drinkable reno tahoe
CAFFEINATION CREATION
Reno-Tahoe’s coffee market offers energizing options.
WRITTEN BY HEIDI BETHEL
PHOTOS BY ASA GILMORE OR ILLUSTRATION BY BAMBI EDLUND
As you enjoy your hot cup of joe on this cool winter day, we celebrate Reno-Tahoe as a caffeinated haven that hosts a corporate giant as well as many up-and-coming and already established small-batch coffee roasting companies.
Believe it or not, one of the largest coffee roasting facilities in the world is in Minden. Coffee giant Starbucks has been roasting at the Carson Valley Roasting Plant since 2005. The company’s mega-complex houses four roasters operating 24 hours a day to supply more than 18,000 Starbucks locations stretching from Los Angeles to Houston, not to mention the plethora of Starbucks in the Silver and Golden states along the way.
Then there’s the amalgamation of small roasters in our area, including Alpen Sierra Coffee Co. in Minden; Magpie Coffee Roasters, The Hub, Kolika Coffee, and Wood-Fire Roasted Coffee Co. in Reno; Sierra Pacific Coffee Co. in Truckee; Coffee Connexion in Tahoe City; San Rafael Coffee Co. in Carson City; and Blind Dog Coffee in Gardnerville. Each of these local companies offers its own extraordinary take on the ideal brew.
In addition to roasters, a couple of coffee equipment designers and manufacturers call the area home. Coffee Per, based in Fallon, manufactures the coveted San Franciscan Roaster used by master roasters in Northern Nevada, California, Papua New Guinea, and beyond (we featured the company in our fall 2010 edition). Finally, Carl Staub of Agtron Inc. in Reno designs and builds coffee-roasting control systems and trains students around the world about the scientific methods of coffee. He says a large percentage of his students are among the best roasters on earth.
All in all, our patch of land in and around the Sierra Nevada continues to become quite the coffee aficionado’s playground.
As Mark Sewell, roaster at Eldorado Hotel Casino in Reno, puts it: “To the coffee purist, our local coffee industry is the best you can get. These companies are doing some great things to bring dynamic flavors and make this area a true hotspot.”
Read the following coffee features for details about Sewell’s offerings at Eldorado Hotel Casino, as well as stories on Wood-Fire Roasted Coffee and Magpie in Reno. But before turning the page, be sure to top off that mug with a nice, toasty brew because these experts surely will perk you up into a pleasant coffee-spiked mood.
Heidi Bethel is a local freelance writer who is excited to see our local foodie movement continue its upswing, with some deliciously roasted drinks to go along with it.
