Have you ever wanted to make friends while drinking your favorite beverage? For students looking to share and learn about the most commonly consumed form of caffeine, the Coffee Club at ASU provides a space to learn and taste beans of all kinds.
Wrapping up its first year on campus after forming this fall, the club invites Sun Devils to learn how to make and enjoy new types of coffee each week, with additional cafe meetups hosted on the weekends.
"It's a pretty low-pressure environment, (a) fun way to learn more about making coffee," said Daniel Mahanpour, a junior studying computer science and mathematics, and a member of the club.
Founder and Club President Justin Weidmann, a senior studying electrical engineering, first became interested in finding an on-campus coffee club in his freshman year. After discovering no organization existed at ASU he waited to see if someone else would start the club. By his senior year, nothing had changed, so he took initiative and made a post on Reddit.
Mahanpour responded to the post and became one of the founding members alongside Weidmann.
"At first it was mostly just like me and Justin, sometimes it would just be us for the two hours," Mahanpour said. "But I think especially this semester … there've been a lot more people are showing up."
At each meeting, attendees are invited to try a different type of coffee or learn a new coffee-related skill, such as how to use a French press, an Aeropress or how to do a pour over.
"We'll pick a theme and then kind of teach people how to make coffee that way," Weidmann said. "We usually make five, seven cups of coffee and split it with everyone that's there. So it's a lot of fun and there's always a different conversation."
Club meetings are now regularly attended by 15 to 20 people and coordinated on the club's Discord server before being posted to Sun Devil Sync, where the club has roughly 80 registered members.
"Coffee brings people together," Weidmann said. "My European history teacher told me that coffee started the Renaissance because people would all sit together in the cafe and come up with really smart ideas. So I feel like coffee creates really good conversations."
Most club attendees prefer black coffee, but the club is not exclusively focused on it. Cafe meetups take place at various shops throughout Metro Phoenix, including locations close to the Tempe campus, such as Cartel or Cafetal.
"It usually tends to be STEM people interested in obsessing over all the little details of coffee. Those are the regulars," Weidmann said. "But occasionally we'll get some casual people which I always love. I'd love to make the club more casual. We're not snobs in any way. We hate on Starbucks only as a joke."
READ MORE: A 'tall order': The guide to coffee shops in Tempe and downtown Phoenix
With its inaugural president graduating, the club will be electing new leadership for the coming year as the members continue to establish themselves on campus.
Meetings regularly run for two to three hours and take place at the Memorial Union. The laid-back atmosphere invites conversation and allows people to filter in and out during the event. Ridesh Nair, a senior studying computer information systems, is the vice president of the club.
"The little gap of time while making the coffee, we do have new people coming or existing people in the club sharing whatever has been happening the last couple of weeks with them, or how studies are going at ASU or new things that they know about coffee," Nair said.
Edited by Senna James, Sophia Ramirez and Natalia Jarrett.
Reach the reporter at allipper@asu.edu and follow @lippert_audrey on X.
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Audrey is a sophomore studying journalism and mass communication with a minor in Spanish. This is her first semester with The State Press. She has also worked at Blaze Radio.
