Summer break is officially here, which means we no longer have access to iced lattes on the meal plan. Whether you’re taking a caffeine hiatus or training to become a part-time barista, there are many local coffee businesses in Nashville to support over the summer, even as you set up shop back home.
Located northeast of campus, Summit Sisters Coffee is a division of Summit Coffee Company that was founded nearly 30 years ago. Summit Coffee was one of the first roasting companies in the Nashville area and currently sells wholesale to hospitals, college campuses and local coffee shops. The Summit Sisters, Camie Carlisle and Chelsea Lanier, initially pursued careers in nursing and social work. They ended up working at the same hospital, but after a few years, they decided to start a new adventure together.
“Coming in, we wanted to make it a full family-run business and bring our husbands in and get them to be able to work too — but you’ve got to grow a little bit to make that happen,” Lanier said. “With The Summit Sisters, we wanted to make sure people could get freshly roasted coffee at home, and that’s why we started this division of the company.”
Carlisle and Lanier emphasized the importance of leading their own brewing company, saying they see a lack of female roasters in the Nashville area. Carlisle said she does much of the roasting for Summit Sisters herself, despite the “physically taxing” nature of the job. Lanier focuses more on the business and retail side of the company.
“We are trying to raise awareness for female Brewsters, because we think that this is a super fun part of the industry, and we feel like we can make a difference in this area,” Carlisle said. “As [women], we try to offer creativity to the role.”
Summit Sisters uses two different roasting methods to produce their coffee, each considered to be a micro batch. Air roasting uses air to shoot the bean chaff out of the roaster. Air roasting creates a smooth and balanced cup of coffee. Drum roasting uses a large heated drum to spin the coffee beans around to evenly distribute the heat, using both air and gas. The air roaster has a maximum capacity of three pounds, so each batch is made for one or two bags of coffee.
Carlisle explained the roasting process to The Hustler, describing the care she takes to ensure that each pound of coffee beans is roasted to perfection. With the meticulous attention to detail it takes to roast coffee, Carlisle said there is a small point at which the beans are roasted enough before they will begin to burn.
“What I do as a roaster is I’m manipulating the air and heat to make sure that the beans are roasted, but also not letting too much smoke in [the drum],” Carlisle said.
As the beans roasted in the drum, we could smell the scent of baking bread spread through the roastery at around the 300-degree mark, as Carlisle predicted. Carlisle shared the importance of roasting different kinds of beans at varying temperatures and timeframes in order to pull out distinct flavor notes.
“There’s different things that we’re manipulating with the Ethiopian beans, for example — that’s a really fruit-forward one, and I want to make sure that you can really taste those fruit notes,” Carlisle said. “If I roasted it at the level of that dark [roast] over there, it would take out that fruity profile.”
The Summit Sisters’ range of products includes flavored, single-origin blends and crown jewels. After trying a few different blends, our favorite was the Tennessee Whiskey, which has a butterscotch and caramel flavor. The crown jewel blends average a cupping score of 85, which is a numerical rating ranging from zero to 100 used to assess the quality of coffee. The Summit Sisters also sells syrups, sauces, smoothie mixes and other items typically found at a coffee shop.
Summit Sisters recently changed their packaging from bags to boxes on April 18. The change allows for more products to be displayed on shelves as the boxes are stackable and compact. They feature embossed gold foil and are recyclable. The inside of each box displays the typical ratios the Summit Sisters recommend based on different coffee roasting processes their customers may be using in their homes.
“We wanted to tell our story through the packaging. The three mountains: The middle mountain is our dad, who started Summit Coffee when we were just little girls, and the two mountains on the side represent when we joined the business,” Lanier said. “The gold represents what we are roasting with, with our San Franciscan roasters. And then we wanted the front to be very photogenic.”
Whether you’re interested in an espresso blend to recreate a Local Java iced americano or looking for a standard blend for your parents’ old-school coffee machine, Summit Sisters has a blend for every coffee lover. A 12-ounce box of coffee is $18.25 and is available for shipping or free in-store pickup.
