Dark Matter Coffee Blends Beats Into Every Cup
You won’t find Dark Matter Coffee selling a stale Coldplay album next to their register like certain coffee establishments. These Chicago-based roasters take their coffee and their tunes seriously. Their relationships with the musicians they work with goes as deep as a dark void of extra black joe. You will instead find the guys behind Dark Matter collaborating with the likes of Mastodon, the Hood Internet, and Derrick Carter on everything from signature blends to mixtapes and special releases. We spoke with Kyle Hodges, their Minister of Propaganda, about Dark Matter’s love of music, his past as a DJ, their mad scientist-worthy coffee experiments, and the unique ways they blend music and coffee into one.
“I think one of the redeeming qualities of younger generations is that they appreciate the little details and the hard work that goes into making something.”
What is Dark Matter’s coffee manifesto?
We are trying to take the bow tie out of coffee. A lot of coffee places have a stuffiness to them. They have this exclusivity that makes coffee seem not accessible to everyone. We are against that and just want to provide people with a really good cup of coffee.
How do you do that?
To us, that means sourcing our coffee responsibly, pricing it well for customers, and providing for the farmers we work with. We have a direct relationship with our growers. We try to make our coffee sourcing as transparent as possible and make sure our coffee is sort of farm-to-table. Because of the relationship we have with our growers in El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, we can guarantee quality coffee. We know how the coffee is maturing, how it tastes, if it got fruitier or more acidic. We help them grow great coffee, and in turn, we make better coffee for our customers.
We want it to be as inviting as possible. It’s not one of those things where you have to be a coffee purist. I mean, what does “coffee purist” even mean? We think that stuff is unnecessary and trivial. It should just be enjoyed. That’s why we experiment with our coffee—so people can try something new.
Can you tell us a bit about your coffee concoctions?
We like to push the boundaries on our coffee. We play around with how we ferment our beans, which can completely change the coffee you get after roasting. On top of that, we do a light to medium roast, which many coffee places don’t do.
Why the light to medium roasts?
I look at it like this: You don’t go to a really nice steak place and order your steak well-done, right? Why would you order your coffee burnt? Plus, light to medium offers us the ability to tweak the taste and come up with a plethora of flavors. Then there is our barrel aging.
Wait, barrel-aged coffee? Like whiskey? That’s awesome!
Yeah! We take the “green coffee”—the unroasted beans—and age them in everything from whiskey, tequila, rum and bourbon barrels. This can give them a certain smoky taste or a hint of that booze, which is really awesome.
Why did you guys decide to combine your taste for coffee with your taste in music?
We just wanted to offer more with our coffee, and we wanted going to work to be fun. We think that goes hand-in-hand with the coffee itself. Plus, we all sort of had a background in music, so it made sense. We wanted the guy in the business suit, the punk rocker, and the DJ to be drinking our coffee and all having a good time together.
Can you tell me a bit about your music backgrounds?
I owned a record store in Indianapolis for about 15 years. That’s actually how I met Jesse Diaz, who’s the owner of Dark Matter. He used to come around and browse through my records all the time, and eventually we became friends. We sort of met through music. At the time, I was actually DJing with my brother in Indianapolis as Twin Peaks.
Like the old David Lynch TV show?
Exactly. [Laughs] We were known for doing funk and soul around 10 years ago. We opened for Kings of Leon, Paul van Dyk, Gwen Stefani, Mayor Hawthorne and a bunch of others. Jesse came to our shows quite a bit back then.
That’s awesome!
Yeah, it was a good but crazy time. We partied way too much! Eventually Jesse moved to Chicago, but we always stayed in contact. When he moved up here, he was a barista, and he was opening stores for Peet’s Coffee and Starbucks. But he wanted to do coffee a little differently, so eventually he bought his own place. Whenever I came to Chicago, I always would visit him, get a great cup of coffee and say what’s up.
How did you make your way back to Dark Matter?
After DJing so much, I ended up moving out to the East Coast, where I worked a corporate brand strategy job for a Fortune 250 company. It was life-sucking, so I just quit, and I ended up moving to Chicago. Jesse and I met up again, and I was like, “Hey, do you need help on this stuff?” That was something like two years ago, and here I am!
Your previous connections helped you guys establish the collaborations you do now with the coffee?
Exactly. Between Jesse—who still plays a lot of music and is in this band Wild Jesus & The Devil’s Lettuce Family Party Band—[and me], and then we have a lot of musicians that work for us. Almost all of our baristas are in a band or are an artist, and so these collaborations allow us to come together and create a personal touch that connects the artist, us, and the customer, all over a good cup of coffee.
You guys recently did a collaboration with Derrick Carter, right?
Yeah, we had him do a mixtape for us and then made a specialty coffee to go along with it.
What was his blend like? And how about some of your other collabs?
Derrick actually loves whiskies and bourbons, so we wanted to incorporate that personal touch into the blend we did for the collaboration. We added some of our bourbon barrel-aged beans to his blend, so then it was a little tip of the hat back to Derrick, because he likes whiskey so much. We wanted to make a really cool, unique blend for Derrick.
Then there was the one we did with Steven of the Hood Internet. He lives in the neighborhood, and he’s actually just a huge fan of our coffee. He’s a super nice guy; all it took was us sort of reaching out to him, and he made a mixtape for us! That was for our anniversary blend in July. We name that blend after a different firework each year. So this time was Dragon Egg with the Hood!
Right now, we have one out with Mastodon. Their drummer is a huge coffee fan, and their lighting engineer is actually roommates with one of our baristas. They had had Dark Matter coffee, and they dug it, so it was no problem. They thought a collab would be kick-ass. We made a really ballsy coffee for them that matched the music. It was half barrel-aged and a really tweaked version of one of our classic blends.
What have your Dark Matter disciples thought of all of this?
Everyone has loved it. We have gotten a great response from it all. I think one of the redeeming qualities of younger generations is that they appreciate the little details and the hard work that goes into making something. That’s why we pair with musicians—because it’s mixing two very good and very honest products together.
What kind of musicians do you plan on working with next—any exciting DJs?
We plan to do the whole gamut of musicians. We want to do everything from DJ’s DJs, to guys that just rock a party, and then some unknown talent. Expect some more awesome DJs right around the corner. We want a ton more house and electro, but we want a ton of other genres, too. We want our collaborations to be in the spirit of a record store. We want to represent every genre and, like I said before, bring everyone together around a cup of coffee.
For those not in the Chicago area, Dark Matter also ships their blends around the world.
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