Just a quick little product highlight to share with you…
Regardless of where you stand on the cold brew / iced pour over debate, you gotta appreciate some of the cooler packaging and design possibilities that attend the new bottled cold brew phenomenon. Pacific Northwesterners have already grown accustomed to the Stumptown stubbie, a design that harkens back to our beloved (and sadly departed) Olympia brand beer stub bottle. But down in the Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina (Durham-Raleigh-Chapel Hill), those in need of a cold brew with nice design can reach for a Slingshot.
Slingshot Coffe Co. makes cold brew using coffees roasted by Counter Culture Coffee Roasters. The summer batch we were lucky enough to try (via elaborate cross-continental ice pack shipping) was made using Counter Culture’s Haru Yirgacheffe, a delicious washed Ethiopian coffee that helped Katie Carguilo’s bring home the gold at the 2012 United States Barista Championship. Slingshot sells their Haru in “ready to drink” and “concentrate” forms, and will change out the coffees used to make the cold brew seasonally.
They’re a tiny little small business (for now), which gives their product a charming by-hand quality and makes their willingness to send us product out on the West Coast feel extra special. Jenny Bonchak, who’s currently handling all the packaging, delivery, and retail outreach for Slingshot, is also the one doing the brewing, which she accomplishes in a shared kitchen space at Market Restaurant, in the Mordecai neighborhood of downtown Raleigh.
You can learn more about Slingshot by visiting their Tumblr, checking them out on Facebook. or visiting one of their pop-up bar locations around the Raleigh / Durham / Chapel Hill area. In the meantime, here’s another picture of those bottles we took on our fire escape:
