Coffee and comic books go together better than peanut butter and chocolate. Well at least in our opinion anyway. Our love of freshly roasted coffee and comic book stories from publishers like Marvel, DC, BOOM! Studios, Image, Dynamite and more is what led us to start Coffee 'n' Capes. To us there is nothing better than a hot cup of coffee and flipping through the pages of one of our favorite comic books.
As a result you might get find yourself wondering where our names come from for our roasts. With names like The Grayson, X-Spresso, America’s Roast, and Logan's Barrel Aged it might look odd to those not in the comic book know. Maybe even some comic book enthusiasts could find themselves wondering "why that name". So we thought we would take a moment to explain how the naming process works.
THE ROAST
First part of the process is we look at the roast. Is it going to be light, medium, or dark? That somewhat sets the tone for where we start looking into comic lore. We treat each roast profile like its own personality. Is it spicey? Robust? Bold? Fruity? When we know the tasting notes then we look at how it will be roasted to help narrow it down a bit more.
LIGHT ROAST – SHINING BEACONS OF HOPE
If it is a light roast we are looking for that shining example of good, or a character that is known for being extremely bright. These roasts always make us think of characters like Captain America (America’s Roast makes more sense now doesn’t it), Sam Wilson, Superman etc. Sometimes we look at characters who tend to shine brightest in the dark as well, like Green Lantern. Sure he had his turn as a bad guy but it really wasn’t his fault, right?
Light roast names tend to lean a bit more towards single characters since in super teams there are always a couple darker leaning heroes.
MEDIUM ROASTS – SO MANY OPTIONS SO MANY ROASTS
Medium roasts open a wide array of comic book characters, teams, anime, and video game inspiration. Mostly this is due to so many different roast profiles you can do with a medium roast it seems. The nice thing about naming conventions for medium roasts is ideas really feel and seem endless. Here we can dive into different genres of pop-culture whether it is in the gamer world, anime, or comic books.
Also most of our flavored roasts land in the medium roast zone. We find that to really get a good flavored coffee using a medium roasted bean helps to not overpower the flavor being infused. Thanks to the specific combinations we can have a lot of fun with our naming conventions here.
The only downside here is that it is easy to have too many options for names.
DARK ROASTS – SHADY, SCARY, and BOLD
I have to be honest here that around my house dark roasts are a favorite. Their bold, intense and smokey smooth flavors really bring out the best in coffee. Also the options for names lets us go to some very different places. The funny thing is we haven’t gone the easy route of a villain name for every dark roast. Not to say we opted to stay away from the scum and villainy of the galaxy in our dark roast names.
Dark roasts also bring some very common roasts around like French and Italian. Sometimes that location makes it a no brainer and we go for the easy lay-up as it were.
SINGLE ORIGIN or BLEND
Next we are looking at if it will be a single origin or a blend of multiple bean types. Blends might end up with a team-up inspired name, where a single origin is single character focused. For example X-Spresso is a dark roasted espresso blend. Since it is a blend we wanted to lean towards a team name.
Now this doesn’t mean we always use a team name for a blend or a single character option for a single origin bean, but we do try to take that into account at least a little bit.
For those individuals who are new to premium small-batch roasted coffee and are unfamiliar with the difference between a single origin or a blend let us help you.
Single origin coffee simply means that the bean used for that particular coffee comes for one farm and is always the same bean from the same location. These beans can sometimes end up costing more since the farm we get them from is smaller, specialized, only produces so much in a season etc.
Blends are exactly what you are thinking. These are blends of more than one type of bean from multiple locations and farms. The exception to this is our Trinity blend, which is a blend purely due to the way it is roasted. The Trinity is actually a single origin supremo bean that is roasted light, medium, and dark so you get a truly unique and amazing coffee with a powerfully satisfying taste.
A MATCH MADE IN COFFEE AND COMICS
Lastly we are looking to see what teams or characters can be reflected in the roast and bean itself. In the case of our espresso blend we searched for a team that traditionally had a little edge to it, and naturally landed with the X-Men (fan favorite around here). Once we had the team name locked down we wanted to find a way to tweak the name to possibly communicate what was inside, hence X-Spresso.
There are names that honestly we came up with because we launched a coffee that went with a comic we are really hyped about at the time. For instance when we released our House of Slaughter #1 shop exclusive by Taj Francis we wanted to produce a roast that was darker than anything else we had done yet due to the Something is Killing the Children universe that particular book came from. We realized we didn’t have an Italian roast in our offerings and that roast would be incredibly dark and bold. So that was how our Someone Is Brewing the Coffee (S.I.B.T.C) came to be.
COFFEE AND COMIC BOOKS
Like we mentioned earlier, and all through out the site, we think these two things are probably the best combination in the entire multiverse. To prove what we mean we decided to start including a free new run comic book with every bag of coffee sold.
Just like there is a joy in opening a bag of coffee and getting that first smell of those beans, there is a something special about reading, especially comic books. The art comes to life similar to the way coffee does when you brew it. As you sip that liquid gold in the morning and immerse yourself into a story filled with fantastic writing and beautiful artwork the day just begins right.
Sure we know that not everyone who buys our coffee is into comics, just like not everyone who is into Marvel, DC Comics, video games, and collectibles is into coffee. For those individuals who don’t enjoy comics, donate them. There are libraries and reading programs that would love those comics. Or give them to your kids, nieces, nephews, friends whoever. Somewhere there is someone who will love that comic book and seeing the joy on their face can make the satisfaction of the coffee a little greater. We promise.
Enjoy!
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