Wake Up with Cheddar got a wake-up call with coffee from the Morning Dram. Coffee from the Morning Dram is not your ordinary coffee though as it is known for being made and aged in bourbon barrels. So in celebration of National Bourbon Day, anchors Baker Machado and Hana Ostapchuk got a taste with the Morning Dram's Owner and Creator Tommy Tardie.

Wake Up With Cheddar

Taste Testing Morning Dram's Bourbon-aged Coffee

By the way today National Bourbon Day. So I made a good day to come back to the office today. We all know how we like to celebrate with all the alcoholic holidays here on wake up with shelter were no strangers obviously to a boozy breakfast, we start drinking a lot of times at 7:00 AM. But this time around we're changing it up just a little bit. We're only having coffee. I promise mom you don't have to change the channel. So we're gonna start this morning properly with some special bourbon coffee that's used fresh brewed coffee from morning dram. Yes. And we're doing this by the help of the owner of morning dram, Tommy tardy. So Tommy before we try out this bourbon coffee, you have to tell us more about how the coffee is really made and aged in these bourbon barrels. Great. Yeah, well thank you for having me first of all. Of course. We start with green coffee beans and we rest them in ex bourbon barrels and then it picks up the flavors of the barrel and then we roast it and then it delivers it to your cup. So there's no artificial flavorings, no artificial coloring, it's all natural. It's beautiful. So why in bourbon barrels assuming the same reasons why you would want to put bourbon in a barrel to get all sort of the flavors of it, you would do the same thing for coffee, bourbon is really good. So if you can compare you want to try some. Yeah, for sure. But tell us why um, you know this, this whole thing came about when I was at the restaurant. Is that not? I think we got it now. It had its little kickstand in there. Um It came about when I had both of my restaurants were closed for the pandemic um temporarily closed. And I had I wanted to combine two things that I love the most which is spirits and coffee. It smells so good. I mean the smell is really sort of amazing. You kind of get that great morning smell. Now you've managed to to maintain a thriving business throughout the entire pandemic. Not just with morning dram but with your other restaurants as well. We know that's been incredibly difficult for a lot of business owners out there. How are you able to do it? Uh Good team, good team. Uh nice, nice cabinet full of liquor By the way. This is absolutely spectacular, knock it over this for the rest of my life. What's what's cool about it is there's there's nothing artificial in that. Start with premium coffee, a specialty coffee, it's graded like 87 points or higher. Um So that's that's the basic greeting is really good coffee. So we're not trying to camouflage the flavor of the coffee. We want to enhance the flavor of the coffee. I just can't get over how smooth it is. Is the barrel the reason why it's such a smooth, yeah it's subtle and that's what we want. Exactly. It's it's we don't we start with with specialty coffee. So the base ingredient is really good, exceptional coffee. Um And then we just want to accent those flavors with these nuances of the bourbon. Um So it's all about the ingredients, right? It's it's we we start with good coffee, we source really great barrels of great bourbon, National bourbon day. Uh and and then it just imparts these natural flavors into the bean. Well we love that bourbon is so different. You don't have to do alcohol, you can have it in something else which is amazing. Thank you so much to Tommy tardy owner of the morning dram for the bourbon coffee.