Antique roasted. Gulf Coast born.

Hey, I'm Kevin Pedeaux, and I'm going to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we make Coast Roast Coffee. I'm going to take you on a journey you've probably never seen or thought about. It's a story you probably participate in every day without ever knowing it: the many hands coffee has to pass through, just here in the New Orleans area, to make a cup of Coast Roast Coffee. The journey starts where you may least expect it. It starts and ends with you, the coffee drinker. The idea is to get the very freshest, most unique coffee that you'll love day after day, consistently in your cup: rich, flavorful, heavy-bodied coffee that New Orleans is known for, to serve at CR Coffee Shop. Now that we've identified what our customers love, we're tasked with making it. The first step is to sample various types of coffee from all over the world to determine a perfect blend. I'm at Westfeldt Brothers in New Orleans, cupping coffee. Cupping is a term for sampling various coffees. Coffee is a plant that grows in the ground, so different soil conditions and elevations change its flavor ever so slightly. When I'm cupping coffee I'm paying attention to two things: one, how the coffee tastes, and how that taste will play into the final blend I'm trying to create; and two, how the coffee was handled en route to New Orleans. Almost all the coffee I use comes into the Port of New Orleans and is stored in one of many facilities around town. Here on Jourdan Road in Gentilly is Dupuy Storage. They store large stockpiles of coffee in warehouses across the city. New Orleans is the second-largest coffee importing port in the country. All this coffee is right behind the scenes in many of the buildings you drive by every day. The next stop is Coast Roast Coffee's roasting facility on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Here's where our coffee really becomes unique. All the coffees we serve are roasted on one of two antique Royal No. 6 coffee roasters. The old-school roasting style is immediately noticeable: it's smoother and sweeter than coffee roasted on modern machines. After roasting, coffee is immediately packaged and sent out. Any coffee being served at CR has been roasted that same week. That commitment to freshness and fast turnaround is another thing that makes our coffee so much smoother. As coffee ages it develops those bitter flavors you want to cover up with cream and sugar. Our coffee is delicious black, as it is in one of our specialty drinks at the shop. When we're developing drinks, we're thinking from start to finish. We make all of our own syrups and flavors to specifically harmonize with the flavor profiles we designed into the coffee blends from the very beginning. Enjoy CR Coffee at the shop, or take a bag of our freshly roasted coffee to brew at home. I hope you enjoyed this behind-the-scenes look at my passion for fresh-roasted coffee, and I hope to see you around the shop.