The local indie coffee festival is a thing of beauty. In a world riddled with bi-coastal hospitality group-hosted events with copy and paste logos—following the familiar “[City] Coffee Festival” and including a roster of questionably local coffee companies, and charging an exorbitant fee for the privilege—the indie event is something altogether different and refreshing. It’s the local coffee community coming together to highlight and celebrate what they have built. It’s organic. It’s seeing the local coffee scene through its own eyes.
Thus it is with the Roast Retreat. Now in it’s fourth year, the Roast Retreat brings together some of Michigan’s best coffee roasters for a one-day festival in Detroit that will feature food, music, art, raffles, and oh so much coffee.
Put together by Washed Up Coffee, this year’s installment of Roast Retreat will be the biggest yet, featuring (as of now) 22 different coffee roasters as well as importers, tea companies, and equipment manufacturers. Roasters include names like Madcap, Sparrows, Desert Oasis, Anthology, and Curious Coffee. Also on hand will be Espresso Parts, Sanremo espresso machines, Dona, and Ghost Town Oats.
Taking place Saturday, August 1st from 10:00am to 12:00pm at The Eastern, each participating roaster will be brewing up tasty coffee for attendees to sample side by side to get a better understanding of each coffee company’s unique expression. And for those fearing the dreaded but ultimately inevitable over-caffeination, Daphne’s Bagels will be on hand to help you carbo load your way through it.
And there will of course be lots of raffle prizes, so make sure you stay the whole time in case your name is called.
Tickets for Roast Retreat are $25 and are available for purchase here. Included in the price is a Roast Retreat tasting mug provided by Espresso Parts, which will come in handy almost immediately.
So instead of going to an overpriced coffee festival whose only goal is to turn a profit by pretending it has any stake in the local goings on, find your nearest coffee event, put on by those actually a part of making the scene what it is, like Roast Retreat. We’ll all be much better for it. For more information, visit Roast Retreat’s official website.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
