Caffeine Crawl - St. Louis

I spent the day yesterday traveling around the city of St. Louis and learning about coffee. The Caffeine Crawl was a well organized event and the different coffee shops were great to check out. We started at Kaldi's Roasting Facility and learned how the beans get their start. This was the only downside of the event in that there were too many people I the space and you could not hear the presentation but seeing the equipment was cool.

Next we broke into groups of 25 and headed to the different shops. Our Route started at Comet Coffee near Forest Park Community College and this was a cute little place. The people were friendly and the coffee was good. They also had some interesting ways of brewing a cup of coffee.

Next stop Kakao Chocolate and really all I can say is yum. Oh, and they had a fabulous window decoration going on!

Next we went to Sump where the coffee theory was just over my head. While I can appreciate it, I'm just not that into it.

Our next stop ended up being my favorite of the day, Northwest Coffee. Here we got to learn about the roasting process but since we were a smaller group we could all hear it and enjoy. The barista kept the coffee flowing and even offered lattes and espressos to our group. I felt more welcome and comfortable here than anywhere and their outdoor fire pit was just perfect for the chilly afternoon.

The last stop of the day was Kayak's Cafe and here we learned about a single cup brewing process that was interesting but more than I'm really willing to invest in time and process for a cup of coffee. The shop was nice and had some great looking food too.

The tour ended back at Kaldi's Roasting Facility and they had all the makings for a fun after party. Unfortunately I couldn't stay but I expect the good times continued. This was a fun way to spend the day and the planning of the event kept it on track so a win all the way around.