by Jeff Hackmeister

I grew up in Southern Idaho, not quite the center of coffee culture like Seattle or Portland, but still in the Pacific Northwest. Even our little town had a couple of funky, local coffee shops and a dozen or so espresso shacks.

Right before high school my family and I moved to Phoenix, AZ where coffee shops were really only large, corporate chain shops that tried, but never really matched, the feeling of a good local shop. And worse of all, no espresso shacks. I guess when its 110 degrees you can’t have someone working in a 4ft by 6ft room, pulling shots of espresso for very long.

We would go to the chain shops, and the coffee was always pretty good, but it was definitely missing something. When my wife finished graduate school, we left the desert and moved to Seattle – the epicenter of coffee culture.  Within an hour of being in Seattle I was in a local coffee shop, reading a well written local paper and enjoying a great, small batch cup of coffee – I was home!

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