Southern Indiana Living SeptOct 2013

Story & Photos // Michelle Hockman
Stop and taste the (artful) coffee
Driving on Paoli Pike in Floyds Knobs, the smell of
roasting cofee beans is enough to entice someone to
stop into HobKnobb Roasting Company. Inside, the
bright red roaster is hard to miss.
Barbara Fischer, a New Albany native, will be there carefully
roasting small batches of cofee beans surrounded by bags of
green cofee beans and canisters of deep brown roasted cofee.
She laughs and says “a lot of people think this is a big grinder
but I tell them, no, it is a small roaster.” Fischer explained that
“a lot of people don’t even know the beans are green” when
they come over to observe the roasting process.
The cofee comes from around the world and only the highest
quality Arabica beans are found at HobKnobb. Each type
of bean or blend of beans is specially roasted according to its
unique favor profle. The beans are roasted in seven-pound
batches, and each batch is roasted at the hand of an artist.
Roasted cofee beans begin to lose their favor in as little as 24
hours after roasting, so freshly roasted beans make the best tasting
cofee. Typical grocery store cofee blends sit on the shelves
for months.
Fischer’s favorite beans are Sumatra, Ethiopian and Costa Rican.
Her son originally had the idea to open a local cofee shop
and roast the cofee beans on site, but Fischer was involved
from the planning that started in 2003 and she took over as
owner in 2005.
Now HobKnobb roasts about 1,200 pounds of cofee beans
per month. Their cofee can be found in many local restaurants
and businesses such as Your Community Bank. In the cofee
shop, they sell more “foo-foo” drinks than regular cofee and
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they also sell some tea.
“Most cofee shops have cut down on the number of espresso
shots in their drinks but ours have stayed the same” she said, and
so the quality of the cofee shines even in the “foo-foo” drinks.
Inside the cofee shop, Fischer’s artistic touches are everywhere
from the walls that she painted herself to the copper tabletops
that she had fashioned. Some tabletops are handmade
mosaics of cofee cups or wine bottles.
Even the ledge of the window is a mosaic. She painted the
prominent display cabinet with a circus theme, and a papiermâché
mermaid she fashioned graces the craft corner of the
store. There also is a large sailfsh in the back corner.
Along with the cofee drinks, tea sandwiches, and treats, the
shop also sells handmade items from local artisans including
many items made by Fischer or the baristas that work at the shop.
At any given time, there are goat’s milk soaps, vintage jewelry,
pottery, candles and hand knit items such as scarves and
mittens. Craft items are available year round but they take a
more prominent role in the fall and winter when patrons come
to fnd unique handcrafted gifts for the holidays.
Fischer always needs to have a project going to express her
artistic creativity. She often gains inspiration from something
she has seen and decides to try for herself. One of her latest
projects are scarves out of muslin decorated with sharpie markers
using a process to create a watercolor art efect.
Knitting is her favorite pastime and she often knits while relaxing,
especially in the winter. In the shop she has scarves and
purses for sale that she has hand knit. The purses are wool and
machine felted.