Coffee On The Porch®

Dan runs Coffee On The Porch out of Camden, Maine, and there is no walk-up shop to find. It's an online roaster and wholesale distributor, and the whole pitch hinges on Dan himself. He meets people on photography trips, ships beans across the country, and answers his own customer emails. Seth Reiner brought Mack the Knife back to Denver after meeting Dan in the field. Michael Gallagher has subscribed for years and reroutes the shipments to wherever he's summering for the season.

The roast style is dark and the names are pure Sinatra. Amen Again, Mack the Knife, Frank Sumatra, Key West Cuban. The Costa Maine blend is the one to send a cream-and-sugar drinker, and the Key West Cuban dark roast works in a French press if you want it loud. The personality of the operation is the personality of the bean list, which is the personality of Dan, which is the whole reason customers stay. There's no marketing layer between the roaster and the buyer. That's the appeal and the constraint at the same time.

Fair warning. The order form has been broken recently and there's no phone line to call when something goes sideways. If you need a customer service department, this isn't it. If you want a small-batch dark roast from a one-man Maine operation with a name pulled from a Sinatra song and an email that gets answered personally, the trade is worth making. This is the right roaster for mail-order dark roast drinkers who want personality with their pound, and for people who'd rather have a name to email than a chatbot to navigate. It's the wrong choice if you're hoping to drop in for a cup, or if you need shipping reliability without occasional friction. Amen Again is the bag to start with. Frank Sumatra is the whole bean for the people who already know they want it darker.