One of the most rewarding experiences in the last few years has been  establishing partnerships with local shops. In particular meeting with new business owners and get to see how they grow their ideas from plans to the grand opening.  Its been amazing to meet all these people and somehow be a part of their dream by supplying them with top quality single origin and artisan roasted coffee.  When we first went into the coffee business, we were told that public relations and customer service would be key to our success. And we have to say we have discovered that...

Marialy Justiniano President and Owner Cervantes Coffee Roasters November 6 to 12, 2016 Cervantes Coffee is a specialty roaster serving the Washington DC Metro area with Single Origin Coffees from around the world since 2011. The company focuses on South and Central American origins where it has relationships with farmers and their organizations. The company is a woman owned and run business and hires youth and young professionals from Northern Virginia. Below is a trip report prepared by the owner upon her return sharing some of the important things about coffee production and farmer cooperatives.  Learnings at origin. The trip...

We got a hold off some old Italian espresso machines. FAEMAs, to be precise. So we've been working hard to clean them, descale them and rebuild them. Just like our coffee, we like to put a lot of effort on the things we do. We think we can reclaim these old machines to produce top quality espresso. In any case, you can be the judges, once we have them up and running.  These are the machines as we got them.    As we took the top off the machine, things looked pretty bad. The machines it appears had never been...

Join us and celebrate life and culture in downtown Georgetown this coming Saturday. We will be holding an Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony with our partners DAS Ethiopian Restaurant. Learn about new cultures and how coffee is enjoyed in other countries.

Brunch and coffee: the perfect pair. Restaurants in the DC Metro area are increasingly offering brunch menus as a way to test creative offerings and provide a variety of great meals and food combinations--and quality coffee is turning out to be an important part of this mix. That's what the latest edition of Northern Virginia Magazine has to say in its front cover, and Cervantes Coffee is precisely at the center of this trend, with a full-page picture and article about us! According to Northern Virginia Magazine, restaurants are upping their game when it comes to coffee, moving away from...

CSA is no longer the obscure acronym people confused with a government program or something similar. Increasingly CSAs are part of the vocabulary of those who are becoming aware of and want to participate in alternative healthy food options. In short, a CSA program allows city residents (and suburbanites) to have direct access to high quality, fresh produce grown locally by regional farmers. When you become a member of a CSA, you're purchasing a “share” of vegetables from a regional farm. The way it works is you basically have to look for a CSA network or pick up point that is close...

While I was visiting a coffee-loving friend, he eagerly showed me some recently purchased whole bean coffee from Pennsylvania. He pulled the bag out of his refrigerator and ground up the beans in his small grinder. As he was grinding them up, his wife grabbed some fish out from the same fridge for lunch, and his kids served themselves strawberries and yogurt. While I commend their healthy eating habits, I couldn’t stop thinking about the aroma and taste of the coffee I was about to partake in, and hopefully enjoy. Freezing Coffee BeansA little known fact about coffee is that...

I never stop learning to appreciate the different ways of brewing coffee. As we prepared for this last session we delivered a week ago, we re-discovered the joy of brewing on the syphon. We've had this coffee maker for over 15 years now. We used it on special occasions and at one point I remember giving it to my dad as a present. A couple of years later, he returned as he was mainly using his mocha espresso pot more than anything else. You can watch this clip on the syphon that our head barista Alex T. made, Quite funny....