Author: John Fladd

News from the local food scene

• Chocolate: The New Hampshire Chocolate Expo will take place Sunday, Oct. 13, at the Doubletree Expo Center (700 Elm St., Manchester), from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. General admission “timed-entry” tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for children. Late Day Special tickets for admission after 4 p.m. are $10. Online VIP tickets are $30 for adults and $15 for children, which allows admittance one hour early. These are available through eventbrite.com. General admission tickets at the door are $30 for adults, and $15 for children.

• Spanish and Portuguese wines go head to head: WineNot Boutique (25 Main St., Nashua, 204-5569, winenotboutique.com) will host a Blind Tasting Duel: Spain vs. Portugal Red Wines, Thursday, Oct. 10, from 6 to 8 p.m. Seven red wines will be served with a variety of fine international cheeses and savory salami. . After each flight, attendees will be asked to vote on their favorite wine in that category. Tickets are $40 and available through eventbrite.com.

• Finding wild food: There will be a Fall Foraging Walk on Thursday, Oct. 10, from 4 to 5 p.m. at New Hampshire Audubon (84 Silk Farm Road, Concord, 224-9909, nhaudubon.org). Walk with Julieann Hartley, also known as Miss Julieann, a local children’s musician and nature educator. Explore and identify a variety of edible plants and talk about everyone’s fall favorite, the acorn. This is a family-friendly event; be prepared to walk 1 to 2 miles and dress for the weather. Reserve a spot at eventbrite.com.

• More chocolate: Van Otis Chocolates (341 Elm St. in Manchester; vanotis.com) will hold a “Chocolate Haunted Cabin” class on Thursday, Oct. 17, at 5 p.m. Tickets cost $75 and the class runs two hours. Attendees will tour the chocolate factory, try some handmade chocolates and decorate a chocolate haunted cabin with provided toppings and goodies, according to the class description. Find the tickets via the website.

This is an extremely good cocktail, with an even better name.

• ⅓ ounce cinnamon syrup (see below)
• ¼ ounce orgeat (an almond syrup used in tropical drinks) – I buy mine online or at the liquor store
• ½ ounce pineapple juice
• ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
• 2 ounces golden rum – I used Planteray’s “Stiggin’s Fancy” Pineapple Rum; it’s smooth and a little sweet and marries well with the other ingredients in this cocktail
• 2 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
• 2 dashes Angostura Bitters
• Ice
• Mint sprig for garnish

Wrap several handfuls of ice cubes in a tea towel, then smash repeatedly with something heavy. (I use the pestle from my largest mortar and pestle; it’s the size and shape of a billy club.) This will provide you with a variety of ice, from one or two full cubes, to broken cubes, to crushed ice, to snow. If you have a Pilsner glass, fill it with the ice; otherwise fill any medium-sized tall glass.

Pour the syrups, juices and rum over the top of the ice. Stir with a bar spoon or a straw or a chopstick, then top it off with the bitters and garnish it with a mint sprig.

This drink will hit you differently depending on how you drink it. If you go at it immediately, with a straw, it will be pretty sweet. Only a hint of cinnamon on the back end keeps it from being a little syrupy. If you sip it from the lip of the glass, the bitters will give it a slightly savory backbone. If you start with just a sip or two, have an in-depth discussion about the relative merits of bagpipe jazz or Klingon love poetry, then come back to it 10 minutes or so later, the crushed ice will have melted, diluting the cocktail a bit as well as chilling the drink.

Cinnamon Syrup

• 2 cups (396 g) granulated sugar
• 1 cup (227 g) water
• 7 cinnamon sticks

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Remove from heat, cover, and leave overnight or at least six or seven hours. Strain and bottle. This will last at least a month in your refrigerator. It is outstanding in cocktails, of course, but even better over French toast.

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.

A&E is reinvented as Rare Breed

Emeran Langmaid has been on a voyage of reinvention.

Langmaid is the owner of Rare Breed Coffee (2 Pittsburgh Ave., Nashua, 578-3338, rarebreedcoffee.com), one of New England’s most innovative coffee and tea companies. For more than 20 years it went by a different name: A&E Coffee and Tea. At the 10-year point, Langmaid felt that her company needed to go in a new direction, but she was advised against it.

“I was working with a marketing company at the time,” Langmaid remembered, “and they told me, ‘Don’t change your name because you already have a loyal customer base and it gets confusing. So just stick with your name,’ which was probably not great advice. It makes sense on the surface, but then the specialty coffee market became a big thing. Like craft beer, a lot more people were opening in on it. And so we actually wanted to rebrand to tell more of what our story was and to connect with people and to really have a much better online presence.”

By 2021 it had become clear to Langmaid that she needed to tap into a new pool of customers, and she made the decision to not only change the name of her company but also completely change the look and marketing of her products.

“We were doing something that was different in our area than really anybody else,” Langmaid said. “Green Mountain [Coffee] was the region’s first or second most popular coffee brand out there, behind Dunkin’ Donuts. Dunkin’ was predominantly a drive-thru business and Green Mountain was Keurig and a brew-at-home business. So they didn’t really compete in terms of who their end user was necessarily. So the genesis of Rare Breed is stepping outside of the lines and doing something different and following your own passage.” A company like hers needs to be unique and vibrant, she said — a Rare Breed.

Langmaid was confident about her coffee. She is one of very few certified coffee specialists to pass the prestigious Q Grader exam, making her one of the most qualified coffee producers in the world. She knew she could depend on her team.

“I totally depend and rely on everybody that’s part of the team,” she said. “We all are moving in the same direction.”

Langmaid knew that roasting and processing Rare Breed’s coffee and tea would involve continual fine-tuning, but one of the highest priorities for her and her team in reinventing themselves was the look of their products. They decided to adopt an audacious brightly-colored look for their packaging, with strong graphics and bold images on the containers.

“You have to really market and brand your company to get attention and to get noticed,” Langmaid said. “It’s a very fast-paced world and eye candy is so important.”

Rare Breed worked with a branding company that was known primarily for its work for craft beer companies with the same market that Rare Breed wanted to target.

“Our core customer is about 25 to 40, whereas it used to be like 35 to 60. As kids mature and grow up, they move away from energy drinks and some of the other caffeinated sugar products into a more sophisticated palate. We wanted to be their first choice. That’s our target audience.”

“If you go to the beer store and you see all of the cans, those labels are bright and fun and dynamic and a little irreverent at times, and that was our inspiration,” Langmaid said. “We wanted to push the envelope a little bit within the coffee space. We also want to be in grocery [stores]. And again, when you walk through the coffee aisle, it’s all in bags. So we ended up going with cans, kind of a throwback to the old coffee can, where it’s completely recyclable, it retains its shape, so regardless of how it’s stocked on the shelf it will look really sharp and clean.”

A&E Coffee and Tea officially became Rare Breed in October 2023. The visual changes have been just a small part of Rare Breed’s rebranding, but so far the results have been promising.

“At times it is an uphill battle,” Langmaid sighed. “You’re swimming upstream. Or against the tide. I’m sure there’s like a lot of phrases that kind of define what we’re doing. We’re just pulling it into coffee.”

Featured Photo: Courtesy photo.

News from the local food scene

• The days of wine and sunflowers? On Thursday, Oct. 3, Barrel and Baskit (377 Main St., Hopkinton, 746-1375, barrelandbaskit.com) will host a Sunny Sunflowers Flower Bar & Wine Tasting from 5 to 7 p.m. Each guest will be able to pick a bouquet of sunflowers and other late summer/early fall flowers, enjoy wine and an appetizer bar, and socialize with other sunflower enthusiasts. Tickets are $85.

• Block Party: 603 Brewery (42 Main St., Londonderry, 404-6123, 603brewery.com) will host a Fall Fest Block Party on Saturday, Oct. 5, from noon to 9:30 p.m. The 603 will take over Main Street with food trucks, live music, a stein holding contest, axe throwing, 603 Scratch Kitchen specials and more.

• Books and Brownies: On Saturday, Oct. 5, The Friends of the Brookline Public Library (16 Main St., Brookline, 673-3330, brooklinelibrarynh.org) will hold their semi-annual Used Book & Bake Sale from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 4 Main St. The funds raised by the Friends are used for library programs, including the Summer Reading Program and Museum Passes

• Fun with tacos: Celebrate an evening of tacos Saturday, Oct. 5, from 4 to 8 p.m in downtown Franklin.The first Fiesta del Taco will bring together community members and support local businesses as they transform their normal menus to serve tacos. Participants will vote for their favorite. Complete a Taco Passport for a chance to win prizes.