Roastmaster's Blog

Yellow has never been my favorite color.  I look around and see it non-intrusively accenting the room, a powerful, though scant slice of the color spectrum.  Most of life is muted earth-tones and yellow is celestial.  A yellow flower in a field of green and brown is a paragon of uniqueness, leadership, or outstanding beauty.  Our yellow star provides warmth and happiness, though in extremes, misery.  And the yellow in our urban society warns us to be cautious.  Yellow, in moderation, is fantastic.

As an incautious kid, I roamed the woods and fields, first of the corn and soy prairies of Illinois, and then of the cross timbers in southern Oklahoma.  Days and nights were spent building tree forts, fishing for mud cats, exploring every hill and dale, and of course playing "war" with my cousins.  Like the kids of "Lord of the Flies," our free time was spent dividing and conquering one another.  On my Uncle's 80-acre pastureland were two ponds, sparse woods, a hay barn, and a pair of combines - an immense battlefield with adequate relief and cover. 

On a sunny Summer Sunday, after lunch all the boys of my extended (and extensive) family grabbed a broomstick or some other janitorial representation of a weapon and we split into 2 groups.  We fled in separate directions into the wilds, avoiding cows and their excrement.  Our troop ranged the ponds and pastures looking for the enemy, with occasional contact and shouts of "BANG BANG BANG! I GOT YOU!"  Invariably if one cousin got the jump on another cousin, the surprise attack would win out and no matter how much negotiation, the surprised party would succumb to their slow reactions and relent to lie on the ground, close their eyes, and count to 100 while the ambush team scampered off looking for another tactical position.

My team crossed a dike containing one end of a cow pond, and descended the grassy slope where we climbed over a huge tree which had died and fallen like Gulliver on Lilliput.  I, being the younger of my cousins, hung back and waited for each one to crest the horizontal trunk and leap to the ground.  When my turn came, I stepped down onto a lower part of the trunk and suddenly, having fallen through rotten wood, found myself engulfed in a nest of angry, swarming, stinging yellow jackets.  My older cousin pulled me out and carried me back to the house, as, from shock or venom, I couldn't stand.*

Way back in the hills, up a long dirt road is another farm called La Pastora.  This farm, far from the rolling plains of Oklahoma, has steep fields upon the mountainsides of Costa Rica's Tarrazu, planted not in hay and cattle, but short, spindly coffee trees.  The owner of La Pastora, Minor Esquival Picado, is the epitome of a happy, paradisiacal homeowner.  You'd almost think his every-present grin was the product of having seen our lifestyle and then reverting back to his leisurely customs.  But I suspect Minor has never been far from home.

Unusually, Minor built a small but pristine mill out of concrete and a mishmash of ceramic tile remnants, many broken into pieces.  He uses this mill to process small lots of coffee that he thinks will be special and worth more than the regular coffee he sells to the regional mill in San Marcos.  After Minor built his micro- wet mill, he began experimenting with Naturals and Honey coffees.  Laying the coffee to dry in the sun on raised, African-style beds, which Minor built on the flat, dry ground between the mill and storage barn, he produced three different styles of Honey coffee.  They are called Black Honey, Yellow Honey, and White Honey, derived from the color of each bean as it dries in the sun.  Had Goldilocks the privilege of sampling the Three Bears' coffee stash, I don't think she would've done a better job than I of picking out the one that is just right.

I have two pictures hanging in my house that mean something extra-special to me.  One, a bluish-hued lithograph of "Lone Wolf" by Alfred Kowalski, which hung in the back room of my Grandpa's house above an old sewing machine.  In it, the foreground is of a wolf, his tracks visible in the snow, looking down a precipitous hillside onto a house - a very small village, maybe - what could be, except for the snow, Minor's farm.  The other picture is a yellowed print of a painting of James Earle Frasier's "End of the Trail."  This picture I got from my dad, who acquired it when he was a kid.  Only recently did I realize that both of these pictures have the same origin.  They were printed at a place in Chicago called Borin Mfg Co, both in 1925.  They're both in the original frames.  Borin printed dozens of paintings, and it appears that they maybe avoided paying royalties to the original artists by printing them all backward.  So I have two backward prints, one of a famous painting that seems to correspond to my M.O., and the other of a famous statue which now resides, forward-facing, at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.  The story of Frasier's statue is a fascinating one, and it just so happens that Mark Brown wrote about it in the current issue of This Land magazine.  I stumbled into this history from a coin my dad gave me:  the Buffalo Nickel.  It's a keepsake.  An antique.  And originally designed and modeled by the same artist, James Earle Frasier, as a tribute to the American West.

I learned something at La Pastora that I probably could've learned at my Uncle's when I was carried back to my mom at HQ, a wounded soldier.  The skin of the coffee cherry, much like the wood of a hollow tree, is a protective coating.  When left intact, nature can take its course, the coffee cherries can dry into a sweet, fruity Natural; and the yellow jackets can work as a biological pest control by hunting other pests, reproduce into a seasonal colony of a few thousand, and no one would be the wiser.  But once that fragile shell is punctured, what's inside is volatile.  Honey Process coffees involve removing the protective skin of the cherry and exposing the sticky pulp to environmental forces of oxygen, bacteria, and yeast.  What Minor figured out is that falling into a nest of yellow jackets can leave a bad taste in your mouth.  He removed some of the pulp from the coffee beans.  Not all of it, but just the right amount.  And what he came up with is a smooth, delicious, sweet-tasting coffee that has all the fullness of flavor I look for in a special Thanksgiving offering.

La Pastora Yellow Honey, though grown in Costa Rica, came to fulfill its purpose here in Oklahoma, in my roaster, and ultimately in your cup.  Frasier's Indian found its end of the trail here too, but you'll have to read about that while drinking the Yellow.

Happy Thanksgiving, Y'all.

READ ABOUT THE BOX SET AND BUY LA PASTORA YELLOW HONEY HERE.

Buy the issue of This Land with Mark Brown's story of The End of the Trail here.

* The yellow jacket incident could explain how I acquired super powers.

What a wonderful gift of coffee Ethiopia has bestowed upon us during the past month.  From Kemgin to Nekisse and now onto the so-smooth Tchembe, we’ve definitely been enjoying the best coffees on the planet right here at the DoubleShot.

As promised, I want to publish a couple of recipes for the suggested food pairings with Tchembe.  The apricot-strawberry crisp is just a huge compliment to the natural flavors present in the Tchembe, and all of that combines to make for a harmonious duet.  Great choice for dessert, when coffee is a must, but I also love to eat fruit crisp for breakfast.  The second pairing is my girlfriend, Julie’s french toast.  I’ve never been very good at making french toast, but it’s my favorite breakfast.  Pair it with my favorite coffee, and I’m set.  Check it out. 

Strawberry Apricot Crisp

½ c. hazelnuts
½ c. rolled oats
1/8 tsp. salt
4 tbsp. cold, salted butter, cut into chunks (cold coconut oil works well, too)
1/3 c. honey (or maple syrup)
6 apricots, pitted and quartered
8 oz. strawberries, hulled and quartered

Preheat oven to 400°.  To make the crisp topping, combine the hazelnuts with 1-2 tbsp. of the oats in a food processor and process until they reach the consistency of coarse flour.  Keep an eye on it to make sure you don’t process it into a paste.  Add the remaining oats, salt, cold butter, and honey, and pulse just until a chunky mixture forms.  Combine the quartered apricots and strawberries in a baking dish large enough to hold them in a thick layer.  Drop spoonfuls of the topping evenly over the fruit.  Bake until the fruit is bubbling and the topping has browned, about 30 minutes.   (Recipe from food52.com)

Julie’s French Toast

Preheat the skillet with tons of butter.  If you have a cast iron skillet, that’s the way to go.  If you don’t have one, you should go buy one.  Use one egg per slice of bread.  Julie insists on challah, which is an egg bread, and we also love Whole Foods Birdland multi-seed bread.  Add a splash of milk to the eggs.  Beat the eggs and milk together for about one minute.  Soak the bread until saturated.  Flip it over and soak it on the other side until saturated also.  Cook until golden brown on both sides and cooked through.  Use real maple syrup, heated for just a few seconds in the microwave.

Gifts

With Christmas less than one week away, we’re making sure to keep our supplies up so you don’t get stuck without coffee or some other important coffee supply you need.  If you’re scrambling to figure out what gifts to buy for the people on your list, I’m here to help.  This is my annual list of top coffee gifts.  This year I’m breaking it down into top 5 gifts for local patrons and top 5 gifts for online customers.  

Top 5 Coffee Gifts for Local DoubleShot Customers

5. DoubleShot Gift Card.  Have you seen the new gift cards?  Stylish.  Do you want to look cool?  Then you should probably give a stylish gift card for the tastiest coffee place in town.

4. Thermos Stainless Steel Travel Tumbler.  Sometimes you just don’t know if people drink coffee (what kind of friends do you have?!) or tea or maybe just sip on some hot water with a little lemon squeezed into it because it makes their voice sound real nice.  With this gift, it doesn’t matter.  They can put whatever they want in it.  They’d be smart to put DoubleShot Coffee in it, but hey, you’re the one who chose these “friends.”  Anyway, once they start using the cup and see how amazing it works to keep the hot beverage hot and sealed up, they’ll think you’re a genius.  And you basically are.

3. Baratza Virtuoso Grinder.  This is what I would like to have.  I’m still using the Baratza Maestro Plus, which is a great grinder, don’t get me wrong,  But the Virtuoso has a nice brushed zinc exterior and a heavy duty motor and burrs that grind coffee twice as fast as mine.  So if I were married, and I wasn’t sure what to get for my wife, I’d probably buy her a new Virtuoso.  Know what I mean?

2. A Bottle of DoubleShot Cold Brew Concentrate (not available online).  People keep telling me they were out in blah blah blah on the such and such coast and so and so coffee place had some way cool cold coffee in a bottle and they thought it was awesome and whatever.  I’m sure you’re sick of hearing those people go on and on just as much as I am, so you should come down here and get them a bottle of our cold brew coffee concentrate and give it to them and they’ll realize that the greatest cold coffee on the planet is right here in Tulsa, under their nose and they just didn’t look for it.  Take that!  

1. Tchembe.  You knew I was going to say that.  All of that other stuff is great, but Tchembe is only here for a short time and when it’s gone we’ll miss it so much and remember how smooth and delicious it was.  So you should definitely get this for yourself, but while you’re at it, get some for a person who has refined tastes, a foodie, someone you like a lot.  Someone who doesn’t know that coffee can be this good.  Or someone who knows it and appreciates it a lot.

Top 5 Coffee Gifts for Online DoubleShot Customers

5. DoubleShot Proprietary Coffee Travel Kit.  I came up with this setup after traveling to Tanzania, because it’s always hard to pack the necessary gear for making great coffee.  I’ve taken this with me all over the place and I really like it.  The kicker with this whole kit, and what makes it uniquely ours, is that I hand-pour every single plastic connector ring right here at the DoubleShot in the basement where we have the whiskey.  The ring makes the glass jar for the grinder unnecessary because it allows you to screw the grinder onto the bottle, where you brew the coffee.  This kit was recently featured on a website called itstactical.com, where it made the list for 55 gifts fort the adventurer in your life.  Awesome.

4. Coffee Subscription.  6 or 12 shipments of a pound of our freshest coffee either monthly, weekly or bi-weekly.  People don’t want a fruit basket.  They want coffee!

3. Thermos Work Thermos.  Or whatever the heck it’s called.  My dad used to carry one of these bad boys with him to the job every day, and it would roll around on the floor of his van getting beat to hell and I still have it, and it’s awesome.  But the new Thermos that just came in is like the dang stealth bomber of thermoses.  The new color is awesome.  And the DoubleShot logo sits on it just right where you kind of feel like you’re a covert DoubleShot Coffee drinker.  So if you know someone who doesn’t want everyone to know how cool they are, this would be a great gift.  

2. Bonavita Stainless Steel Coffeemaker.  It seems like everyone has an auto-drip coffeemaker at home and most of them suck.  Seriously.  If you bought someone a coffeemaker that actually works right and looks cool, they will probably feel obligated to buy you a bottle of 1978 Glenrothes or something.  And that would be really great.

1. Tchembe.  Just in case you missed it, we’re really all about the coffee.  Super coffee.  Fresh coffee.  And this is the king of coffee.  Buy it, drink it, gift it… buy it intending to gift it and then drink it instead.

One last thing.  We usually only offer USPS Priority Mail as a shipping option, because we like to keep it simple.  But starting right now, up until I leave the store at noon on December 24, you can have your DoubleShot order shipped Express Mail.  Get it there fast so you don’t panic.  Merry Christmas.

My dad* has always been the key influence in my life when it comes to work.  He installs floor covering.  And the man is a workhorse.  I remember when I was a kid, my dad would lift a huge roll of carpet onto his shoulder and walk up stairs.  He seemed to work interminably, sweating, breathing hard, and moving things in ways I couldn’t budge.  Not only that, he makes extremely precise cuts, very rapidly.  He measures in ways I don’t understand, makes calculations in his head, and cuts things upside down and backward, perfectly.  His patterns are uniform and square, and somehow bend around curves.  He wields a carpet knife, with its reversible razor blade, penetrating to the exact depth needed, ripping down a row of yarn, so square that his trimming is minimal and his waste almost nil.  

He has the patience to work on cars.  Completely disassembling and reassembling three in my memory: a Model A Ford, a Model T Ford, and a Falcon Knight Speedster.  These came apart rusted with friction that breaks and busts even calloused knuckles.  But they went back together smooth and lubricated, painted and polished, pinstriped, upholstered, and running like they did off the early 1900s showroom floor.

The man can fix almost anything.  So much so that he took to collecting antiques, some of them relinquished to the junk pile, because he could see the beauty in a worn out, beat up cabinet or dresser.  I grew up using restored antique furniture with names like “hall tree” and “pie safe.”  The patience and precision and vision that he has can transform wood and marble and brass.  And boy can he swing a hammer.

The peak of his antique restoration came in the form of a run-down, dirty, two-story Victorian house with a carriage barn and, once completed, a round brick patio.  Layers of paint and wallpaper and old newspaper came off with sweat and toil, and beneath it all he found the wood that once again brought class and refinement throughout their home.  

His product is meticulous. 

And he drinks a lot of coffee.

Coffee is a curious thing.  Like corn, it’s a huge commodity.  Coffee trees grow and produce fruit, while the farmer toils in the equatorial sun to keep them healthy and productive.  Margins fluctuate but the work is constant.  During harvest, hand picking is followed by milling (sometimes by hand) and drying (oftentimes on patios where people rake the coffee to ensure consistency) and sorting (sometimes performed by women who pick through every coffee bean to remove defects) and bagging (almost always controlled by men who dispense the coffee into a bag and then sew it shut).  And amongst these commodity beans, occasionally an experienced cupper will pull out a specific lot because they recognize that it surpasses the quality and flavor profile of its peers.  But true exceptional coffees are not the result of luck or happenstance, rather the product of concerted effort, focused methodology, and fastidious performance.  People produce high quality coffees on purpose.

I roasted a batch of Nekisse a few days ago and it was one of those roasts where I just knew I nailed it.  It was beautiful.  I set the damper on par to restrict the airflow just right, bringing the temperature of the coffee up at the precise timing I intended.  I felt like the temperature profile of this roast should be recorded on canvas and placed in the Philbrook.  The coffee coalesced at first crack and became one mass of popping, drumming, hip-shaking rhythm to the drone of the roaster purring like a huge metal lion.  And I manipulated the intake and outflow until those precious few seconds arrived at the end of the roast where the coffee and I speak to one another.  

Because I’ve worked with coffee a lot and I care about coffee a lot, something happens between the coffee and me.  There is a personification of the coffee beans.  They become a living entity, the embodiment of all those who toiled on the their behalf.  The coffee is like the star of the show, who couldn’t be where it is if it weren’t for so many people behind the scenes who worked hard to propel it to greatness.  And all those people who had a hand in the coffee come with it to the DoubleShot, from the ones who nurture the coffee trees from seedlings to transplanted mature adults, to those who fertilize and prune and pick and carry the coffee cherry down the mountain.  The people who process the coffee and turn the coffee over on its drying bed.  Those who manage its production and sort out the premium quality beans for us.  The baggers, the shippers, the cargo ship captain who delivered our coffee in port.  They’re all in there with the coffee, because this coffee couldn’t have become what it is without all those people striving on its behalf.  And their spirits cry out in those final moments of the roast and I can feel it.  And they are happy, proud, excited.

The entire life of this coffee has come to this.  All that came before was for this moment in time.  Everything that has happened to this coffee along the way allowed us to fulfill Nekisse’s mission by roasting it properly and delivering it to you for your ultimate enjoyment.  That’s what this coffee was made for.  

And at the moment I dropped that Nekisse from the roasting drum into the oversized stainless cooling bin, all of my life had led to this.  All the hours of roasting and learning and listening and reading and hauling bags of coffee on my shoulder.  All the lessons my dad taught me through his actions about working hard and doing my best, about learning a craft and becoming good at it, about the value of transforming raw materials to make something beautiful.  All of that work by my father carried forward in me, like the work of the coffee producers which carried forward in the Nekisse.  And it all came together for one purpose:  To make delicious coffee.

Nekisse is moving fast.  (get it here:  DoubleShotCoffee.com/nekisse) The response to this coffee has been outstanding, and we love the appreciation you’ve shown to our efforts in providing coffees of this caliber.  With fantastic fruity aromas of strawberry and peach, the brightness of Nekisse glows through in the cup past a sea of milk chocolate that will linger on your palate.

Two more exciting things will happen this Tuesday.  We will prepare two food pairings that accentuate the amazing qualities of Nekisse:  a blueberry-lemon drizzle bread and a chocolate lava cake.  You will have the opportunity to let us make you a pourover of Nekisse and purchase one or both of the food pairings with it.  This is a one-time offering, happening Tuesday, December 10.  

The second thing you need to know about this Tuesday is that we will be releasing a new chocolate bar.  I’ve once again collaborated with the chocolatier who produces our MADURO bars to create a new bar featuring our NEKISSE coffee in a darker chocolate from the Ivory Coast.  It really makes a rich melange of bright, fruity, coffee flavors in that bed of amazing, silky dark chocolate.  A great gift for the holidays and a special treat for you.

Tuesday will be a great day at the DoubleShot.

* If you look around the DoubleShot, most of what you see was made by or restored by or at least inspired by my dad, Steve Franklin.

Well, the holidays are upon us once again.  And as usual, we have pulled out all the stops to bring you some amazing coffees during your holiday celebrations.  This Wednesday night marks the beginning of Hanukkah, and Thursday is Thanksgiving, so right now is the opportune moment to purchase the first of these brilliant coffees. 

Kemgin is a very high-end coffee from Ethiopia that we procured through Ninety Plus, who have brought us so many exquisite coffees throughout the years.  We offered the Kemgin a couple of years ago, and it was a big hit then, so we've brought it back for another go-around.  This is a coffee that has been celebrated by coffee reviewers and professional tasters, as well as winning top coffee at the Good Food Awards.

Because of the region where it is grown, the care with which it is picked, and the clean processing and sorting of Kemgin, it achieves some of the flavors that make coffees stand out as the best coffees in the world.  Aromas of jasmine and lemon lead off, and as you taste the coffee, nuances of black tea and orange excite your palate, with a long, silky finish with highlights of pine.  Perfect for the holiday season.

Because we care about your coffee experiences at home, we came up with two food pairings we think accentuate the coffee in different ways.  Obviously you'll want to drink Kemgin by itself, but having just the right thing to go with it for breakfast and dessert makes the coffee all the more pleasurable.  Follow these recipes for our Cranberry-Orange Muffins and Blackberry Cobbler.

Cranberry Orange Muffins (courtesy of our baker, Kristin Hoffman)

1 orange (including peel), quartered with seeds removed

1/2 Cup orange juice (juice of 1 orange)

1 egg

1/2 Cup butter, melted

1-3/4 Cup all-purpose flour

3/4 Cup white sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2/3 Cup dried or 1 Cup frozen cranberries

Preheat oven to 400ºF and prepare 12 muffin cups with spray or paper liners.  Puree orange quarters and orange juice in a food processor or blender.  Add egg and melted butter to orange puree and blend until smooth.  Sift dry ingredients together in a medium-sized bowl, then add orange mixture and combine.  Stir in cranberries.  Fill muffin cups with batter.  Bake 20 minutes.

These tend to bring out the black tea flavors in the Kemgin, as well as some soft vanilla flavors that really make this pairing meld together.

Blackberry Cobbler (courtesy of my mom, Millie Franklin)

3 Cups frozen blackberries (do not thaw)

1 large pear, halved, cored, thinly sliced

2/3 Cup sugar

3 T orange juice

2 tsp orange zest

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Gently toss all ingredients together.  Pour into buttered pan.

1 Cup flour

1 Cup sugar

Dash salt

1 Stick butter

Vanilla & Almond extracts (to taste)

Mix sugar, flour, salt, and sugar in food processor with butter until crumbly.  Add vanilla and almond extracts and pulse again.  Pour over fruit and bake 350 degrees until brown and bubbly (45-50 minutes).

The pears in this cobbler really smooth out the acidity in the blackberries, and the whole thing brings out the citrusy aspect of the Kemgin, and the cinnamon really carries forward through the coffee to make for a unified experience.

Both of these recipes are just unbelievably good, and I highly suggest you give them both a try while you have Kemgin in hand.  And it's not going to last long, so buy some today!  

DoubleShotCoffee.com/kemgin

I'm sure you're scrambling to figure out what to buy for certain people on your holiday gift list.  You've probably been googling to see what cool new gifts are out there for people who love coffee, and who doesn't love coffee?  Well, google no more.  I have compiled a list of my TOP 10.  The top 10 things that, if I didn't own the DoubleShot, but I were still me, I would be stoked about getting for Christmas (which makes shopping for ME a lot harder).  Here it is, David Letterman -style: from number 10 to number 1!

10. A DoubleShot gift card. If you just have no idea what to get, but you know they like coffee, get them a gift card. Buy a card in the DoubleShot or buy one online HERE. We can even email you a coupon to send to your favorite coffee drinker so they can buy on our website!

9.  The new DoubleShot Corporate Mastermind Tshirt!  You know your friend loves the DoubleShot.  Get them a shirt so they can let everyone else know.  It's the new design, it's just arrived, and it comes in two colors:  blueberry or split pea soup.

8.  The Thermos Sipp stainless steel travel tumbler is the most popular cup we've ever sold.  They're so popular that it's hard to keep them in stock.  Rightfully so.  All we get is positive feedback from these awesome cups.  They keep coffee hot for hours and hours, they don't leak, they're indestructible, and they come with the stylish DoubleShot logo right there on the side.  This cup has been missing from our shelves for a few days, but the new shipment will be here today.  Order now, or stop in to get one before they all go bye bye again! 

7.  The DoubleShot proprietary coffee travel kit.  I've been using one over the past year, and it's just been a lifesaver on the road.  I got the idea when I was packing for my trip to Tanzania, and it took me a few months after my return to fabricate the missing link to the whole kit:  The Connect3 Adaptor Ring.  This ring, which I construct by hand right here in the DoubleShot basement, makes it possible to screw the Hario Skerton hand grinder directly onto a Nalgene bottle (I prefer this stainless steel version), so you can grind and brew with the H2JO right in the bottle.  Saves tons of space and makes brewing on the road a piece of cake.  See a video of how it all works here:  http://www.doubleshotcoffee.com/products/connect3-adaptor-ring

6.  Gooseneck kettle.  I've been using one of these kettles for so long that whenever I try to make a pourover without it, I remember how much I like my kettle.  Available in electric or stovetop models.

5.  Everything you need to make a pourover (except the kettle).  Get your friend a Hario V60 pourover cone, some filters, and the DoubleShot filter crib to keep the cone filters neatly stacked on your counter, and they'll be in coffee paradise.  This is the method and the equipment I use every day to make my coffee, so you know I think it's good.  There's really no need to own an auto-drip if you're patient enough to make coffee by hand.  It's so much better.  Watch a video of how it works:  http://www.doubleshotcoffee.com/products/hario-v60-dripper

 4.  A burr grinder.  I've often said that, second to great coffee beans, the biggest difference I've ever noticed in my coffee brewing has been in the grinder I'm using.  Anyone using a blade grinder to whirly chop their coffee to smithereens is not getting the most out of their coffee.  A burr grinder uses a set of grinding disks that adjust to grind consistently coarse or fine, depending on your brewing method.  A consistent grind size will change anyone from a coffee drinker into a coffee taster.

3.  Subscription!  Get someone signed up for our automatic coffee shipments.  One pound of coffee will be shipped to them either weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly for 6 or 12 times.  They'll remember you each time a pound of coffee shows up at their door, and they'll thank you every time they see you.  Sign up online and we'll get started shipping whenever you say the word.

2.  Maduro coffee beans plus a MADURO chocolate bar.  This is THE gift for someone who is a coffee and chocolate lover.  The Maduro, an exclusive natural coffee from Colombia (only available at the DoubleShot), is just an amazing coffee, and since we're always trying to push the envelope, we teamed up with a chocolatier to produce a chocolate bar made with Belgian dark chocolate and bits of crushed-up Maduro coffee beans, roasted right here at the DoubleShot roastery.  Satisfy two vices with one awesome gift.

And the number one gift on my list this year is...

1. The Perci Red/Lycello box set.  THIS is the ULTIMATE gift.  The best gift ever.  It's a 2 Barrel Project double wooden box, containing the Perci Red experience and the Lycello experience.  This set is extremely limited and will only be produced as they are ordered, so order yours today.  If you want this before Christmas, you'll have to get it done asap.  My dad has been nice enough to build some more Double-boxes for this awesome gift set, so you still have time to get one, but you should hurry.  The box is solid and beautiful, and the lid is etched with the DoubleShot and 2 Barrel Project logos.  Two Gesha coffees, one washed and one natural, in one box - and each with their own cup!  (If I can't have this, I'll have one of each, Lycello and Perci Red.)

 Happy holidays!