Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/603345
40 | DECEMBER 2015 nshoremag.com But she started very, very small, with a table at a kids' craft show, surrounded by children hawking painted rocks and gimp bracelets. "I was the only adult selling there," Brainard says, "but I really wanted to see what people who didn't know me thought of it." They thought it was delicious, so, emboldened, she tried out some more grown- up festivals and farmers' markets. Eventually, Wenham's Grassy Roots sandwich shop, which had been selling Mojo by the cup, suggested packaging it in a multiserving size. That original Mojo was sold in mason jars, but thanks to a new rela- tionship with Puleo's Dairy in Salem, Brainard bottles her brew, a mixture of strong coffee, local milk, and cane sugar, in classic glass milk bottles so she can use the equipment at Puleo's. That's not the only North Shore partnership Brainard has culti- vated. After outgrowing the tiny commercial kitchen she'd been renting in the basement of First Church in the center of Wenham, she started sharing space with Lark Fine Foods, the gourmet cookie producer in Essex. It's a good fit, as cold brewing coffee doesn't take up much space—just a bunch of plastic five-gallon buckets. And, of course, it's hard to beat the scent of freshly baked cookies mixing with a hint of coffee that fills the place. Cold brewing—steeping ground coffee in cold water overnight, or in Brainard's case, for 13 hours—ex- tracts a more complex coffee flavor with less acid than traditionally brewed coffee. Brainard says the intense flavor that results from the cold-brew process just makes sense. (When you brew using a drip coffee maker, the grounds are in contact with the water for only a few minutes and the heat releases the acidity.)