650 Samples in Four Hours: Our First Lexington Cold Brew Coffee Festival

We took our OG cold brew and a new Bourbon Maple Cream down I-75—and discovered that Carabello was already more at home in Lexington than we realized.

On Saturday, August 22, Emily and I, along with two of our all-star baristas, Patty and Jessie, traveled to Lexington to participate in the city’s eighth annual Cold Brew Coffee Festival. It was our first year attending, and we had an absolutely fantastic time.

The festival takes place downtown alongside the Lexington Farmers’ Market. On a beautiful Saturday morning, Market and Short Streets were full of farmers, makers, coffee people, UK students, families, visitors and a whole lot of caffeine. The farmers market already has a great energy of its own, and adding more than a dozen coffee shops and roasters serving cold brew turned it into a pretty vibrant place to spend a Saturday morning.

First, 35 Gallons of Cold Beverages

Our festival experience actually started Friday. We had roughly 35 gallons of cold beverages to get to Lexington and keep cold until Saturday morning. Thirty-five gallons. That is not a typo.

We decided to make an overnight of it and stayed at The Manchester, one of our Lexington wholesale partners. Their team was incredibly helpful and allowed us to store all of our cold brew in their walk-in cooler overnight. That one act of hospitality saved us from having to leave Newport at an hour no coffee professional should have to see from the wrong side of the day. It also gave the four of us a chance to spend some quality time together before the controlled chaos began.

How the Festival Works

From 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., festival-goers could purchase cold brew flights and exchange their tokens for three-ounce samples from the participating coffee businesses. There were two judged categories: Best Plain Cold Brew and Best Cold Brew Specialty/Wildcard Drink. Guests also voted for the People’s Choice Award.

We entered one drink in each judged category.

For the plain cold brew, we brought our OG Carabello cold brew made with Tres Fincas, our signature blend. Tres Fincas is built from three fully traceable relationship coffees from Nicaragua, Honduras and Ethiopia, and it has been the foundation of the cold brew we have served in our café since we opened 13 years ago. It is balanced, crisp, naturally sweet and very approachable—which is precisely why we have stuck with it for all these years.

For the specialty category, we decided to have a little fun.

We got our hands on an emptied Eagle Rare barrel. Eagle Rare is a Kentucky straight bourbon aged for a full decade, and it is one people in bourbon country recognize immediately. We put green coffee from Honduras into that barrel and allowed it to age for three weeks. Then we roasted the coffee, cold brewed it, and combined it with bourbon barrel-aged maple syrup and oat milk.

We called the drink the Bourbon Maple Cream.

It was sweet and creamy, with maple sweetness, oak and a warm, unmistakably bourbon-like character from the barrel-aged coffee. It drank almost like a bourbon cream—only built around coffee. We were honestly proud of how it turned out, but we were still curious to see whether the people of Lexington would be as excited about it as we were.

We did not need to wonder for very long.

Pour, Explain, Smile, Refill, Repeat

From the moment the festival started, we were slammed. For four straight hours, it was pour, sample, explain, smile, turn around, bend down, refill and repeat. Between our two drinks, we served well over 650 samples.

By 1 p.m., the four of us were pretty wiped out. There is a particular kind of tired that comes from having hundreds of short conversations while your hands never stop moving. It is a good tired—but your back definitely knows what happened.

The Bourbon Maple Cream was a humongous hit. People would see the words “Eagle Rare barrel-aged coffee” on our sign and make a turn toward our booth. It turns out that putting the words Eagle Rare on a sign in Lexington is a fairly effective way to start a conversation.

We met bourbon-tour guides who immediately understood what we were doing. We met visitors from Atlanta and other parts of the country who were excited to take tubes of the barrel-aged coffee home. And we met a whole lot of Lexington people who simply like bourbon, understand bourbon and were intrigued by what happens when those flavors meet specialty coffee.

A Bigger Carabello Community Than We Realized

The most encouraging part of the day, though, was how many people already knew who we were.

We only have a small handful of wholesale partners in Lexington, including The Merrick Inn, Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse, The Manchester, The V at The Vine and The Camel Club. Because this was our first year at the festival, I assumed we would spend most of the morning introducing Carabello to people for the first time.

Instead, we kept hearing some version of:

“Oh my gosh, I’ve been to your shop.”
“I’ve had your coffee at Jeff Ruby’s.”
“I know your coffee from The Manchester.”
“I’ve heard you guys are really good.”

A number of UK students who grew up in Northern Kentucky stopped by and were excited to see a familiar name from home. Other people had encountered us through one of our Lexington partners, visited our café while they were in the Cincinnati area, or heard about us through friends.

I was honestly surprised by how much awareness there was. We may only have five wholesale accounts in Lexington, but it became clear that those relationships have introduced Carabello to far more people than I realized. That was deeply encouraging.

No Trophy—and Still a Win

We did not win an award this year, and that is okay.

Congratulations to Leestown Coffee House, which won Best Cold Brew; City Roastery, whose Berry Chantilly Cold Brew won Best Specialty Drink; and Funky Rooster Coffee, which took the People’s Choice Award. There were a lot of thoughtful, creative drinks being poured, and we were glad to be part of the field.

Of course, bringing home a trophy would have been fun. But we came home with something useful: real-time feedback from hundreds of people who tasted our drinks, asked questions, came back with friends and bought the barrel-aged coffee to take home. The response to the Bourbon Maple Cream, in particular, told us that there is something there worth continuing to explore.

And perhaps more importantly, we came home encouraged by the response to Carabello itself.

We went to Lexington thinking we would introduce Carabello to a new city. Lexington reminded us that many of you already know us. That was a pretty great way to spend a Saturday.