Cuve Coffee

Cuve Coffee sources its beans from locations throughout the world, including Africa and Central and South America. McKim said different areas produce different kinds of beans with their own unique flavor profiles.

McKim said roasting is a key step in producing coffee and bringing out each unique flavor for each type of bean. He said roasting coffee beans is like a science experiment with many different variables to consider and control in order to produce the most flavorful coffees. A couple of those variables include the temperature at which to roast the beans and how long to roast them.

"It's all chemistry," McKim said. "There's a whole slew of chemical reactions that happen when you're roasting coffee."

Roasting a batch of beans in the company's roaster takes 12 to 15 minutes, said Logan Allender, a roaster with Cuve Coffee.

Business has been booming for McKim and Cuve Coffee. McKim said last year, the business sold more than 250,000 pounds of coffee and provided coffee for the artists' lounge at the 2013 Austin City Limits Music Festival.

McKim said the company also is looking into re-establishing its coffee bar in East Austin. Cuve Coffee turned over operations of its coffee bar to the owners of Salt & Time Butcher Shop and Salumeria at 1912 E. Seventh St., but McKim said he is currently negotiating a lease for a new property on East Sixth Street.

"It was a slow, uphill climb, but the good news is it all worked out in the end," McKim said. "We got to pioneer specialty coffee in Texas."

Types of coffee

The flavors and characteristics of a coffee come from the type of bean and how it is roasted, owner Mike McKim said. Here are some varieties offered by Cuve Coffee:

• Classic Spicewood 71—A blend coffee that is clean and sweet. The coffee, which has flavors of melon, toffee, caramel and malt chocolate, is meant to be used as a house blend.
• Los Luchadores—This large-bean coffee comes from El Salvador. The coffee has sweet orange citrus flavors along with pie spice flavors.
• Brazil Fazenda Pantano—Grown in one of the oldest coffee plantations in Brazil, this coffee is honey-processed, which means it is picked as a ripe yellow cherry. The coffee has flavors including malt chocolate, roasted hazelnut, maple and cedar.
• Las Mingas—This type of coffee is grown in Columbia and has a milk-chocolate aroma with a creamy body and whiskey and pear flavors.

Cold-brew coffee: Black & Blue

Cold-brew coffee is a process that steeps coffee grounds for an extended period of time at room temperature or cold water. Logan Allender, a coffee roaster with Cuve Coffee, said the company's Black & Blue cold coffee steeps for about 19 hours before brewers load it into kegs.

Owner Mike McKim said he once saw a barista pour coffee out of a tap, and the idea stuck with him.

"Finally, I was just like, 'We just need to do it ourselves. Let's develop the product, put it in kegs and make it easy for people,'" McKim said.

Cuve Coffee launched Black & Blue cold coffee in January after about seven months of developing the product.

"We do our cold coffee a little bit different than most people do it," McKim said. "One of the things we do is we filter it really heavily. Almost like we're distilling it. What that does, we pull out all those suspended solids so the coffee ends up kind of thin, so we introduce dissolved nitrogen into it to give it that kind of creamy-mouth texture."

McKim said that so far it has been a popular product, and he expects demand to continue even into the cooler months.

Where to find Cuve Coffee:

• Jo's Coffee, 242 W. Second St.
• Home Slice Pizza, 1421 S. Congress Ave.
• Thunderbird Coffee, 1401 Koenig Lane
• Salt & Time Butcher Shop and Salumeria, 1912 E. Seventh St.
• Cuve Coffee also is available at several H-E-B Central Markets and Whole Foods Markets. For a complete list of Texas locations at which Cuve Coffee is sold, visit www.cuveecoffee.com.