There are no words to adequately describe the way I feel about coffee. Those magic beans are the highlight of my morning.

Getting tare. That’s one heavy jar, now that I think about it.

And afternoon.

And sometimes evening.

I just really love coffee is what I’m saying. And our little tourist trap of a town is lucky to have a few coffee roasters within its boarders. Not all are open to the public, but my favorite one happens to be (perhaps why it IS my favorite, come to think of it), and the owners, aside from being awesome people in general, allow me to bring in a reusable container for purchases.

And even punch my card so I can have a free pound after every 10. And tell me how great I am for bringing my jar.

This whole ordeal is full of win. 🙂

My jar holds 1.3-ish pounds, which is about a month of beans in my world. Here’s how it usually goes down:

1. Peg’s behind the counter! She’s so great. We chat.
2. She takes my jar and weighs it to get the tare.
3. She then takes the jar into the back to fill with beans.
4. I pet the office dog for a while.
5. Peg comes back and places the jar onto the scale again.
6. The scale is set up for tare, so it subtracts the weight of the jar from the weight of the beans.
7. I hand over my credit card. Buying this locally roasted coffee is more expensive than buying a plastic bin of some industrial coffee, but it’s worth it. Plus these guys have good relationships with their growers, which is important to me, and Peg does a lot of work to help women especially in those villages.
8. Peg punches my card and I pat the dog one last time and off I go.

Hello, my lovely!

I can technically get these beans in bulk at the grocery store, but only the caffeinated ones – and I like to have a jar of decaf, too, because I am old and I’m not willing to be up all night just because I’m too weak to resist coffee in the afternoon. The grocery also doesn’t do the punch card system. If you’re going to buy it anyway, you may as well get something for free, right? Plus it’s on my way home, so I don’t have to make a special stop out of the way somewhere.

This was one of the first steps I took when I started thinking about zero waste, and it’s been the easiest for me to continue. Well, I’m super motivated for coffee, that’s probably part of it, but also it’s thanks to the roasters who support this kind of thing. Even if Peg isn’t behind the counter, whoever is is more than willing to take my jar. I’ve even given lessons on tare to newbies. Just the fact that I know I can go here and not get shut down is everything.

Anyone else get their coffee beans straight from the roasters? Or bring a jar for bulk?

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