Overview
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Roastery Roundup: A Year in Review
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December Releases and January Runouts
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Camp Coffee Liqueur: A Collaboration with Grand Armory Brewery
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A Polar Plunge and Aldea Development Fundraiser
Monthly Features
Filter (Drip)
15th Anniversary Blend
Gilberto Barrientos
Karolina Alvarado
Pour-Over
Walberto Castellanos
Coffee Fun Fact
Your nose, specifically your retro-nasal cavity, is responsible for about 80% of what you perceive as “taste.” Your tongue picks up on the basics—sweet, sour (acidity), salt, bitter, and umami (savory)—while your nose fills in most of the rest, giving your sip of coffee all that complexity—florals, specific fruitiness, nuttiness, etcetera. With nearly 1000 olfactory receptors up there, your sense of smell plays a huge role in how coffee or anything tastes to you. This is why you might see some coffee professionals slurping their coffee (sometimes very loudly): they are aerating the beverage to send the volatile molecules up to all those receptors in their noses.
For fun, try holding your nose next time you take a sip of coffee and find out what you can and cannot perceive. For even greater thrills, let your nose free and try slurping next!
Roastery Roundup: A Year in Review
It has been a year, folks!
A whole year of Roastery Newsletters. A whole year of exciting collaborations. A whole year of sustainable progress, great coffee and special drinks, impactful community events, animal rescues, generous charity–things to be proud of and to be grateful for. Proud moments and accomplishments to keep us going, and some goals yet left on the table to get us excited for another great year to come. Hello, 2025!
There are too many to list, but here’s a quick list of Aldea’s Top 24 Proud Moments of 2024:
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We officially Recertified as a B Corp!
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Became the first B Corp in West Michigan to go solar-powered
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8,901 paper cups and counting were saved from the landfill due to customers bringing in their own mugs or using our new reusable clay GaeaStar cups–way to go!
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Expanded our Wholesale offerings to include roastery tours, tastings, and custom blend options for local businesses, events, and corporate gifts. Kind of like when we . . .
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Collaborated with the Muskegon Museum of Art to help promote the “Weathering the Storm” Exhibit!
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Hosted several beach and street cleanups in Muskegon and Grand Haven throughout the summer, removing over 100 pounds of trash from our communities
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Expanded our Composting program with Organicycle
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Sparkle Water is back on tap at the cafes!
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Our very own, Brittany Goode, was a finalist for the Lakeshore Chamber’s Athena Young Professional Award, recognizing outstanding women in the area
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We rehomed an overly friendly squirrel in Grand Haven (Happy New Year, Rowdy!)
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And saved a raccoon that was stuck in our downspout at the Roastery (Love ya, Squeegee. Hope you’re staying away from storm drains.)
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Michael and I received more Specialty Coffee Association Certifications
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Purchased a record amount of green coffee from our partners in Honduras this year
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Andrew got me a TV so I can watch my soccer matches (We also have a ping pong table and cornhole boards, expertly made by Andrew. I promise we work, too, occasionally.)
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Attended the SCA Coffee Expo in Chicago for the first time
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Created a new, stellar Switchel Recipe
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Started a Wholesale Equipment Service (Doing great, Michael!)
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Our Marketing Director and Lead Designer, Elly Kuyt, did a heck of a job rebranding many of our products and packaging with our new “Explore, Enjoy, Preserve” line
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Thanks to our new Health and Wellness Coordinator, Emma Versaw, we’ve partnered with Pine Rest for their Employee Assistance Program
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Hosted some community events like the Curated Cabaret and the musician, Seth Bernard, as part of a greater effort to host more events in Muskegon
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Our Cafe Managers, Jill and Chloe, our Product Specialist, Kim, and Production Roaster, Ames Goldman, all reached five-year anniversaries with Aldea
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Increased Online sales by 27%
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Partnered with Muskegon Conservation District to turn our Roastery lawn into a regenerative, native prairie (Pictures to come in the Spring!)
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And, last but certainly not least, we reached a huge milestone as an organization: Our nonprofit that started it all, Aldea Development, has turned 15 years old! Read on to learn more about AD and our ongoing fundraiser to help support their efforts in improving the lives of coffee producers and the community of La Union, Honduras.
A big thank you to every one of you for your support over the last year and beyond. We literally couldn’t do any of this without you. So, thanks. And, thanks for reading my letters all this time.
Happy New Year!
Releases & Runouts
December Releases (You Might’ve Missed)
Walberto Castellanos | Release Date: December 6, 2024.
I wrote last year that Walberto's coffee was "the sweetest coffee I've ever tried from Honduras," and this year's harvest is no different. With balancing notes of black cherry, citrus, and praline, this smooth-bodied medium roast still has that characteristic sweetness in spades.
Walberto started selling to Aldea Development in 2022 when he was participating in Aldea’s specialty coffee training program, led by another producer you may be familiar with, Gilberto Barrientos. Walberto has been dedicated to growing coffee since he was very young. His passion grew from working in the coffee fields with his father, who was also a coffee producer.
If you want to read a little more about Walberto, check out this blog from last November: https://www.aldeacoffee.com/blogs/news/new-coffee-release-walberto-castellanos.
Walberto’s coffee will be featured on Pour-over for the month of January. Try it next time you’re in!
Karolina Alvarenga | Release Date: December 13, 2024.
It’s back! Karolina’s coffee has had a big following ever since the early farmer’s market days of Aldea Coffee (Circa 2011!). Roasted medium-dark, you can expect bold notes of dark chocolate, subtle pear and citrus, and a smooth finish from this crowd-pleaser.
From providing us with awesome coffee, office and storage space, and even a residence for folks working for Aldea Development in Honduras, Karolina has played a significant role in our nonprofit’s success in La Union over the last decade.
Karolina’s coffee will be a featured drip coffee for the month of January.
Check out our website to learn more about our nonprofit, Aldea Development, and their work in Honduras.
January Runouts
Carlitos Heins Washed | Est Runout: Jan. 21th
Gilberto Barrientos | Est Runout: Jan. 27th
A Polar Plunge and $1061 Raised for AD Fundraiser
On Sunday, January 5th (1/5) at 3 pm (1500 UTC), 41 community members and Aldea employees dug a walkway through the snow and jumped into a frigid Lake Michigan to celebrate and bring awareness to the 15th Year Anniversary of our nonprofit, Aldea Development, and to celebrate the charity of everyone in our community, and specifically Jim Anderson, for his incredible generosity in helping us meet our fundraising campaign goal.
Four news crews and about 100 people were in attendance for our first ever Polar Plunge at North Shore Park in Spring Lake–a thrilling and chilling occasion inspired by Anderson’s goal to jump in the lake every day this winter. It was a hugely successful event, with over $1000 raised for the Aldea Development campaign on the day.
Big thanks to everyone who participated! I hope you’ve warmed up since.
Aldea Development Fundraiser Campaign Update
We are very excited to announce that we met our campaign goal, thanks to many generous donors. $50,000 and counting has been raised over the last couple months to support Aldea Development’s community and infrastructure efforts in La Union, Honduras, where the majority of our coffee comes from.
Thank you, thank you, thank you to all who have donated to the cause!
With our first goal met, we decided to extend the Aldea Development fundraiser until the end of 2025. If you’d like to learn more about what Aldea Development does to better the lives of coffee producers in Honduras or would like to donate, please go to aldeacoffee.com or use the QR code below.
We will also have the very delicious 15th Year Anniversary Blend available in stores and online while supplies last! Get it while you can.
Camp Coffee Liqueur: A Collaboration with Grand Armory Brewery
Legend has it that the owners of Aldea Coffee were once afraid of their espresso machine. Massive, screechy, red-flanked, and 100% manual—the original Ranchillo is kind of intimidating, especially for folks who’ve spent the last couple of years solely making pour overs at the Farmer’s Market.
And yet, sometime on opening week, a man named Kenny, who would later become a regular, walked into the first Aldea Coffee Café and ordered a traditional macchiato. The café—a small, open-counter concept nestled in the very entrance of the Grand Armory Brewery—left Andrew and Jeremy nowhere to hide. They peered nervously at one another, neither party wanting to approach the growling machine, let alone cajole it into producing a tiny latte.
I don’t have the full transcript, but I think Kenny put his hands on his hips and said something like, “Well?” and then Andrew tried to pull a shot from the red machine, but it just angrily spit and hissed back.
Andrew persisted, tamed the beast—at least temporarily—and Kenny officially took the first ever Aldea macchiato.
Andrew held his breath while Kenny slurped. A couple tense moments passed before Kenny nodded with appreciation. He loved it!
Kenny would be back to Aldea almost every day to get a macchiato (I made at least two dozen for him, personally.) and become part of the family. A legend was born.
After several great years and thousands of lattes later (yes, Andrew and Jeremy did befriend that old Ranchillo and became master baristas in due time), Aldea eventually moved out of the Armory Building and down the street to their current location on Washington in June of 2021. But the time known as the “Armory Days” is looked upon very fondly by both staff and customers and our connection to The Grand Armory Brewery has just been reignited.
As of last month, Grand Armory Brewery launched the Camp Coffee Liqueur, a blend of Aldea’s cold brew coffee and Grand Armory’s vodka with a healthy dose of brown sugar.
“We are super excited about the way it turned out,” says Aldea’s Wholesale Account Manager Michael Burrows. Michael joined Aldea Coffee’s co-owner Andrew Boyd and Grand Armory founder Ben Tabor for the original experimentation session, when they mixed multiple ratios of the ingredients until they struck a delicious balance.
“We wanted something with a strong cold brew flavor but let the vodka come through—everything compliments each other,” says Burrows.
It’s perfect on its own, over ice, or in your favorite coffee liqueur cocktail like a B-52 or Irish Coffee. I personally like it with a splash of cream.
Try it or grab a bottle today, only at Grand Armory Brewery!
Cheers to years of friendship with Grand Armory and to warm, collaborative beginnings.
Happy New Year and coffee on,
