on my microwave and thought, why not offer Peace Coffee—but freshly roasted in a jiffy We think our customers will have a great time trying to achieve the perfect roast at home. It doesn’t get fresher than Peace Wave! - Lee Wallace
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New B Corp Score
The process towards becoming a B Corporation starts with a comprehensive impact assessment in which a corporation must score at least 80. Here's the breakdown of our new score!
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Espresso Many Ways
Developed as a means of making small amounts of coffee quickly and repeatedly so Italian bars could serve shots of freshly brewed coffee as quickly as they poured grappa, espresso is a complex drink built around large scales and repeatability. So why would anyone attempt to make it at home? To be honest, there’s nothing quite like an espresso or an espresso drink from your favorite café. No amount of finagling will turn something that comes out of a drip brewer into the same rich and syrupy experience as an espresso shot. While there are many great places to get a Peace Coffee espresso drink out there, we, as Minnesotans, understand that whether it be due to a Polar Vortex or just not wanting to put on pants, sometimes leaving the house is a Herculean effort. So here’s what to know when you’re pondering a home espresso set-up, from the budget-friendly options to the elaborate set-up of your dreams. The Original Bialetti Moka Pot – Under $50 The classic “stovetop espresso machine” that lets you brew the European way is the Bialetti Moka pot. This uses the pressure of evaporating water vapor to press the water through the puck of coffee in the center of the pot. When used well and dialed in properly, it will make a delightful stronger-than-drip kinda-sorta-espresso-like drink that works beautifully to make a café latté in one’s home, and creates a fun and nostalgic atmosphere along the way. Travels Well AeroPress and Bellman Stovetop Steamer – $150 The AeroPress can’t technically make “real” espresso, but it does make a potent concentrated coffee drink that can be mixed with hot steamed milk from the Bellman Stovetop Steamer. This creates something that might not be a cappuccino in a snob’s eye, but it’ll look like one, smell like one, and most importantly, taste like one. Just Getting Your Feet Wet Breville Bambino – $350 The Bambino does a lot of things well for not a lot of money or counter space. It might not rival your favorite espresso drink at your local café, but it will get you the better part of the way without a lot of deep espresso knowledge or financial investment. The Intense Hobbyist Gaggia Classic Pro – $450 At first glance, the Gaggia Classic Pro can seem a little clunky and difficult to use, but with time, patience, and effort to learn some barista skills, you’ll be dropping perfect shots and steaming gorgeous milk to wow your household–and yourself!–with some delicious espresso drinks. Breville Barista Pro – $850 The Barista Pro grinds coffee beautifully, extracts it beautifully, and steams milk pretty dang well too. It has all the bells and whistles one might want from a home espresso machine including an incorporated grinder, included tamp, volumetric controls and a digital shot timer, making it a cinch to make a beautiful espresso drink even while still pretty sleepy and/or lacking in barista skills and knowledge. Never Want to Spend Money in a Coffee Shop Ever Again It’s a tie – Rocket Appartamento OR Breville Dual Boiler $1600-$1700 These machines will crank out beverages beautifully and quickly, can steam milk and extract espresso at the same time, and are built sturdily enough to keep running for years after purchase. The Breville Dual Boiler has more features like volumetric shot controls and a built-in shot timer but the Rocket Appartamento is built with sturdier parts and is easier to fix. You really can’t go too wrong with either. For Those Whose Dream is to Open Their Own Coffee Shop La Marzocco Linea Mini – $5900 Built like a tank with professional replaceable parts with a giant and powerful boiler and excellently engineered temperature and pressure controls, this machine can make 40 drinks a day that taste spectacular and keep on ticking for decades down the line. If you’re a serious “money-is-no-object” shopper this is the “buy it for not just my lifetime” machine.
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Holiday Cookie Pairing
Spritz Cookies These sweet, buttery cookies are coffee’s best friend! While we would never try to beat grandma’s recipe, this NYT recipe comes in clutch if you need a refresher. Gather the fam, break out your press, and brew a big pot of coffee to keep the cookie cheer going all day long. Spritzes pair well with our new Limited Edition Peace and Love Holiday Blend! This light roast has a wonderful buttery flavor that pairs well with your favorite pastry…or Spirtz cookie, if you know what we mean. 😉 Chocolate Molasses Cookies We recommend this NYT recipe – These cookies give off a grown-up taste with the bitterness of the cocoa and molasses play off of the spiciness of the ginger. These cookies pair well with our “grown up” coffees, the robust and smoky French roast or comforting decaf Morning Glory. Peanut Butter Blossoms Let’s be real, you probably have your own recipe but if you’ve misplaced it, we use this one! – This is the cookie no one is ever going to be disappointed to see in your holiday exchanges. A well-loved absolute classic, we’ve been known to go a little rouge and incorporate hazelnut spread into our batches from time to time. The roast flavor from the peanut butter pairs well with nutty coffees like our smooth Twin Cities blend, carmelley Black Squirrel Espresso, or signature dark roast Tree Hugger. Holiday M&M Cookies A tried and true crowd-pleaser, we love this recipe! The red and green M&Ms add a festive touch to your cookie platters…so we’ll pair one festive addition with another… try it with our seasonal Snowshoe Brew.
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Move Over Mint
Introducing Mouth Peace! Our latest line of caffeinated goods is here just in time for April ;-)
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How To Clean Your Coffee Gear
There are few things as disappointing as doing everything right for your cup of coffee—carefully selecting the beans, measuring them properly, measuring the exact amount of water, grinding them to the perfect size, and carefully managing their extraction into water—and still getting a cup that tastes…uninspiring. If you feel you did everything right but there’s an ashy, burnt, or medicinal taste; oftentimes the culprit is dirty coffee equipment and it might be time to learn how to clean your coffee gear. Coffee equipment cleaning easily goes by the wayside, as it doesn’t have the kind of urgency as a dirty plate or skillet does. Even still, your coffee brewing equipment is worth cleaning. The difference it will make in your morning mug should be enough to help you remember to do it on the regular. Do you want to learn how to clean coffee equipment the right way? Here’s how we keep our precious tools clean! Make Your Mug Happy In a few simple steps, easily learn how to clean coffee gear so that your coffee tastes as good as it should every time. Clean Your Coffee Brewer When deciding if you need to learn how to clean your coffee gear, our advice can be broken down into one single phrase: If brewed coffee touches it, it should be cleaned with soap and water at least once a week. The exact same kind of soap you use on your dishes is adequate for the task of cleaning your coffee brewing materials. Be it your Auto-Drip brewer, Chemex, French Press, Moka Pot, or your Bripe; a little soap, water, and scrubbing will go a long way. The only issue with using dish soap to clean your coffee gear is that it also requires scrubbing, and sometimes that poses a problem with brewing devices that have hard-to-reach nooks and crannies. In times like this, coffee machine cleaner is the solution. Coffee machine cleaning powder has additional surfactants that dissolve coffee oils with a good long soak. Make a solution of 1 tsp cleaning powder to 1 liter of hot water and soak your gear for 15 minutes. This generally does the trick perfectly, even for the most caked-on gunk. Anything in your brewing arsenal that can be removed or taken apart should be removed or taken apart to scrub or soak, and if you’re fortunate enough to have a home espresso machine, it should be backflushed. Clean Your Coffee Grinder Grinders are likely that it’s easiest to forget to clean. In burr-style grinders, the actual grinding action happens in a chamber that is not easily seen unless you take the grinder apart, and blade-style grinders commonly do not come apart easily to be washed. However, dirty grinders will introduce off-flavors into your coffee, so if you don’t remember the last time you cleaned your grinder, now’s a good time to learn how to clean your coffee gear. The rule of thumb for coffee grinder cleaning is that if it’s made of plastic and is removable, it should be cleaned with soap and water and allowed to completely air dry before reassembling. If it’s made of metal, it should only be cleaned with dry materials. The Baratza grinders that we sell have removable hoppers, hopper lids, and grinds drawers, as well as a gasket that feeds beans into the grinding chamber. Each of these would be considered “removable plastic”. Once these are removed, the upper burr carrier can easily be lifted out so that it can be cleaned, and the lower burr and grind chamber are exposed allowing them to be cleaned. Baratza includes a grinding brush that’s designed to clean these, but if that has been lost, a stiff nylon bristle brush, a wooden skewer, or even a toothbrush will work great. Just make sure to keep everything dry and wipe it out with a clean dry towel or rag once you’re done. If you find that cleaning your burrs or blades with a nylon brush and a skewer is tedious, good news! Coffee professionals agree, and as a result, have developed a far easier way. You may have heard about the hack of grinding rice through your grinder to clean it. This is technically true–it totally works–but dry rice is also very hard and will dull the edges of your burrs or blades if done regularly. You can also use a breakfast cereal well known for how it snaps, crackles, and pops to clean it, but it can also leave behind a residue that will leave the flavor of that cereal in your coffee for the next few brews. The best option is grinder cleaner tablets. These are made specifically to clean grinders and do so easily with minimal effect on the burrs while leaving behind no residue. If you haven’t cleaned your gear recently, it can be amazing how much better your coffee will taste the next time through. If this inspired you to learn how to clean your coffee gear, the next time you taste your morning coffee try and hold onto how nice it tastes. Let that exceptional brightness, sweetness, and complexity without any ashy or muddy flavors be your guiding light to remind you to keep cleaning regularly, and to let your coffee be all that it can be. Worth Cleaning Fav! Chemex 6 Cup Rated 5.00 out of 5 $47 Add to Cart Baratza Encore Conical Burr Grinder Rated 5.00 out of 5 $150 Add to Cart French Press – 34 oz $40 Add to Cart
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2021: On Down The Road
Looking back at 2021 with a mix of happiness and a sober reminder of the difficulties of this time.
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2020: Can You Hear Me Now?
A recap of the year that no one asked for, but ended up being kind of like a half-caff cup of coffee.
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We love you MPLS
Our city and many others across the nation are experiencing mountains of hardship, loss, and hurt right now. This past weekend was filled with grieving, unrest, protest, and also a call for justice and peace to be restored. We are fortunate that all our locations are unharmed, but the immediate areas around us have been severely damaged and will take much time to rebuild. Along with the businesses still standing in our area, our roastery is going into its fifth day with no power due to the inability to safely dispatch the city electricians. Until electricity is restored and we can assure the safety of the roastery for our staff, delivery team, and shipping partners, we are unable to fulfill orders. We know that you plan to have your coffee order within a certain window of time, especially our coffee subscriptions, but we hope you can be patient and understanding as we navigate a difficult situation full of heartache unlike anything most of us have seen in our lifetime. On Friday of last week our CEO, alongside, a team of amazing staff, former employees, and vendor partners worked together to move all of our inventory off-site, and also rerouted a delivery of green coffee from our farmer partners to offsite warehouses. Both the trucks and the space to store this product were kindly offered by other local coffee and beverage companies. We are immensely thankful for the show of support from these fellow business owners. This reflects the general acts of goodness that were not shown on local and national news this past weekend. Our community is full of kind and beautiful people that came out to sweep our streets, put out fires, move debris, and provide essential supplies like food, masks, diapers, and medicine to those in need. We’ve also been witness to continuous peaceful protests demanding justice for George Floyd. We love our city and have faith that together we can repair, heal, and make changes for the better. Sweeping Our Streets As we wait for our power to be restored, we are taking a moment to reflect, check in with our loved ones, march and call for justice, and look for ways to give back by delivering food and essential supplies to community hubs. If you live nearby, grab a winter shovel, a push broom, garbage bags, masks, and gloves and find a local group to assist in organized and much appreciated sweeping up of our streets. Join in a Clean Up Handing Out Supplies There are many folks who are in serious need of essential supplies due to damage and closure of grocery stores, big-box retailers, pharmacies, and further difficulty while public transit is paused. If you can help, here is a list of places you can donate supplies and/or money to in our immediate area. Groups That Need Resources We sincerely hope and ask you to please continue to support our business and those of so many others in our city that are working to rebuild, ensure safety, and provide their goods and services again as soon as they possibly can. We need healthy, vibrant, diverse, equitable communities to survive and thrive and it comes down to all of us doing the work together to make this world a better place. Heads Up, Seeking Justice We know the hardships for our business, the physical structures and streets, and many of our residents will pass. Things will get better. But what we know now, more than ever, is justice, equality, and peace must be our collective aim. The marginalized parts of our community, and communities across America, are crying out and being heard. To answer those cries, justice for George Floyd must be served. Justice For George
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Our City Is Hurting
For almost 25 years, Peace Coffee has been roasting coffee with love in the heart of Minneapolis. Our roastery and our flagship coffee shop are both two blocks from the main artery of our community, Lake Street. It connects our residents from Bde Maka Ska to the Mississippi River and is a treasure. This stretch of the city has innumerable small, independent businesses as well as big-box retailers that provide essential items and services to the area. It’s where countless nonprofit and community organizations hold space to listen to, gain insight on, and provide for our community. It’s also the location of the third precinct police station, where the officers involved in the killing of George Floyd report. Since Tuesday night, emotions and actions have overflowed, and spilled over into the businesses and properties along Lake Street and beyond. With multiple fires, irreparable damage to property, theft, and also injuries incited by rubber bullets, tear gas, and physical violence, we are simply at a loss. But Still Love Remains Despite the hardships and time it will take to repair businesses throughout the area, many shop owners have stressed that they can replace things, but not human lives. Ingebretsen’s, a 99-year-old business located on Lake Street, is a welcome example of how compassion and love usurp hate and injustice, as they boarded up their broken windows and painted MLK Quotes and hearts on their exterior. Also, community members are assisting with the cleanup efforts. Spread the love or help businesses along Lake Street clean up. Act For Lake Street Gone But Not Forgotten There have been many peaceful acts of demonstrations on our streets calling for justice. People are marching together, building memorials and painting murals to honor George Floyd, and donating to organizations working to dismantle racism and to support Floyd’s family and loved ones. First and foremost, use your voice to help seek justice for George. If you are able, consider giving to organizations on the ground that need our help. A Call For Justice We ask you to keep our city, its businesses, and its people in your thoughts as we try to navigate a situation that is part of a systematic issue around relations to power, race, and inequality. All things which matter deeply to Peace Coffee because the heart of the fair trade coffee we sell is a hope that we can do things differently and change the narrative when it comes to equality and justice for all. More Ways To Help Take Action MN Loaves & Fishes MN Reclaim The Block
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A Word From Lee: Adapting To Uncertainty
When new challenges come, we've always adapted and worked for our community, even more so now.
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2019: A Decade Gone By
Looking back at the amazing things that came our way, and the amazing coffees we sent your way, in 2019 fills us with gratitude for our place in the coffee universe.
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Peace Coffee Is In Great Hands
By now you know we have some pretty incredible things in store for 2018, but strap in because this caffeinated journey of ours is forging a new path. As you may know, Peace Coffee has been owned by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) since the beginning. It’s been a great ride, but recent discussions have led to IATP and Peace Coffee agreeing that it would be mutually beneficial to both parties if they were to sell the company to a new ownership group. The priority for everyone throughout this decision-making process was to find a like-minded buyer that could continue our mission and culture without fail. Who better to do that than one of our own? That’s right, our own Queen Bean and leader for the last 11 years, Lee Wallace, loves this company, its mission, and its culture so much that she decided to buy the whole operation in partnership with her friend and new business partner, Kent Pilakowski. A New Era for Peace Coffee You’re probably sitting there thinking, who is this Kent Pilakowski character? I haven’t heard of him before… Well, he’s a successful Minneapolis based entrepreneur and management executive with over 20 years of experience in the consumer packaged goods industry. He’s passionate about our mission and sees this as an opportunity to make a difference in the world, and set the foundation for his children to grow up around a socially-minded business that they can be proud to be a part of for years to come. As the new owners, Lee and Kent will work diligently to build upon the success Peace Coffee has experienced to date as an innovative social enterprise. While this change means that Peace Coffee will no longer be owned by a non-profit, it doesn’t mean we’re changing our focus from being a mission-based social enterprise that aims to have a lasting positive impact on the world. Staying True to Our Roots The foundation of Peace Coffee is our great coffee, along with our unique and innovative culture, and our mission to support the livelihoods of everyone in the chain from farm to cup while protecting and enhancing the environment in which the coffee is produced. It will continue to be our number one priority to have an active involvement in our supply chain, and look for ways to deepen our impact on coffee-growing communities. Along with improving the lives of coffee growing families through our industry-leading ethical purchasing practices, we will continue to demonstrate our leadership in the industry through transparency, sharing information on best practices, and collaborating on projects with other like-minded organizations. Overall, this change will help ensure we continue to lead the way and inspire others to follow in our footsteps. Peace Coffee has set the tone for innovation in organic, fair trade coffee for 20 years now and we fully expect this to continue to for the next 20 and beyond! Focused and Ready to Lead Under our new ownership, we will work even harder to stay ahead of the pack and maintain a focus on sustainable operations, while looking for ways to continuously build upon what we’ve been doing for years. One way we are doing this is through our recent B Corp certification. That’s right, we are now a certified B Corporation! This certification not only demonstrates our leadership in sustainability but provides the framework for improvements, enabling us to further enhance our farmer and environment-first mission. Over time, our enduring commitment to building upon our mission will further our ability to buy and sell in other regions, expand our retail presence, and initiate other major changes that will help grow our impact. We’re excited to have you help us usher in this new era of Peace Coffee. Our continued growth and success will mean better livelihoods for more farmers, partners, and staff. Thanks for your support over the last 20 years and we look forward to an even better 20 years ahead! Media Coverage of Our Announcement: Star Tribune Minnesota Business Minneapolis St. Paul Biz Journal WCCO – Channel 4 Daily Coffee News City Pages Twin Cities Business Magazine Southwest Journal
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The Art of Turkish Coffee
If you're looking to discover the art of Turkish coffee, look no further! In this blog post we break down more than you thought you wanted to know about this magical brew method. Just looking for a quick brew guide without all the fun facts? Click here to check that out!
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A 40,000 Pound Milestone
Yesterday, with much fanfare and hard work, we received a 40,000 pound cargo container of Guatemalan coffee beans. While we receive deliveries as large as this every few weeks, this container was shipped directly from Apecaform Coffee Cooperative in Guatemala right to our roastery door, bypassing other stops along the way. The coffee was harvested in late spring, put into 275 bags, each weighing over 150 pounds, and packed into a shipping container. The container went by truck to Puerto Barrios, where it was loaded onto a ship for a journey to New York. In New York, it cleared customs and was transferred onto a train to Minneapolis, where it was delivered to our roastery doors by truck. Unloading was an all-hands-on deck situation and took most of the morning. This container is significant to us not only because it came from our longest standing trading partner, but it is also our first direct whole container purchase since the first shipment from Mexico that got us started in 1996. That initial similar-sized purchase, took over 9 months to sell. Now 40,000 pounds represents a small fraction of what we will buy in 2016. We couldn’t imagine a better way kick off our 20th year year in business then by honoring our mission to continually buy more coffee from small scale farmers at fair prices. Having already traveled thousands of miles from Guatemala, these beans will soon be will be roasted and sent out, some by bicycle, to stores and coffee shops in the Twin Cities and beyond. Share in this milestone with us, pick up a bag of Guatemalan Dark Roast completing the coffee’s journey from farm to mug.
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