Arctos Coffee & Roasting Company Bear-Hugs Spokane With New Cafe

Arctos Coffee & Roasting in Spokane, Washington. All photos courtesy of Arctos Coffee.

Coming face to face with a grizzly bear isn’t something one soon forgets. It certainly made an impression on outdoorsman, science teacher and Arctos Coffee & Roasting Owner and Roaster Jason Everman, who encountered the mesmerizing beasts during a weeklong research trip into Glacier National Park while in college.

“I wrote a big research paper entitled ‘Everything But the Rocks,’ because grizzlies eat everything,” Everman told Daily Coffee News. “I guess you could say that is where my fascination with bears started.”

Everman is hoping his coffee business — which takes its name from Ursos Arctos, the scientific term for grizzly — makes an equally strong an impression on the coffee drinkers of Spokane, Washington. This Spring, the company opened the doors to its first cafe, where a Diedrich IR-5 now turns out the goods for drinks prepared on a 3-group Synesso Hydra MVP, with grinding handled by a trio of Mazzers: Robur, Major and Super Jolly. An EK43 grinds for Curtis batch brew.

The cafe is also a place where a trio of Everman’s passions — family, coffee and science — come together. The yearlong renovation of the 1,400-square-foot former auto body shop space occurred with plenty of help from Everman’s father, whose lifelong experience woodworking contributed to the alderwood furniture and a coffee bar crafted from repurposed plywood. Everman’s daughter, Courtnee Everman, is also a manager at the cafe. Still a full-time local science teacher, Everman relishes every aspect of coffee from that perspective as well.

“All of it,” said Everman, “from the biology of the growing regions to the transforming of the physical and chemical properties into roasted coffee. [It’s] amazing stuff.”

Yet for all the fascinating physics and chemistry involved in his coffee business, it does not carry over into the classroom. Not formally, anyway.

“Although I do teach science, the only time coffee science is integrated into my curriculum is when I am drinking it and teaching simultaneously,” said Everman, “which is all morning.”

Everman’s first professional associations with coffee came when he purchased the local shop Grind Central Espresso in 2013, which he still owns, and which now also serves Arctos-roasted coffee. Two years after buying that business, he installed a 2-kilo-capacity Mill City roaster in an uninsulated 8-by-10-foot garden shed, and set about learning the processes through which he now generates the house Arctos espresso blend, comprised of coffees from Central America, Brazil and Africa. Arctos also offers one decaf and one ultra-light-roasted white coffee blend called Ghost Bear.

Said Everman, “Once I am done teaching for the summer, I will begin offering single origins at Arctos also.”

Beyond the single-origin-oriented expansion to the roasted coffee menu this summer, there are no current plans for another cafe or other immediate growth, as the company opts instead to keep things slow and steady.

Said Everman, “I have fallen head over heals for many aspects of the coffee industry and I only hope that I am a part of it for years to come.”

Arctos Coffee & Roasting is open now at 1923 N. Hamilton St. in Spokane.