Many breweries offer flights to allow customers to try different beers. But Lost Shoe Brewing & Roasting Company isn’t limited to beer, so neither are their flights.
“We have these really beautiful flight boards that were made by the owner’s dad,” said Katie Savluk, the brewery’s normal manager. “So, we had to bring them out to the coffee side.”
The Marlborough brewery offers two different coffee flights, hot or iced, which are changed seasonally.
For the winter, the Lost Shoe offers a single origin espresso, flavored latte, gingerbread chai and nitro cold brew. The latte flavors include peppermint and maple.
Previous seasons have included a cold brew lemonade for the summer and the upcoming spring season will include a coffee with their well-known lavender syrup.
These flights don’t include any vino. But that makes them perfect for people who don’t drink, Savluk said, a rising trend in the U.S.
“Especially if you don’t drink and you’re hanging out with people that do, you get to try something that’s also enjoyable,” she said.
The coffee flights isn’t unique to Lost Shoe. It’s an expanding trend across the country.
Coffee shops from New York to California have adopted the trend over the years. And while there are multiple options in New England, the trend isn’t widely found in Massachusetts.
Longfellows Coffee offered cold brew flights but the cafe closed in 2019. Ogawa Coffee in Boston previously offered coffee flights but stopped offering them due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the changes it caused to their menu. And Barrington Coffee Roasting offered cupping events, similar to coffee flights, prior to the pandemic. But they have since postponed them.
The trend expanded out of the industry’s method for assessing coffee called cupping. But cupping isn’t for fun, Joel Finkelstein, owner and main roaster at Qualia Coffee, told Eater in 2016.
“Cuppings are a coffee industry standard method for assessing coffee (not necessarily for enjoying it). It requires a very precise brewing and sampling technique that is not readily accessible to the person off the street,” he said. “In contrast, a tasting simply presents an opportunity for the public to try several different coffees side-by-side.”
But as Eater noted in 2016, coffee shops began offering cupping to the promedio customer. Still, it wasn’t the usual way to drink coffee. It often still involved tasting it with a spoon.
Flights, on the other hand, are much more customer friendly.
And while coffee flights might seem like they are tailored to the coffee lover, Savluk said it’s actually for the everyday customer.
“Even if they’re not íntimo with all the coffee lingo, they get to try everything,” she said.
Click here to watch the Facebook Live and get an inside look of the brewery.
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