Upper Midwest Gourmet

Upper Midwest Gourmet

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Upper Midwest Gourmet is a one-stop, wholesale distributor of specialty food service ingredients, Flamenco fair trade organic coffee, Italian gelato ingredients and equipment, hundreds of other gourmet beverages and foods, café equipment and machines, and environmentally-conscious supplies like cups, napkins, and eco-sleeves.

Upper Midwest Gourmet

1901 Traffic St. NE Minneapolis, MN 55413

Office: (612)728-7208 / Fax: (612)728-7227 / E-mail: info@uppermidwestgourmet.com

Hours: Monday-Thursday 7am-5pm / Friday 9am-1pm / Saturday & Sunday Closed (Central Time)

See About Us for more. Our UMG Blog starts below. Thank you.

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May 9th, 2013

Mountain Cider in the Spring and Summer?

Whether you are trying to think up summer drink ideas, or you are just wondering what to do with your extra Mountain Spiced Cider concentrate, fear not, we’ve got a list for that:

Summer Cider Drinks

Sparkling Cider
1 oz. Cider concentrate
7 oz. Sparkling water

Cider Float
1 oz. Cider concentrate
7 oz. Ginger ale
Scoop of vanilla ice cream

Apple Raspberry Cooler
1 oz. Cider concentrate
1 oz. Raspberry syrup
6 oz. Sparkling water

Apple Pie A la Mode Milkshake
1 oz. Cider concentrate
1 oz. Caramel syrup
4 oz. milk
1 scoop vanilla ice cream
1 piece of graham cracker
Blend until smooth

Read the rest of this entry »

April 11th, 2013

UP Cafe Grand Opening Party and Flamenco Organic Coffee Release – Presented by Upper Midwest Gourmet

UP Cafe Grand Opening Party Invite

UP Cafe Grand Opening Party and Flamenco Organic Coffee Release

Presented by Upper Midwest Gourmet

We will have live music (Zorongo Flamenco Music & Dance and our very own Eric and Pat’s band, Woodshop), free food, drinks, and gelato (café drinks from UP Café and hopefully, HammerHeart beer, if they have it brewed in time), and a bunch of our vendors (Crazy Boy Farm, Autumnwood Farm, Fabbri, Cherrico Pottery, Extraction Coffee Co., Umpqua Oats, and more) with booths selling and giving stuff away to celebrate the Grand Opening of UP Café. The event will also be a release party for one of Flamenco Organic Coffee Company’s newest offerings.

When – Friday, May 3rd, 2013

Time – 10am-4pm

Where – UP Cafe – 1901 Traffic St. NE, Minneapolis, MN 55413

Open to the public, we hope you can make it!

Please RSVP on our Facebook Event Page or by emailing Party@UPcafe.us.

March 28th, 2013

Brewsletter – Volume 49 – Spring 2013

Here comes warmer temperatures and hopefully a lot of snow melting!

We are really proud of our new training cafe, UP, along with many other improvements we have made to Upper Midwest Gourmet and Flamenco Organic Coffee Company in the past few months!

Please check out our newest Brewsletter – Volume 49 – Spring 2013

Brewsletter - Volume 49 - Spring 2013

Also, please go to the Brewsletters Page on our website to download and read previous Brewsletters. They contain lots of useful information!

Enjoy and thanks again from all of us at UMG!

February 6th, 2013

Upper Midwest Does Italy 2013

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Ciao Ciao everyone!  2013 is off to a great start at Upper Midwest Gourmet.  Bethany and I traveled to Italy last month.  Our first stop was Riccione where we met up with everyone from Fabbri in order to attend the SIGEP show.  SIGEP is the largest gelato and pastry show in the world!  While it’s a bit chilly in this NE coastal region in the winter, it was really warm compared to what was going on in Minneapolis, so the timing couldn’t have been better.  We spent three days touring the show and eating (and drinking) our way around the town.  SIGEP is always a great time and we were impressed with all the presentations put on by some of the best pastry chefs in Italy.  Fabbri presented a number of new items that we’ll be able to start importing sometime this Spring that we’re really excited to show everyone.  The pistachio and amarena cherry gelato pops in particular are going to be a great addition to many cafes in the USA.  Fabbri hosted a large banquet with top notch entertainment and the Italians really know how to put on a party!  Fabbri took that opportunity to present awards to some of their staff and distributors from around the world.  To my surprise, Upper Midwest Gourmet was presented with the award for Best Distributor in North America in 2012!  It was a complete shock, but we were honored to receive the award.  No distributor has ever won the award more than once so now I have a new mission for the future.

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There are a bunch more pictures from the show at the end of the blog post.

Read the rest of this entry »

January 28th, 2013

Coffee Brewing Outdoors in Extremely Cold Weather

We, Flamenco Organic Coffee Company, had the pleasure of being the Designated Driver Sponsor for this year’s Winter Carnival Beer Dabbler!

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We knew the conditions would be cold and not nearly ideal for mass-brewing of coffee, but we were determined to make it work. The last thing we wanted was for our coffee’s quality and/or reputation to suffer from not brewing fresh or keeping it hot. For that reason, brewing ahead of time or using large holding containers just wasn’t going to work for us.

The first obstacle was not having power, so we rented two gas-powered generators (Honda EU3000) to run the coffee brewers.

We decided to brew using our trusty Grindmaster B-SAP single airpot brewers running on 110 volt in pour-over mode. Each brewer needs roughly 15 amps of power, so the 25 amps that each generator was pumping out was perfect!

We did some brew tests in 20 degrees outdoors the day before the event and had an amazing regeneration time of seven minutes per brewer! This was much faster than we expected which pleased and surprised all of us.

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To help simplify matters we decided to only brew in two quart increments. This made measuring our water a cinch due to buying one gallon jugs and essentially pouring half into the brewer for each cycle. We also pre-ground and weighed our coffee dosing a few hours before the event to ensure quick and accurate coffee portion control on every airpot brewed. We generally don’t ever recommend pre-grinding coffee, but we used our awesome 5lb Coffeevac containers to store the coffee fresh and they worked really well. We could offer three different origins of coffee easily this way and didn’t have to worry about the power or mess of a bulk grinder.

Just put a filter with measured coffee into the brew basket, pour two quarts of water into brewer, and press brew button! It was that easy and efficient!

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brewing 2 brewing 1

During the actual event the temperatures were around 10-15 degrees and our generator/brewer combo set-up worked like a champ!

brewer setup 1 airpot

We had way more visitors than expected and were able to keep up with the demand almost flawlessly!

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We would be happy to help you get set-up to brew coffee for an outdoor event and have these awesome Grindmaster B-SAP brewers in stock currently.

(For pricing or additional product or event coffee brewing information, please Contact Us. Thank you.)

January 7th, 2013

UMG Holiday Party at George & the Dragon Pub

We had an awesome Holiday dinner at George & the Dragon this year!

Please enjoy some pictures of the crew:

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Beth, Brier, Jesse, & Pat Alan and Pancho

Everyone chatting

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Thanks again to David and Bethany for such a fun evening!

October 31st, 2012

Brewsletter – Volume 48 – Fall/Winter 2012

Here comes cooler temperatures and increased hot drink sales!

We have been really busy making some serious improvements around here with a focus to better serve you, and want to let you all know again how much we appreciate your business!

Please check out our newest Brewsletter – Volume 48 – Fall/Winter 2012

Also, please go to the Brewsletters Page on our website to download and read previous Brewsletters. They contain lots of useful information!

Enjoy and thanks again from all of us at UMG!

October 24th, 2012
October 15th, 2012

New Cappuccine promotional materials!

Cappuccine has come out with some great, new posters and signs that are sure to entice your customers!

Click below to see your new POS options:

If you are currently buying your Cappuccine from us and want some of these cool, new posters,

just let your sales person know and we will be sure to order them up right away for you and will ship them to you on your next order.

(For pricing or additional product information, please Contact Us. Thank you.)

August 21st, 2012

Fabbri Gelato & Pastry Training/Demo @ UMG

Fabbri North America‘s own Tom Trieschmann will be in the Twin Cites on Wednesday, August 29th for a fun and relaxed gelato/pastry training and demo at UMG.

Upper Midwest Gourmet

1901 Traffic St. NE Minneapolis, MN 55413

Office: (612)728-7208

The demo/training will begin at 10am.

Please RSVP to FabbriDemo@umgcoffee.com with what business you are with and how many people will be attending for lunch ordering purposes.

We would also like to focus the event on what you guys would like to learn about, so please let us know any ideas you have in your RSVP.

Looking forward to seeing you on August 29th, 2012!

(For additional event or Fabbri information, please Contact Us. Thank you.)

August 8th, 2012

Gelato on the River in Minneapolis at Wilde Roast

Looking for some great Gelato while you’re in the cities?

Check out the newest gelato review of Wilde Roast, Click Here.

We’re sure you’re gonna love it!

(For pricing or additional product information about how your business can make gelato, please Contact Us. Thank you.)

July 16th, 2012

Brewsletter – Volume 47 – Spring/Summer 2012

What a hot spring and summer we have had this year and we haven’t hit the really hot months yet! Let’s hope business continues to improve for everyone with these beautiful days!

The weather will be turning even warmer, though, which means cold drinks like iced espresso drinks, cold press coffee, smoothies, frappes, iced tea, and lemonade are going to continue to pick up. It also means that those of you that are making gelato will continue to see some serious sales increases.

We have been really busy making some serious improvements around here with a focus to better serve you, and want to let you all know again how much we appreciate your business!

Please check out our newest Brewsletter – Volume 47 – Spring/Summer 2012

Also, please go to the Brewsletters Page on our website to download and read previous Brewsletters. They contain lots of useful information!

Enjoy and thanks again from all of us at UMG!

July 12th, 2012

Amarena Cherry Cream Cake

Cream Cake

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 2/3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup heavy cream (35% butterfat)
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preparation:

Beat eggs until thick and lemon colored; gradually beat in sugar. Sift together the dry ingredients. Stir in sifted dry ingredients alternately with the cream and vanilla. Beat well.

Spread batter in 2 greased and floured round 8-inch cake pans. Bake at 350° for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a wooden pick or cake tester inserted in center comes out clean.

Amarena Cherry Buttercream

1 cup (2 sticks) butter
4-5 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon Fabbri Amarena Cherry delipaste
3-4 tablespoons of milk

1. Beat butter until creamy, scrape bowl.
2. Add 2 cups of sifted powdered sugar, one tablespoon of milk and delipaste, beat until combined.
3. Add more powdered sugar (One cup at a time) along with milk (one tablespoon at a time) as needed to get to whatever consistency/sweetness you wish to achieve.

 

July 3rd, 2012

Star Spangled Sweets

I get a little carried away when it comes to holidays, so in honor of the approaching 4th of July, I present to you — red, white and blue gelato.

Here we have Fabbri amarena cherry, blueberry and yoghito gelato as well as a lemon hops sorbet. I used citra hops that I got from our pals over at Northern Brewer. Give me a call if you want to talk recipes.

For now, feast your eyes on these photos, or drop by and pick up some real, live gelato (we have plenty to share).

And because being festive is so enjoyable, we busted out the sparklers.

Have a safe and happy 4th of July!

July 2nd, 2012

Amarena Cherries at Yogurt Lab

Yogurt Lab on Excelsior near Lake Calhoun is now serving Fabbri’s signature amarena cherries as one of their many yogurt toppings. If you have not experienced this amazing summer treat yet, go visit them after a walk around the lake. They have three other locations coming soon too! Learn more about this great company here.