Category: Coffee Talk

Hey Coffee Drinkers – The Bean Bag now has customers from Australia to Alaska, Colorado to Canada, Minnesota to Monterey, Hawaii, and even Hong Kong and the UK… Not bad for a start-up that originated in 2014 as a grad school concept. Working full-time and going to business school meant a lot of sleepless nights just to stay almost caught up, which also meant a lot of coffee was going down the hatch.

Lucky for us there are plenty of local roasters with excellent beans, and a grocery store nearby that sells them in bulk in the coffee aisle.

Our “coffee transport system” is innovative, and Fresh Cup magazine agrees, featuring The Bean Bag in an article last Fall about new coffee packaging and sustainability.

There are a lot of fantastic coffee roasters out there who don’t offer their beautiful beans in bulk.

So look at The Bean Bag as your coffee offset – using a cool, secure-closure, washable, reusable cloth bag when you can, to offset the times when you can’t.

Buy The Bean Bag for yourself anyway. Use it for your rice, or beans, or another favorite bulk item you buy at the grocery store. The Bean Bag is easy to fill with dry goods, and handy to keep in the cupboard. Choose Red for Rice, and Blue for Beans, so that you know in an instant what you’ve got on the shelf.

We get it! You want to try new coffees, but these small specialty roasters aren’t able to refill The Bean Bag yet. You don’t want to have to throw away their empty bag each week, but right now it’s the only way to buy their coffee. Ask your roaster if they’ll set up a refill system for their regular customers. Show them The Bean Bag.

What can you choose to re-use?

2020 vision brings clarity to the world around you. Let the year 2020 do the same. Choose just one thing that you’ve been putting off, and do it by February. On February 1st, choose one more…

And while you’re at it, choose a great new Bean Bag to take with you to the store. The standard paper coffee bag is often lined with plastic film, or uses a wire closure, so it’s not recyclable. The Bean Bag solves this problem.

Wondering how to store your coffee beans to keep them fresh? You want to maximize the flavor of your beans from first cup to last, so take a quick look at how much coffee you go through in two weeks and set that as the maximum amount of coffee to load into The Bean Bag.

You may go to the grocery store about once a week, maybe twice. Instead of buying a month’s worth of coffee beans and storing them in the freezer, consider buying a smaller amount every week or two weeks during your regular shopping trip.

I know, I know, you’ve been buying more coffee beans at a time because you don’t want to waste a paper bag each time. That’s why The Bean Bag is the perfect solution to your dilemma. Most of our customers buy two Bean Bags. One is on the counter with beans or ground coffee and the other is folded up in their grocery bag. Each week, or every other week, they buy fresh coffee just as the bag on the counter is almost empty. They trade out the bags, with the just-emptied bag going into the grocery bag, ready for next week’s shopping trip.

Coffee experts agree: you should never, ever store your coffee in a paper bag in the freezer. Even the plastic lining – or a plastic coffee bag – will not keep it fresh. If you must freeze, place the beans or ground coffee in an air-tight container and put that in the fridge or freezer. The Bean Bag can go straight into that storage container before you place it into the ol’ icebox.

Here’s a link to some beautiful coffee canisters on etsy.

You can now find The Bean Bag on Instagram: @thecoffeebeanbag

We’ve been rolling along – designing, prototyping, product testing, patenting. It took a year to find a top-quality U.S. manufacturer for The Bean Bag. Following that up with inventory management and quality control. Plus processing and filling all of your orders. Now we are ready to share this cool bag on social media. Check us out on Instagram and share your coffee photos.

Why is The Bean Bag’s Instagram username @thecoffeebeanbag? Because a styrofoam pellet chair had already snagged The Bean Bag for their domain name. That makes sense. Turns out “thebeanbag” is also pretty common on Instagram, so we added “coffee” to help you find exactly the right kind of Bag for your Beans.

Imagine thinking you were ordering a rugged, washable, secure-closure bag for your coffee beans only to have a huge chair full of styrofoam delivered to your door. They sure are comfortable, but it’s hard not to spill your coffee trying to get up out of one.

We have the perfect bag for your Italian Roast coffee beans! These reusable and washable secure-closure bags are on their way from our mid-West sewing contractor this week. The bags are made of a beautiful 100% cotton fabric and feature a gorgeous Italian “pavone” design reminiscent of the Venetian or Florentine style of marbled papers that gained popularity in 17th-century Italy. The marbleizing technique is still in use today. For more historical background on marbleizing, check out this June, 2018 story in Italy magazine.

Marbleized paper may have first been developed in 12th century Japan. The art form evolved in the Middle East and Europe in the 15th – 17th centuries. Colored pigments are floated on a liquid, and paper or fabric are carefully placed on or drawn across the medium to create intricate, flowing and unique designs. The design is named “pavone” in Italian because it looks like peacock feathers.

Italian Roast is a distinctively dark roast, so you’ll enjoy using a distinctive bag for this special coffee.