The best coffee in Maine is found served up at a sporting camp in the great, deep woods.

  The coffee server making his rounds like a private after the day’s hard fought battle to catch some type of wildlife with the Choke full o’ Nuts, Eight O’clock, Wally World Classic Roast beverage.

Served up inside the hand peeled cedar or pine log Maine woods camp. Using a pot holder, gripping a very old smoke charred metal pot tipped slowly to spill its precious contents.

The blackened coffee pot like the cowboys used out under the stars, on the open range leaning against their circle of western saddles glazing into camp fires. Collecting positive ions as a summer breeze circulates around the idle conversations.

Back at woods camp, the metal coffee cups gripped by handles by the partridge, deer, black bear or moose slayers. Transported out onto the open porch after a gut busting supper of fresh game, local veggies, out of state dessert pies their better half packed in coolers days earlier.

Fresh coffee to start the day tastes mighty fine, extra special at a Maine lake cottage too.

With Grampy cooking a breakfast of eggs, sausage, bacon, ham, baked beans, home fries, pancakes, homemade biscuits and jam. The chef telling his three grandsons to shake a leg. “We’re wasting daylight lads, the fish are waiting, I can hear them calling your name”. A glance at his Timex shows a whisker before five AM.

The excited boys, a trio of cousins under the gun to finish their breakfast eggs, flap jacks, whatever remains. Mopping up their plates using the last biscuit what was served up from iron frying pan atop the antique wood cook stove. The passed down family stove surviving two World Wars and the Great Depression. The eggs just dined on, cooked the way each young boy likes them best while their grandfather cleans up, finishes one more cup of early morning coffee.

 Filling a thermos with the excess brew to nurse on later to percolate, stay caffeinated out on the open water.

As a day of fishing and stories with a grandfather out in the boat unfolds in the memory making. The competition for the biggest fish bragging rights about to launch from the boat tied to the dock out front the Maine lake cottage.

The best coffee in Maine, you can find it in quaint small town, a few city venue established that stand out. But the map from the hand picked beaneries touted online seems to stop in Bangor heading north. It forgets the coffee served daily at the corner stores, local Northern Maine diners, restaurants and cafes. Morning coffee tastes best in anything but a Styrofoam cup and the conversation, catch up on grapevine news with the other ground bean worshipers makes it almost a religious like ritual.

 Just try to skip that morning coffee and the rest of the day seems to back peddle and makes you feel out of joint.

Maine like it’s micro breweries has lots of bean roasters. Clever names attached to the coffee to tie in with the regions it is from and pushing the branding levers hard to stand out as the best bean to start or end your day. What’s the slogan of the double DD brand of coffee? Oh yeah, the World runs on Dunkin’ coffee. My World rocks on Tim Horten’s and with my boys playing hockey in Canada I noticed there is a Timmy Ho Ho’s on every corner eh?

 Forget the brand of java bean you like best, how do you enhance it to your liking with the aftermarket fixings.

If straight up, Darth Vader black is not your color or choice for coffee hue or not cutting it for sweetness or flavoring infusion. Latte this, double shot of turbo that, triple triple espresso leaves little room for coffee among all the foamy lather.

And how much coffee is too much? Hold it to a limit of 28 cups per week some preach.

Remember, it’s not the coffee alone but the people and Maine setting that improve the taste. Coffee moments, ahhhhh.

Oh sure, sometimes it’s just you and the coffee in the holder with tunes or the news on the morning commute. But the sense of community among coffee drinkers after their morning fix is strong. Truck drivers guiding the 18 or more wheels through all kinds of Maine weather and winding roads. The guy or gal with the chain drive wallet and linear got your ears on needs the road juice. Not a flashlight full of bennies under the bunk mattress. To stay extra alert, to avoid flattening texting teenagers with new licenses and plenty of other distractions. That’s a big 10-4 to skip the 10-55 that leads to the meat wagon or hearse call.

 What’s that, you are a tea toteler?

Being this close to the merry old dominion of Canada which learned the love of a spot of tea at three from across the pond, Mainers are no strangers to the power of the tea leaves. Don’t have clouds in their coffee and reach for Red Rose, Sleepy Bear, Earle Grey, Lipton or whatever their favorite blend of tea in the bag to heat, steep and pour. Some hot items for tea drinkers if it is no to the cup of Joe.

The best coffee bean grinder on the market today to own because some argue fresh ground of any variety that trips your trigger is the single most ingredient. Or what about French pressed coffee? It ain’t rocket science as this coffee camp blog post sputters.

Anything but those Folger’s coffee crystals for me please.  And what about cowboy coffee that is only the beans, the water, the pot? True two wheel hog riders don’t mind the bugs in their teeth but the grounds from really bad cowboy coffee can stick with your gritty smile and spoil the day.

 I think the water is right up there with what’s most important to pay attention to making the morning coffee.

Don’t spoil the coffee with chlorine and fluoride municipal H2O IMHO. And push back, run away from those burnt over-roasted beans that taste like Moxie, roots, bark mixed with dirt. I know folks line up in droves, beat a pathway to the door of Starbucks. And I’m a some like it fine just midnight black, straight up no thank you to anything extra slid into my coffee cup. To wrestle with the taste, to interfere with the clear, crisp liquid buzz.

 What you park the coffee in for a vessel for the road or standing around hearing about how the Red Sox, Celtics, Boston Bruins or local sports team did last night.

With the shuffle stop and go at the Piggly Wiggly corner pit stop.

Where talk about the brown trout biting out on Secret Pond or the river with the first settler’s name, Meduxnekeag that means “Rocks at its mouth”.

Here’s one fine coffee tested container for road or camping trips where you need more than one 8 ounce fix and the thermos is as precious as the green tank with the air cord is to folks short on breath.

The coffee cup better not be Dixie brand or hydrocarbon styrofoam. That’s right up there with drinking water out of a garden hose on a warm day experience when you are a kid. And your peers say “he’s just a young sprout, don’t know no better”. (Speaking as an aside of the dialect, expressions in Maine check out this wicked decent story about the trusty, crusty clammer with his hoe, boots, on the mud flats in search of the friggin’ purple clam that removed his finger. He could have used a squirt of French Vanilla coffee to his sweeten his sour mood.)

 Here are some local Maine bean roasters and distributors.

Wicked Joe’s pushes not just a better coffee bean but fair trade with the Juan Valdez farmer on the other end of the trade. Carrabassett Coffee Company is headquartered in Kingfield, Maine near Sugarloaf USA ski area. Here’s a Maine map with more coffee roaster locations to located the ones nearest you. Will double back and add more from the list as we delve into who they are, where they are in Maine for your coffee hounds.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker

 207.532.6573 | [email protected] |

MOOERS REALTY 69 North Street Houlton Maine 04730 USA