Cellarest Beer Project Debuts Bimble Coffee Blonde Lager In Collaboration With Riverbend Malt House and Asheville’s Coffee Library
Cellarest Beer Project just released Bimble Coffee Blonde Lager, a blonde-hued beer made with Riverbend Malt House’s most recent pallet coffee blend by Coffee Library. Cans of this storied beer will be available soon.
The Backstory
In 2025, Riverbend Malt House launched the pallet coffee program in tandem with local coffee roaster Coffee Library. We wanted to thank our customers who purchased full pallets of malt with an added treat— because most brewing teams are fueled by morning coffee, partnering with Coffee Library on a specialty blend was a natural fit. Brewers absolutely loved it, and the program continued with a second blend last year. Now, we are excited to involve West Asheville’s beloved Cellarest Beer Project, who have invested in local ingredients since day one, in the third blend of our unfolding coffee program.
Enter Bimble Coffee Blonde Lager
The teams at Riverbend and Cellarest gathered for a cupping at Coffee Library to select two coffees to be included in the blend: one from Brazil and another from Mexico. The naturally processed Brazilian coffee is of the Catuai varietal of the coffee plant, grown and harvested at an altitude of 1100 MASL in the Cerrado Mineiro Region of the Minas Gerais state. The washed processing Mexican coffee was grown and harvested in the Zangolica, Veracruz region of Mexico at an altitude ranging from 1250-1700 MASL. The Brazilian coffee’s notes of almond, brown sugar, and milk chocolate beautifully complement the notes of cinnamon, cocoa, and baking spice flavors of the Mexican coffee.
“I wanted to encourage more cocoa and depth to the Mexican coffee’s brown sugar and cinnamon notes, and the Brazilian seemed to provide that,” says Cellarest Co-Founder and Director of Fermentation Mark R. Goodwin.
“The Mexico coffee provides that nice warm, subtle spice and the Brazil enhances the creaminess and cocoa, chocolate notes,” adds Noah Marines, Head Roaster and Certified Q Arabica Grader at Coffee Library.
The resulting beer has incredible depth of flavor with a range of notes from fresh coffee and to cocoa, cinnamon, and brown sugar; to light toffee and honey covered biscuits from its malt additions. Bimble was made with Riverbend Southern Select, Great Chit, Vienna, and Double Kilned Munich styles and hopped with Willamette hops. It was fermented cold with Cellarest’s preferred German Lager yeast inside of an acacia wood foudre.
Get It While You Can
Bimble, a word that represents a relaxed— even aimless— journey taken without haste, is an apt name for this exploration of flavors. The result of these rambles between this trifecta of local Asheville businesses is now on draft at Cellarest Beer Project. Sixteen ounce canned 4-packs will be available to-go from the brewery in coming weeks. Follow @cellarestbeerproject on Instagram and Facebook for can release details.
