Novo Coffee Roastery Tour and Tasting 

Over the weekend, my wife and I went to a coffee tasting at Novo coffee. Novo coffee is a coffee roaster and wholesaler in Denver in the Rino district that's been around since 2002. They were recommended to me by the president of our Chamber of Commerce because if you partner with them they will train your baristas! I’ve been trying to connect with as many people in my community that are in both the coffee industry and comics industry to get a better understanding of what I'm getting myself into. A couple weeks ago I spoke to my city’s Chamber of Commerce and they set me up with some good resources. I’ve gotten my paperwork submitted to register with the state and get all the necessary documents for sales tax and whatnot so I can start the online shop already. While operating the online shop I’ll be trying to learn more and more about both industries and immerse myself in coffee and comics. 

As I talk about my Coffee and Comics concept, one of the things that I hear from a lot of people is if a shop has horrible coffee. Not often have people been telling me of a place that has great coffee. It seems as though when someone talks about a coffee shop they like, it’s more about the uniqueness or experience. I feel like the coffee industry has shifted a little bit in terms of no longer seeking good coffee, but instead something to show as content in our lives i.e. a very cute Instagrammable coffee shop at the expense of drinking shitty coffee.

A topic of discussion that I had with the president of the Chamber of Commerce, who was a previous coffee shop owner, was that great coffee is important. That’s when she recommended Novo coffee to me, I did a very quick search on Google to check them out and saw that they have a few locations. They also had workshops and tasting tours available that they host at their roastery, so I thought it would be fun to go on a tasting tour with my wife. With both of our parents in town it was a great time to take advantage of the free babysitting and go on a little coffee date. Honestly it was a fun experience that also provided us with valuable information. We got to look at a potential wholesaler that we can partner with that could provide us with our coffee as well as you know just going on a little date.

So on Friday we went down to the Rino district in the Denver area. Very cute community, very cute area, a few cute buildings on the street. Upon arriving we were introduced and told to ask as many questions as we had. It was great to see other people who wanted to open a shop that also chose to tour Novo. When we started the tour, the first thing we learned about was where they get their beans from, but more importantly how those beans are processed. There are four different ways to process beans, we got to see 3 of those 4 at the roastery. If you haven’t seen beans before they’re processed they sorta look like peanuts and have an earthy smell to them.

After that, we got to check out their amazing roasting machine, which is one of the most green conscious machines. One thing that I particularly liked about Novo coffee is that they roast to order, instead of roasting huge batches of coffee and storing it for who knows how long. Seeing the process was awesome, the machine they have can roast around 50 pounds of coffee in 15 minutes. Bringing us to learning about roasting levels. The light medium ones have the most flavor whereas the dark roasts lose that flavor because it’s being roasted longer/out of the bean. I had the complete opposite understanding, thinking the dark roast had the most flavor of the bean, so learning that little bit of tidbit information was great. We also saw their nitro coffee process which I’ve never had before and got to taste it. As soon as I saw all the nitro coffee canisters I had the idea to start a nitro coffee cart and post up in front of some comic shops; might be a good idea to promote the online shop too.

All in all, it was a very good tour to go on to learn the process. It’s nice to know that there is a local roastery in Denver that is well-established. I’m going to do a little bit more research and see if there are other coffee wholesalers available to get a deeper understanding of the coffee aspect of this business. One thing that I will need to figure out is, do I want to be a barista? Does my wife want to be a barista? Will we be able to hire a barista? These are all things to think about and they both make me nervous but really excited for the future.