Coffee and tea shop tour event jolts into Loveland

From St. Patrick’s Day to Loveland Aleworks’ annual Zombie Crawl in October, nary a festive holiday passes anymore without an accompanying bar crawl.

But could that popular “crawl” tour concept also be applied to coffee and tea shops? Craft beverage enthusiast Jason Burton bet that it could when he put on his first Caffeine Crawl event in his hometown of Kansas City in 2011. Now, Burton is bringing one of his crawls to Loveland for the first time this Sunday.

Downtown Loveland’s Dark Heart Coffee Bar will serve as the last stop for Sunday’s newly christened Fort Collins and Loveland Caffeine Crawl, which will start in Fort Collins with a walking route stopping at four chocolate, tea and coffee shops before concluding at Dark Heart Coffee.

Though the Caffeine Crawl comes with the promise of enough coffee to satiate any fix (samples will be provided at each stop), Burton said the event comes with an educational slant.

Each stop, Burton said, will feature a short presentation or engagement session from the shop about “anything from how to brew better coffee at home to working with the palate to compare coffees brewed different ways or from different areas.”

“It will be very educational but not super geeky where it’s over anyone’s head,” he said. “Part of the goal is to bridge the gap from one side of the coffee bar to the other, if you will.”

Still, the tour will also include plenty of fun.

“We are entertainers with caffeine, basically” he said.

According to shop owners Allison and Justin Real, the stop at Dark Heart will include a sampling of one of the shop’s specialty drinks.

“Its a very fun drink with coffee brewed in a different way,” they said in a message.

Burton said the idea from the initial tour actually came from his experience with craft beer and cocktail events and realization that those events were attended “mostly by consumers” while similar coffee events, like latte art competitions, were attended mainly by those working in the industry.

“Back then it was really hard for consumers that were into coffee or wanting to get into it to get more information from professionals,” he said.

Apart from marking the first time a Loveland coffee shop is part of the Caffeine Crawl, Burton said the stop at Dark Heart Coffee Bar will also be unique because it will be an hourlong “double stop” during which organic tea producer Rishi Tea will be presenting and providing samples at Dark Heart. Though based in Milwaukee, Rishi distributes its teas in Colorado.

Bringing the crawl to a Loveland coffee shop, Burton said, also provides an opportunity to showcase how widespread craft coffee is becoming, particularly in Colorado.

“I think just the nature in the U.S. is always to flock to the major metro areas,” Burton said. “But a lot of these towns also have coffee that is just as good as what you might find in Denver or Boulder or Colorado Springs, where our other tours are.”

Dark Heart Coffee Bar, Burton said, was chosen to be the shop that would bring the tour to Loveland because it exemplifies that concept and the customer-centered approach Caffeine Crawls seek to highlight. The shop serves coffee roasted by Coava Coffee Roasters in Oregon, a roaster which the Reals say “has some of the strongest direct relationships with farmers.”

“You could drop Dark Heart into Chicago and they would be a top-tier bar there,” Burton said.

The Reals also expressed excitement about being part of the tour.

“We are very happy to put Loveland on the map with specialty coffee,” they said.

Paul Albani-Burgio: 970-699-5407, palbani-burgio@reporter-herald.com