FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Q: Can I order your coffee mail-order? A: No. We are not currently planning mail-order sales. Buy local!   Q: Where can I find your coffees available for sale outside of the Washington DC area? A: We are committed to offering our coffees through our various retail and restaurant partners within the Washington DC area. We believe that coffee, just like most food, is best when it is produced locally. Now coffee obviously isn't grown locally, but it can be roasted locally, and so if you're from outside the DC area, we encourage you to find a great local coffee roaster. Wrecking Ball coffees will be here for you when you visit Our Nation's Capital.   Q: How do you source your coffees? A: Sourcing of green coffee is a very complicated issue to be sure. There's a lot of talk of "fair trade" and "direct trade" and everything in between, and there's as much misinformation as there is information out there. We're currently sourcing our coffees through both existing and new import/export relationships, and for now, we feel very comfortable that our coffee sourcing is representative of the highest standards of ethics and economic sustainability. We will continue to work on improving the relationships that we have with our green coffee suppliers in ways that are beneficial to all.   Q: How are your coffees packaged? A: GREAT QUESTION! All of our coffees are roasted and packed in air-tight foil-laminate bags with degasing valves. For now, they're the best way we know to feature coffee while preserving freshness. However, we're working hard behind-the-scenes, bugging the hell out of the coffee bag manufacturers to come up with a fully biodegradable, compostable, or for gawdsakes, at least a recyclable bag. Alas, we've been told that they're still a couple years from bringing such a product to market. Well, heck, if Sun Chips can come out with a compostable bag, what the heck, ya know? Stay tuned on this.   Q: How many coffee beans are in each bag? A: No idea. But every bag comes with a little sticker on its bottom with the roast date on it. You know why this is important, right? Right?   Q: Why are your coffee descriptions so understated? A: It's simply what the coffees are like. To get more detailed could be problematic for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the taste experience you'll encounter in a coffee is very dependent on how it's prepared, including freshness, grind quality, water temperature, grind size, brew time, amount of turbulence, etc. So we just give you a few of the big ones. We hope you'll try your best to brew our coffees (heck, any coffee) properly and encounter the fantastic flavors within, and share with us what flavors emerge in your cup!   Q: Do you offer a "dark roast?" A: Our particular roasting aesthetic tries to strike a perfect balance of sweetness, brightness, and deep flavor development. "Dark roasting" takes the roast much deeper, in a way that tends to shroud the nuanced and lively flavors in the spectacular coffees that we've sourced, resulting in a cup character that we don't find to be a good representation of the coffees. So while our roast-level will vary a bit from coffee to coffee, you won't find our coffees dark-roasted.   Q: How should I brew coffee for the best flavor? A: There's a great new online resource for that: http://www.brewmethods.com   Q: Will you have a coffee shop? A: We are currently looking for a location in the city to open a coffeebar.   Q: Why is your website's main page a big collage of stuff? A: Why not?   Q: Who did your logo? A: The lovely and talented Nikki Arcieri. Check her out at: nicolearcieridesign.com   Q: Do you have a blog? How do I keep up-to-date on what's going on with you? A: Rather than clutter up our website, how about we use Twitter and our Facebook page for that sort of stuff?     More questions? Send us an email!