Tag: coffee history

Coffee Cup In Sunlight

Huntsville Coffee Tour: Offbeat Coffee Studio

Posted on by hippieadmin

For this second review on the Huntsville Coffee Tour, we visited Offbeat Coffee Studio, located in Campus No. 805, right next to Straight to Ale. Tucked into a corner of this old school, Offbeat offers not only coffee but also records for sale to satisfy the resurgence of vinyl collectors.

The name is apropos as they offer a few different concoctions that one might consider offbeat in nature such as shots of espresso over giant marshmallows or cereal milk to use in coffee and espresso-based drinks. Yes – I said cereal milk! Ask for the daily cereal milk flavours when you visit – you will not be disappointed. My favourite is Lucky Charms, but Cinnamon Toast Crunch would probably do well in a latte too.

We visit Offbeat often, so you would think they have a leg up in this rating system, but we are trying to keep our bias to a minimum. Trying. On that note – let’s see their scores…

  • Beverage Score = 8
  • Ambiance Score = 15
  • Location/Hours = 15
  • Price = 15
  • Staff/Service = 30
  • Social Media = 25
  • Total = 108
  • Rating = 65%

For more information about the scoring system, please read our intro article, Huntsville Coffee Tour and check out the competition in our post on Honest Coffee Roasters. Have a wonderful Sunday and keep on caffeinating!

Peace, Chantale aka hippiegrrl

Huntsville Coffee Tour: Honest Coffee Roasters

Posted on by hippieadmin

Welcome back to the Huntsville Coffee Tour! The first location that we visited for the Huntsville Coffee tour was Honest Coffee Roasters. They provide excellent coffee and a pleasant atmosphere to hang out for a little while. When I was working part-time last year I spent a lot of my afternoons on my personal computer at Honest and they were always very welcoming. Being a busy location, though, has its downside. Sometimes it is impossible to get a seat inside. Luckily there are many locations for excellent coffee in the Huntsville area and in this series we are rating them all. For a refresher on the rating system, please see this previous post, Huntsville Coffee Tour. And now, here are the results for Honest Coffee Roasters:

  • Beverages = 8
  • Atmosphere = 10
  • Location/Hours = 10
  • Price = 15
  • Staff/Service = 20
  • Social Media = 20
  • Total = 83 out of a possible 165
  • Rating = 50.3%

Being the first location to get a rating, this doesn’t seem awful. We don’t believe that any of the coffeehouses in Huntsville will get 100%, but it remains to be seen if 50.3% is a good score. Once we have more scores in we will see!

And now for a detour into my thoughts on coffeehouse culture, in general, in 2019…

One of the things that I really miss about coffeehouses in Buffalo (in the 90s) was the social interaction that occurred within those walls. Political and cultural discussions were plentiful. Drinking copious amounts of caffeine and smoking real cigarettes indoors while playing mancala and discussing the news of the day was standard. Nothing compares to that time in history and I realize that. This is why I’m not comparing the coffeehouses of Huntsville to other cities or other times in coffeehouse culture history.

The 90s in most cities was a very different scene than we see today. Technology has changed the way we interact in public spaces. The proliferation of WiFi and the welcoming of individual tech by coffeehouses has given each patron the ability to exist in public space without interacting with other humans. This severely shifts the culture of what coffeehouses were meant to be. For the current generation, this is a welcome outcome, but for a GenXer, it can be super rough to integrate into this new way of being in public. Although – I am typing this in a coffeehouse right now, with my headphones on, so it seems that I have made the transition pretty well. I still yearn for the days of interacting with the baristas and arguing with professors stopping in for their cups of java between classes. I miss the times sitting on couches and just chatting with someone I never would have talked to otherwise. That time is gone, but we can look back with fondness.

Peace and happy caffeinating!

Chantale aka hippiegrrl

If you are interested in reading more about the Buffalo, NY coffee scene in the 90s, check out my articles on genXreactions.com:

Buffalo, Then (Part One)
Buffalo, Then (Part Two)