Java House Coffee Bar Serves Up Cold Brew In Carmel
Photographer: Ellie Sophia Photography
A new coffee shop is brewing in Carmel, and it means business.
Java House Coffee Bar opened its doors in May, and it doesn’t serve traditional cups of ground coffee beans. Rather, the bar is pouring cups of premium cold brew coffee.
“The whole purpose is that we set out to make a better tasting cup of coffee,” says Cassandra Moe, Coordinator of Java House Coffee Shop. “We believe that we’ve accomplished that through our cold brewing process. And then the way that we are able to make that into different style drinks.”
Java House Cold Brew is owned by Heartland Food Products Group, which has had its corporate headquarters in Clay Terrace for about 10-15 years.
“We moved over to this new suite on the other side of the building about a year ago,” Moe says. “When we did that, we decided to get the first-floor suite as well, with the opportunity of opening up the Java House Coffee Shop in the store below. The idea started about a year ago. We wanted to showcase everything that our coffee can do and the way to do that is to open a retail spot.”
A Long Process
The coffee at Java House is 100% cold brew, meaning that the coffee beans are brewed using cold water. The whole process takes more than 12 hours and begins by steeping small batches of coffee beans in room temperature or cold water, rather than roasting coffee beans for traditional coffee.
“Over at our manufacturing facility on 86th Street, we soak our coffee beans in cold water for 12-14 hours in all of these small batch tanks,” Moe says. “We do small batches and it’s all handcrafted and artisan brewing. We do all of the brewing over there, and what we get is this concentrate. Then we use that concentrate to make a cold brew.”
From the concentrate, Java House can make cold brews that are hot, cold and with nitro. With the shop, they’re now able to do cold brew lattes, served either hot or cold. Also on the menu are Cappuccinos, Americanos and Frappuccinos.
The difference between cold brew and ground coffee is that with ground coffee, it runs the risk of burning the beans. The result can give coffee a somewhat burnt taste. With cold brew, the finished product is a smooth taste.
“When you brew coffee hot, essentially what you’re doing is you are scorching that bean. So what you get from that is a little bit of acidity and a bit of a bite,” Moe says. “So that’s why sometimes you’ll have coffee drinkers that don’t like it because it’s too much of a bite or it tastes burnt. With cold brew, you’re soaking that bean in cold water for 12-hours. You’re really ending up enjoying that bean with all the coffee notes that it was intended to have with it.”
Mobile Coffee
Since opening the doors to its Carmel location, Moe says the community has been super responsive to its cold brew.
“Everybody has loved it,” Moe says. “We have a really great repeat rate so far. We’ve had a lot of unique visitors come through the shop already, and we just want to continue to get that exposure out there so that everybody can understand what we’re trying to do here, and what we’re serving is a better tasting cup of coffee.”
In order to increase its exposure, Java House created a mobile truck to go to events around Indianapolis and the surrounding cities. For now, it can be found at CarmelFest, City Market and all the Food Truck Fridays. Additionally, it partnered with Indy Eleven and will be at the Summer Concert Series at Clay Terrace Mall.
“The mobile truck was in Chicago last summer,” Moe says. “We decided to move it to Indianapolis, so we’d have better control over all of the events that it was going to. We did that starting this year only. We’re looking forward to just doing a ton of events around that truck this year.”
Java House Coffee Bar is located at 14390 Clay Terrace Blvd. Suite 160 in Carmel. It’s open 7 a.m. – 9 p.m. from Monday through Thursday. On Friday and Saturday, its hours are 7 a.m. – 10 p.m. It’s open Sunday from 7 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. You can call them at 317-564-7815 or visit them online at javahouse.com for more information.
