Coffee Fest: Louisville, KY 2023
Transcript
Coffee Fest: Louisville, KY 2023
Andy
So the significance of Coffee Fest being in Louisville, I know that when they announced it, I was stoked. Like, so happy.
Cameron
Yeah, I think I think it's great to have a coffee fest in town. I'm really excited about it. I've never been to a coffee fest, so stoked about that.
Matt
Having Coffee Fest in Louisville this year is huge. I think over the last 10 to 15 years, the coffee community in Louisville has just really exploded. I think it's long overdue, but super exciting.
Andy
I don't know, like, I kind of feel like like we've arrived. Like I said, there's a bunch of specialty shops and they're kind of all just doing different things. You know, some are multi-roasters, some are roasting in town and they're all doing their thing really well. And I think it's just a chance for us to just show what we can do. We're a coffee city and like, you know, you should come here. You should check it out, see what we have to offer. And I think it's neat.
Cameron
Yeah. I mean, I think I've just been here. Would be great for the culture, hopefully spark some excitement, especially amongst, like, people just coming into the coffee scene. I think Louisville's always been a coffee city, but hasn't really gotten the recognition. As far as Specialty being recognized in Louisville by the general community at large. I think there's still some ways to go just with any any medium sized city. A lot of people who are who still view coffee as a commodity.
Andy
Who am I looking forward to seeing at Coffee Fest? Probably anyone we have a relationship with being in events and being in, you know, in the industry. It's it's really communal. And that's the thing that I'm probably most excited about. So anyone that we partner with, you know, we have friends at Royal Coffee, we have friends at you know, MiiR, we have friends at you know Malkohnig, and Synesso, and La Marzocco. Probably all them. Prima, obviously, you know, so often it's emails or phone calls or you don't really get that face to face interaction. So I think that's what I'm most looking forward to.
Cameron
So as a roaster, all the importers I'm excited to visit with. I'm really excited to see Bellwether and check out their, you know, their roaster and meet their team. And then I would say Roast magazine and Keys to the Shop, Chris is Great.
Matt
I'm really excited to see representation from all the local roasteries and cafes on the show floor this year. There's just been so much development in Louisville and the surrounding areas. It's really exciting to see a lot of those companies and just showing the the national coffee community what's happening in Louisville. Coffee Fest is always a great place to meet people in the region that it's located who are doing really interesting and exciting new things in coffee.
The Louisville coffee community has grown in huge ways over the last ten years, both from roasteries and cafes opening and expanding to the the culinary scene here in Louisville, really starting to embrace the specialty coffee scene.
Andy
I've lived here for about 15 years, so I've had a really good time kind of watching the coffee scene just kind of explode. When I first moved here, there really wasn't many specialty shops and now I feel like they're kind of just popping up everywhere, not over-saturating, just kind of like complementing each other and like helping each other do better or trying to stoke that community.
Cameron
That's a tough one. I think ten or 12 years ago, just in specialty coffee in general, I don't think it was specific to Louisville. I think there is a huge boom in like appreciation and discovery of different brewing methods and espresso. It has matured a lot. I'll say that there's more more acceptance of like different people's preferences for coffee, whereas ten years ago it was like the lightest and brightest you could get was best.
Cameron
You know, I think there used to be a much tighter knit community, and I'd actually love to see that redevelop. I hope the, you know, younger generation, which makes me sound old but will gain a passion for it. I see some definitely promising stuff like in our our own baristas here at Quills coming in and like excitement about different coffees and excitement about us working with producers directly.
Matt
There's so many great things to do in Louisville when it comes to both like beverage and the food scene. Obviously, bourbon is a huge part of our culinary scene here and it drives a lot of really great restaurants and businesses here in town. Right now, we're at Monnik, which is a really great brewery in Germantown. Holy Grale is a really fantastic restaurant, best burger in Louisville, in my opinion, and they also have a conjoining cafe called Gralehaus which is really awesome. If it's a local place here in Louisville, it's probably going to be pretty great.
Cameron
Yeah. Pizza Lupo, Great pizza, great natural wine. Repeal. It's fantastic. If you if you like good steak, it's a little more of a pricey place. But if you need a nice dinner after coffee fest, a good spot, there's lots of museums and tourist stuff to do. Of course, the Frazier, the Louisville Slugger Muhammad Ali Center is really cool. Cherokee Park if you need a good place to unwind or hang out or go hike on trails and Quills of course, Quills coffee.
Andy
I'm not originally from Louisville, so I'm probably going to go very stereotypical. Go on a bourbon distillery tour, They're very neat. Like if you have the opportunity to drive out of town and do it. They're beautiful. They're in the middle of country. There's rolling hills, horse farms, all of that. But if not the cool thing about Louisville in the last few years is they've put a bunch of distilleries downtown, I'm also a sports fan. They make bats here to check out the Bat Factory. And then we also just have a crazy good food scene. So pick a local restaurant like hit that up, sit down, have fun.
