Calling all coffee lovers! We’re thrilled to share a First Look at The Café at The Bierhall at Common Roots — a new weekday favorite for a cup of coffee, a breakfast sandwich, and the cozy, welcoming atmosphere that Common Roots has come to be known for. We caught up with Rich Wilson, Director of Food, Beverage & Taproom Operations at Common Roots, to hear a bit more about the space, the food, and the coffee, of course!
On Opening The Café at The Bierhall
In addition to wanting to extend the experience that we’ve been fortunate to build at our Taproom over the past three years, we also wanted to start making coffee for our line of coffee beers. We were so thrilled with the coffee that we created, we wanted to find more ways to showcase it. The idea of the Café was an opportunity to not only showcase and share the coffee, but also to invite the community into the new Bierhall space. With the Bierhall being primarily used for events and weddings, it was an opportunity to bring people here in a new and exciting way.
The hospitality aspect of the new Bierhall and Barrel House is obviously fantastic — we are so excited to be a bigger resource for the community by way of the Café and event space. From our standpoint as a brewery, we are also benefiting from this building on the production side — mainly in the form of warehousing and storage, as well as isolating the production of our wild fermentation sour beers.
The Bierhall Interior • Image courtesy of Common Roots
On The Coffee
We are sourcing as sustainably as possible from Colombia, Mexico, and Guatemala for the three beans that go into our House Blend. Here in our Café, we will feature one of those brewed hot over the course of our operations, but we’ll always have five products available as beans to go: the House Blend, the three single origins [Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala], and a decaffeinated Colombian. We’re packaging the beans into a fully compostable and resealable bag, so from a packaging standpoint, it’s as low impact as you can be.
With our ability to roast in house, we’re not only able to offer great coffee and beans, but we’ve also been able to really dial in the cold brew concentrate that we use for our Coffee Cup series of beers for the brewing side. Though at this point, I should mention that we are keeping caffeination and alcohol separate — we’ve had a few requests for breakfast beers, but we’re not there yet!
On The Food
When it comes to food, it’s always been important to us to source as local as we can and be as close to scratch as we can. We recognize that quality of preparation goes a long way, and that’s what we’re continuing to do here with our programming.
At this point, we’re offering a grab-and-go breakfast sandwich and burrito that are fully customizable and can accommodate a number of dietary restrictions as well.
On The Space
While we’re proud to offer grab-and-go, we also have an atmosphere here that encourages one to stay a while. We have free wifi, and there’s plenty of room to spread out. If you are looking for a place to have a small meeting, we have large tables to utilize.
The smiles and welcomes of our staff have become a big part of who we are, and we want to emulate that in this space as well and keep things welcoming and inviting.
On Hosting Events
We’ve hosted weddings, celebratory dinners, small birthday parties, and other events, so it’s relatively customizable. The fireplace inside is cozy and inviting, and on warmer days, we can open up the garage doors to include the outdoor space with the fire pits and Adirondack chairs.
The Bierhall and Barrel House Exterior • Image courtesy of Common Roots
On The Future
As winter approaches and as we learn a little more about the new space and all the fun to be had here, we hope to open it up for more public opportunities, which could take the form of live music. That’s something we haven’t been able to explore since our rebuild. Live music doesn’t really overlap smoothly with our restaurant operations on the other side, but that’s something that this space might allow us to get back into, with the added bonus of potentially booking a larger artist since we have seating for 200.
The Café at The Bierhall is open to the public Monday - Friday from 7am - noon. The Bierhall is available to book for events 7 days a week. Check it out at www.commonrootsbrewing.com/events.
