For today’s coffee review, I will be reviewing Old Crow Cuppa Joe from Red Rooster Coffee.
While I have blogged about Red Rooster Coffee before, if you haven’t heard of them….
What or Who is Red Rooster Coffee?
As I am originally from a small town, I support small town coffee shops. But my small town which I grew up in was at the time 10,000-20,000 people. Floyd, Virginia has a population of 425 according to the 2010 census.
Perusing information online, the small town has your local hardware store, a country store, a barbershop and known for its bluegrass music and home to the National Music Festival.
The small town is also known for Red Rooster Coffee, the award winning coffee roaster selected by Forbes Magazine in 2018 as one of the “Top 12 Coffee Roasters in the United States”.
Red Rooster Coffee was founded by husband and wife duo, Haden Polseno-Hensly and Rose McCutchan.
Rose who once lived in NYC, moved back home to start the BlackWater Loft cafe in 2005 (which would later become known as Red Rooster Coffee Roaster and Cafe) with her mother and sister, wanted to increase the quality of their coffee and invested in roasting coffee in-house. With the help of family and friends, Red Rooster Coffee Roaster was born in 2010.
Haden, who received an MFA in creative writing in Alaska, lived in Italy, moved back home to marry his high school sweetheart and learn the coffee business, from roaster, bagger, distributor, salesman and also working hard for the community as President of SustainFloyd (which supports the community’s next generation in order to preserve Floyd County’s existing assets and traditional strengths in agriculture and craftmanship to build a resilient rural local economy), also having a hand in organizing the SplitRail Eco-Fair and the 350.org event.
But one thing I’ve learned that with their passion to the community and also to ecology, it all plays a big part in what makes Red Rooster Coffee special.
For one, within a decade, the company won “America’s Best Espresso” at Coffee Fest NYC in 2016, 1st Place Brewers Cup, TN US Coffee Champ Qualifiers in 2019, 1st Place for “America’s Best Cold Brew” Coffee Fest Baltimore in 2018 and has been a Good Food Awards winner for 2017, 2019, 2020. And also have several dozen coffees placed above 90 on Coffee Review.
And just because they are in a small town full of artisans and craftsman, this company aims high in quality for coffee but also being progressive in the direction of the company.
For one, they are the only coffee company in the country with a licensed onsite daycare facility for staff’s children.
They also source their coffee responsibly using Organic and Fair Trade Coffee for their signature blends and many of their single origins. When not using Organic and Fair Trade Coffee, they use premium quality coffee beans sourced from estates and farms that are known to treat workers equitably and take care of the land.
One of the things that you will notice with Red Rooster Coffee, they commission artists to create artwork for their bags.
In fact, they offer biodegrable coffee bags, not the usual foil bags which companies utilize. They also have their bags hand-printed locally using water-based inks, composting their chaff with local organic farms and minimizing their footprint by recycling and reusing within their facilities.
They also hire locally, providing a living wage and full health care benefits to their employees, contribute to local charities and participate in local fundraisers with an intention of developing into an economic and social anchor in their small rural community.
The company has since grown to employ around 30 employees, roasting some of the best coffee in the world.
Which leads me to their Old Crow Cuppa Joe Coffee. The coffee received a 93 on Coffee Review.
According to Red Rooster Coffee:
Rich with a smooth chocolatey mouth feel and ripe cherry acidity, this full-bodied blend offers a little bit of something for everyone to enjoy. The Old Crow when served as an espresso you can expect dark chocolate notes with a sweet berry tartness. As a brewed drip coffee, that acidity mellows, and that dark chocolate really shines into a perfectly sweet and creamy mouthfeel. We suggest this blend as espresso due to its rich flavors and the way it tastes when paired with milk. Scroll down for brewing parameters.
Red Rooster Coffee’s Old Crow Cuppa Joe features beans that are washed and natural processed from Central and South America.
An espresso, once drinking this coffee, the first thing you may think when tasting it, it’s like drinking hot chocolate because it’s very chocolatey, smooth taste and it has notes of sweet berry as well.
This is very delicious coffee and quite creamy finish and added with milk or cream, its absolutely delicious.
I really like this coffee a lot and I highly recommend Red Rooster Coffee’s “Old Crow Cuppa Joe”!
