Uppers and Downer 2017 (more photos)
This is a unique festival that celebrate coffee, beer, and coffee beers. It brings together some of the best breweries and coffee roasters to collaborate on new coffee beer combinations.
In terms of coffee, La Marzocco helps to sponsor the event and provided their Linea Minis and GS/3 machines for the coffee roasters to pull shots on. At each of the two sessions, there were six different coffee roasters, from national commercial roasters like Intelligentsia, PT’s, Stumptown, and Counter Culture to regional and local roasters such as Kickapoo, Gaslight, and Onyx.
Of the eight SO-Espressos I tried, my personal favorite pulls were the Ethiopia Sidama by Kindred Coffee Roasters and the Kenya Muthunzuuni Peaberry by Metric Coffee. These were all amazingly complex, bright, and fruit forward offers. The cold brew bar on the top floor hosted by Stumptown also had some interesting and enjoyable nitro and carbonated coffee drinks.
Over all the multi-roaster espresso bar was simply amazing and bye itself made the even well worth attending. My only wish is that they would have had higher end pressure profiling machines, competitions between the roasters, and offered single and double shot SO-Americanos.
Should also give a shout-out to Bille’s Local Foods, which is right around the corner from Thalia Hall. They offer amazing all natural smoothies, as well as a good range of vegetarian and vegan dishes. What a great place to grab a healthy lunch or dinner while attending Uppers and Downers.
