For a lot of us, our morning cup of coffee is almost an afterthought. Maybe you’ve got a tried-and-true Mr. Coffee machine on your kitchen counter, or perhaps you swing into the drive-through on your way to work each morning. For Jordan Fallon, the morning cup of coffee is a ritual that calls for precision. He grinds beans in a state-of-the-art Baratza grinder, then pours water, which he mineralizes himself and has heated to exactly 198 degrees Fahrenheit, over a Kalita Wave dripper, which is a type of pour-over dripper. If this sounds like more work than you’re willing to put into a cup of coffee at home, the good news is that you can at least get a to-go cup or a bag of coffee beans made by someone who takes java this seriously.
Jordan, founder of Bare Knuckle Coffee in Jefferson City, started roasting coffee when he was fifteen years old. He remembers having a particularly good cup of coffee in San Diego when he was younger, and then thinking, “What’s with mid-Missouri coffee being so subpar?” Jordan recalls that first batch of home-roasted coffee wasn’t exactly what he was looking for, but gradually he learned more and began to improve. Eventually, he had the opportunity to buy a production roaster from the owner of Sump Coffee in St. Louis, which led to him launching Bare Knuckle in 2016.
According to Jordan, his hands-on experience with roasting has led him to think about coffee differently than someone who may have been trained on a production roaster. “Really quickly we learned through manual methods that you need to roast each coffee totally differently as it comes down the line and treat it like a new practice all the time,” he says.
Precision is central to the way Bare Knuckle approaches making coffee. Jordan works with an importer out of Minneapolis, and he’s extremely particular about what kinds of coffee beans he decides to work with. “We look at everything from plant variety to how it’s handled in that year to what’s the moisture,” Jordan says. “There’s a lot of background research that goes into those coffees before we have them on deck.” He adds that Bare Knuckle Coffee emphasizes traceability and can identify which farm and harvest date beans come from. The company also emphasizes getting green-produced coffee beans, ensuring environmental sustainability.
Jordan explains that selecting coffee beans carefully and roasting them the right way doesn’t necessarily go hand-in-hand with putting out a perennially available, consistent product. He compares it to the difference between getting produce from the supermarket any time of year versus getting something that is in-season at the farmers market. Bare Knuckle has one coffee that is available year-round, and the rest are roasted individually. “Each coffee is roasted differently, and when we’re out of it you’ll never see it again,” he says.
Part of Bare Knuckle’s philosophy is emphasizing education. If you look on the website, you’ll find brew guides and other information about how to make a great cup of coffee at home. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, more people are getting their caffeine fi x this way. Jordan says that while in-store sales have gone down, online orders for Bare Knuckle coffee are up, and the company believes in being a resource for people who want to make quality coffee at home. “If people have questions, they can reach out and we’ll try to find an answer,” says Jordan, who also considers his work with Bare Knuckle an ongoing education.
“We’re always learning but it’s come a long way.”
Learn more about Bare Knuckle Roasting and order coffee at BareKnuckleRoasting.com.
