Carabiner Coffee- Serving Up The Goods

Gone are the days of Folger's, Maxwell House and Sanka, unless you happen to do most of your coffee drinking at Waffle House or the Shell Station on the I-70.  For the rest of us, a lot of options are out there for delicious coffee, roasted the way we want it.




















Enter Carabiner Coffee.  Erik Gordon, the founder of the small roasting company, roasts small batches of beans and sells them locally and through an online store, basing much of the operation out of his 1971 VW van.  After embarking on a long bike tour, he devoted himself to the mission of putting good coffee in the hands of adventurous people, who are out there climbing, hiking, skiing, paddling and enjoying the wonders of the world.
How is the coffee?  Delicious.  I have been trying to ween myself off of Starbucks Via Packets for some time now, and although they still have a place on long alpine routes where weight is key, I have now traded up to a French press and a bag of grounds on base camp trips.  The roasts are spot on, with a medium and dark roast now available (the "Skootch" and the "Business"), with a light roast on its way.

But we can get good coffee from a lot of sources now, so why go to the trouble of going online to buy it?  Well, like a lot of the other ways we choose to spend our discretionary cash, using our purchases to support causes, local economies, and lifestyles we identify with has become a powerful thing.
So when you buy beans from Carabiner, you are not just getting a good cup of coffee, but also helping to keep the adventure alive.  Hey, the next time you roll up to your local crag you might even see Ol' Blue parked in the lot serving up some brew!