On Sacred Grounds’ beans are wood-fired

Grab a morning cup of Joe around here and, chances are, the beans for your drink came out of a roaster fired by electricity or natural gas. Not at On Sacred Grounds.

Most of the coffees served at this little shop in the Steam Plant Square in downtown Spokane are two days out of a wood-fired roaster. Owner Elaine Rising sells drinks infused with shots of Wood-Fire Roasted Coffees made by former Spokanite Tim Curry.

“It’s almost like a lost art,” says Rising. “This is what people fell in love with 300 years ago.”

Curry roasts coffee beans in small batches in a wood-fired roaster fed with oak, cherry, alder and other aromatic woods. He graduated from Rogers High School and now lives in Reno, Nev. The smoke from the wood imparts a subtle flavor in the beans that gives the coffee a nice depth and character.

When Rising found Curry and his coffees, she knew she wanted to serve them at her shop. “When I tasted this, I thought it was remarkable.”

Curry’s one of just five people in the U.S. selling coffees roasted over a wood fire, Rising says.

It’s hard to imagine anyone more passionate or animated when it comes to talking about coffee and its origins. Rising bought On Sacred Grounds about a year ago, after working for more than 20 years as a special education teacher.

Ask her about the history of coffee and its social or cultural past and Rising will pull out a deteriorating copy of “The Signet Book of Coffee and Tea,” and check the underlined passages to be sure she’s remembering the details correctly. Then, she’ll tell her favorite coffee tales, pantomiming and introducing props along the way.

Rising will share her passion later this month in a class she’s teaching on coffee through Spokane Parks and Recreation, called “Romancing the Bean.” For registration information, go to www.spokaneparks.org or call 625-6200.

On Sacred Grounds is located at 163 S. Lincoln. The phone number is 747-6294.

Wood-Fire Roasted Coffees can be found on the Web at www.woodfireroasted.com.

Impromptu kitchen gadgets

Have you introduced a tool into your kitchen you found at the hardware store? We want to hear about it.

Like the humble beginnings of the Microplane graters (which were invented when the wife of a wood-working tools salesman discovered that a superfine wood plane worked wonders in the kitchen), we’d like to know about other hardware that has made the jump from the tool box into the utensil drawer.

Send a note to the address below to tell me about your find and how you use it in the kitchen, and we’ll share the best tips with readers in an upcoming story.