Happy New Year!

Hey folks!

Thank you for continuing to support this little coffee shop during some of the coldest days of the year! We are so grateful for you!

One awesome benefit of expanding our hours into the afternoon has been increasing opportunities to have a nice cup of tea! If you haven’t spent much time discovering our tea menu, you need to come visit us and check out our oolong selection. April 23 Orchid yields a light, balmy oolong with notes of ginger blossom, orchid and rice milk. It is a tea that pays homage to Song’s creative and thoughtful approach with attention to when and how the leaves are picked, temperature-specific indoor oxidation, resting and baking being dialed in by Song every step of the way.

Classic Rougui, a Wuyishan Yancha oolong, is much more intense, with layers of charcoal roast on top of natural stone fruit notes and sweet aroma. This is a great tea for folks craving something with a more concentrated flavor - look for notes of aged balsamic, lychee, and wild honey. This tea is a great study buddy, as it can be extracted and enjoyed many times with variations in character, sweetness and body.

We will soon be phasing out the caramel latte with oak smoked sea salt and bringing on some new espresso specials for February, so stay tuned and we’re happy you’re choosing Constellation as your winter warm up spot!!

Holiday Hours

We are so grateful for your support during this exciting year of coffee brewing!

From awesome developments in coffee processing, expanding our hours, and bringing on new wonderful staff we are so glad to have such loyal and curious customers keeping this place buzzing!

We will be open 7am to 1pm on December 24th, closed December 25th and 26th, and then open our regular hours from the 27th through the 30th. We will be closing at 1pm on New Year’s Eve, staying closed on New Year’s Day, and then reopen at 7am on January 2nd.

Come by and enjoy the final days of the year with us, make some time to enjoy many of the amazing year-end coffees we’ve saved for holiday treats, and welcome 2025 with a peaceful, clear mind! Thank you again and see you soon!

Seasons Greetings!

We are happy to announce extended hours here at the café – we will now be open from 7am to 4pm Monday (7 days a week now!!!) through Friday, 8am to 4pm on Saturday, and 8am to 2pm on Sundays.

We’ve got a couple of seasonal specials to enjoy – salted caramel lattes with oak smoked salt, maple spice lattes, and tons of amazing beans coming through the pour over bar. Right now on pour over we’re featuring an assortment from Vignette Coffee Roasters, including a natural Ethiopia with clean and clear chamomile tea notes, and a buttercream like sweetness and texture. We also have a washed Ethiopia with sunshiney notes of apricot jam, wildflower honey, and pineapple. Take the time to enjoy one of these treats during the busy holiday season!

We are all stocked with awesome gifts for the coffee lover in your life such as Beehouse and Chemex brewers and filters. We also have wonderful coffee box sets from Little Waves including rare and exquisite coffees from the Quindio region in Colombia – this growing region is located between two Andean mountains, just over 300 miles from the Equator, with an average altitude of about 5000 feet. The name Quindio comes from the indigenous Quimbaya for “Paradise.” Coffee grows on shrubs year round here – it’s not unusual to find flowering, budding, fruiting and ripening coffee all on the same bountiful branches.

Little Waves is also featuring a Supernatural Set highlighting the variety and complexity available through Natural Processing. 100 gram envelopes designed for a tasting experience showcase more fruit forward styles as well as more spice forward notes, influenced by terroir as well as variety.

We’ve also got limited stock of some Cup of Excellence coffees from Ethiopia. These award winning coffees have been tasted hundreds of times, by both domestic and international judging panels, as they traveled through the rigorous COE process. Cup Of Excellence winning coffees are quite uncommon in the US, and this is a rare opportunity to taste multiple winning Ethiopian coffees in one place.

Thanks for finding your way to us and we’re looking forward to enjoying the season with you!

Seasonal Specials

Hey folks!
It’s been difficult to keep cool this summer - although we are so grateful the Bloomfield pool is back up and running this year! We’ve got a few drink specials (and some very active ceiling fans!) to help with the hot spells!

The iced sesame milk latte is made with a low waste non-dairy and gluten-free sesame milk. We love this milk for it’s tahini-like taste and sweetness, and also for it’s smaller ecological footprint. As a by-product of the sesame grinding process, it’s made using up-cycling procedures. As a drought-tolerant and self-pollinating crop, sesame is more planet friendly than almonds, and also contains 8g of plant based protein and 9 essential amino acids. We’ve sourced this milk because using 75% less water, as compared to almond growing, and no bees to produce sounds like a win win!

The other seasonal special is a matcha lemonade! It may sound like an odd pairing to those who drink lots of matcha lattes, but this refreshingly tart and sweet drink is so refreshing and provides that pleasantly focused green tea buzz. Made with organic lemons and ceremonial grade matcha.

As always, we’ve got tons of great coffees on offer. The Little Waves Edwin Enrique co-ferments have been a popular choice on the brew bar, particularly the watermelon and lulo. If you haven’t tried it yet, it’s a unique take on coffee processing. We’ve also got amazing espressos which change out frequently, and reliably delicious hot batch brew, iced coffee, and cold brew.

Thanks for all your support, even during the crazy weather, and we look forward to seeing you!

Time for an espresso!

Seasons Greetings!

One of the main reasons for opening Constellation was to serve great quality espresso in an environment that was peaceful, welcoming, and focused. This time of year, as we are all bombarded with the “holiday hustle” I am reminded more and more of how important our simple mission is. We’re here, our windows decorated with joyful colors, brewing our coffees to the best our ability, glad to offer you a moment with a great cup of coffee.

We’ve got some great espresso options on right now. Stellar Collisions, a blend from Brandywine Coffee Roasters, grounds some very heady coffees with a more familiar base to present a novel expression of your favorite beverage.

Two of the coffees in this blend are co-fermented with different berries – both strawberry and blueberry. During the strawberry co-ferment, pioneering farmers skilled in processing techniques sort the coffee cherries for ripeness, allow the coffee to ferment for 60 hours, then introduce a mother culture of microorganisms, such as lactobacillus, which have been fed on strawberries and molasses. The fermentation is fueled by these flavorful sugars, which then find their way into the flavor of the finished product. You may notice notes of raspberry, blueberry crumble, and milky way candy bars.

Highly technological controls and innovative practices allow farmers to fetch a high price for these exciting, quality coffees – and then combining them with more familiar, but equally delicious coffees allows us to serve them to you at a reasonable price.

We also offer a delicious Brazil from MaQuina coffee roasters, which perfectly presents all the qualities we expect from a classic espresso. Roasted in Pennsylvania, this Brazil boasts notes of dates, dried fruit, and a deep chocolate quality. A staple of our workflow, this is an espresso that blends beautifully with milk and stands on its own for that familiar, full-bodied espresso experience.  

 There is so much competition for your attention and hard-earned money this time of year, so it is our wish that you may find time for yourself, time for loved ones, and maybe a great cup of coffee, too!!

We will be closed for our annual holiday hiatus from December 24th through January 2nd. Thank you for a wonderful year, and see you in 2024!

Happy Holidays!

With Halloween in the rear view mirror, we’re full speed ahead into winter holiday territory! We’ve got fresh stock of brewing equipment including kettles, scales, and mugs from some of the best manufacturers we could find - Timemore, Origami, Beehouse, and more. We’re always excited to help you improve your coffee game at home and happy to help you find the best gear for yourself or your favorite caffeine enthusiast.

We also continue to round up some of the best coffees we can get our hands on. A great thing about working with a number of different roasters is that we can curate our menu selections based around what we know our customers will enjoy. Our current roaster lineup offers something for everyone - including those of you hosting family who might prefer a darker roast with cream, or have cool nieces and nephews who are super into pour overs. We got you!

This is also the time of year when many of us begin to need more of an immune boost. A little reminder to please be considerate of all our guests, mask up or delay a visit if you’re sick, or order online and ask us to deliver your beverage to you outside. We are also offering a turmeric latte to help the seasonal transition - vibrant colors and warming spices to soothe and support! The turmeric is first harvest turmeric, equitably sourced by Burlap and Barrel spices, blended with black pepper, cardamom, ginger and nutmeg.

Additionally - we will be closed for a few days over the Thanksgiving Holiday. We’re shutting down Thursday the 23rd and Friday the 24th, but will be back for service on Saturday. Have a happy, healthy holiday and we will see you soon!

International Women's Day

Thank you for supporting this lil’ Women Owned Small Business and a happy Women’s Day to all the gals out there kicking butt!

We’re so lucky to work with a crew of women at the top of their game! I’d love to mention a few of our roasters who are doing the heavy lifting for us so we can relax and brew tasty beverages.

Mother Tongue Coffee is roasted by Jen Apodaca, who… “has been roasting since 2005 for a range of well-loved businesses, including McMenamin’s, Intelligentsia, Blue Bottle, and The Crown. She is also a certified Q-Grader, former chair of the Coffee Roasters Guild of America, the 2019 US Cup Tasters Champion, and won second place in the 2022 Roasters Championship.

In 2017 she founded #shestheroaster - which is a visibility campaign that women do indeed roast coffee and also promotes and encourages women in the coffee industry to become professional coffee roasters.”

Little Waves Coffee, 2022 Micro Roaster of the year, is also a Latina-led operation. Not only are they churning out awesome coffees, sustainability and equity are hallmarks of the business as well. In their words, “we strive for sustainability in everything we do from relationship to energy usage. Our Loring S15 Falcon roaster has an 80% reduction in energy usage compared to traditional roasters. Our retail coffee bags are 60% compostable. We divert coffee bi-product chaff to be used in local community gardens. Our roastery & cafes divert nearly all of the coffee compost they create to local gardens and farms.”

But there’s more! We also work with Vignette Coffee, roasted by Mandy Spirito, a dedicated Q-Grader. These coffees are not only an absolute delight to brew, Vignette also ensures transparency and equity all along the supply chain. This goes above basic certifications like fair trade or organic… “we believe in paying producers well beyond their cost of production and living. To accomplish this, we buy from specialty importers, who charge premium prices for access to transparent, high-quality, ethically-sourced green coffee.

Our current selection ranges from $4.30 - $6.95 FOB. To put this in perspective, current commodity grade price is $2.16. For additional perspective, a living income price for a producer in Huila, Colombia is $2.10 FOB. It's worth nothing that the C Market has risen considerably from its historic lows.”

We are proud to work with so many great women all along the supply chain - I didn’t even start to dig in to the stories of amazing women working at origin! - and are grateful for your continued support. Thank you and see you soon!