Coffee You'll Dream About: Reismühle Kaffemanufaktur

In the United States at least, we’ve come to expect coffee shops on every corner.  Mundane at best.  Nothing different but the prices.  Then one day, if you’re lucky, you stumble on the rarest of all cafés:  a place that does more than just  sling some whatever in your mug and take your  money.   Read on and you too will uncover a hidden coffee nirvana:  Reismühle Kaffemanufaktur.

Yeah.  Lots of places attach especially foreign monikers to their brews and the zizes of their cups, all a conspiracy to trap you into believing their coffee is something special.  You know what I mean:  I’ll have a Congolese Mountain Grown, dwarf picked, French-style, hand pressed, dark slope grown latté, with soft-shouldered virgin goat milk.

Will that be a Congolese Hungus?

No, I’ll just have the Very Roomy Pigmy.

In the U.S. you wait patiently for the recent high school graduate to finish loading the industrial grinder with beans that are only slightly younger than she is.  Your eyes wander to the posters on the wall of simple people in colorful, hand-woven cloaks, riding burros, smiling at the thought of making people happy the world over, with the finest brew extant. 

Just the word extant should give you the final clue.  This is only a dream. You’re going to get the same rough-edged, stomach churning, black tar you’ve always gotten, but this time you’re paying five bucks for the privilege.  However, now you’ll be able to brag to your over-achieving friends that you sampled a rare brew from the Congo.  PhD?  I’ll trump that with a little nonsensical name-dropping!

Then suddenly, in a world of wonder, one day you find yourself in the picturesque German countryside. You drop the top on the Bimmer, grab your wife or significant lover and browse the green hills and dales of springtime in Deutschland.  Suddenly you’ve found it!  In a very unlikely spot, begging for trail walks and rustic picnics, you spot an older, stone walled home, expanded to offer a covered patio, teak tables, flowers galore, wait-staff in black and white, thirty some very special coffees on the menu, and cakes and tarts that will make your tongue wag like a hound who’s just lapped a full bowl of water.

Reismühle Kaffemanufaktur is the name.   And so as not to be confused with other rice mills you’ve visited that serve their own special, house roasted coffees, here’s the web site:  http://www.reismuehle.info

The story of the Reismühle is all on the site, but permit me to summarize.

The Reismühle’s java is selected and roasted in very special ways, by very special people. 

Nadine and Wolfgang Lutz share a passion:  Coffee.  Took them seven years to restore the building and many years of training in traditional coffee roasting and preparation before they opened their own café and coffee factory.  Both are coffee sommeliers, trained in the Black Forest, Vienna, and Berlin.  Just like the baristas at Gimme-yer-Bucks, right?

One thing I’ve noticed about the Germans, often sadly lacking in our own country, is their dedication to passions, professions, and hobbies.

It’s not just with restaurants, and in this case the tradition of artisanal coffee, but in almost everything.  When it comes to even straightforward professions, they believe in a depth of education and training that is beyond anything you normally find in America.  Want to work as a waitress in a bakery?  Three to four months of training before you’re serving customers and ringing up sales on your own.  And it’s not just serving.  Waitresses know how the breads are made, which restaurants the bakery supplies, and how to get the flour delivered. Apprenticeship is alive and well in this country.

But, back to the Riesmühle.  The Lutzs place great emphasis on every step of the process, from searching the world for the best coffees, to the handling of the beans, the roasting and grinding, and finally the brewing and serving of a very luxurious beverage.

It all begins with attention to detail.

Big coffee makers roast tons of beans at a time, in a matter of five minutes or less.  Very cost efficient, but as we all know, when you increase the volume and decrease the time, a lot gets lost along the way.

At the Reismühle, they roast comparatively small batches, at lower temperatures, in traditional drum roasters.  What’s the difference?  Coffee is coffee, right? Oh yeah?  Stop reading right now and shuffle off to “Slow Jim’s Truck Stop and Pancake House!”

Quality beans are the first step.  Ripe and ready for picking.  At the Reismühle, you have a choice of some thirty varieties from around the globe.

They roast in small batches, for twenty minutes, at a temperature of 190ºC.  So what?  A lot!  Unpleasant acids, especially the chlorogenic acid (which is responsible for stomach pains and heartburn ), are largely eliminated . Since the temperature of 190 ° C is not exceeded, there is also no acrylamide, which is suspected to be a carcinogenic.

Bottom line:  No stomach problems and no bitter after-bite. 

My wife and I shared a small pot of Mexican coffee.  Absolutely smooth and delicious.

Then came another surprise.  Wonderful, freshly made cakes.  I opt for poppy seed, while my wife ordered a fruit custard tart.

It was one of those pleasant afternoons you dream of.  Outdoors in the full bloom of spring, a quaint, yet opulent setting, and a pot of delicious coffee and some nibbles.  How about prices?  Very understated.

Once was not enough.  We’re going back.  Seems the Reismühle has breakfast on the first Sunday of every month and on Saturdays, there’s a special breakfast, followed by a show-and-tell coffee roasting.  We’re signed up and you can too, but plan ahead.  I asked for a breakfast/roasting reservation and the next available opening was three weeks down the road.

Until then, I may not drink coffee again.  Ah, that soft, lingering memory of beans at their best!