When ex-president Millard Fillmore led a steamboat expedition up the Mississippi 149 years ago, it may have looked like a publicity stunt for the Know-Nothing party. Maybe he was just looking for a good cup of coffee brewed fresh from organic, shade-grown beans. Of course, in 1854, all coffee was organic and shade-grown by default. Dow Chemical had not yet invented the hazardous compounds now in widespread agricultural use, and the hybrid beans designed for growth on deforested mountainsides were not available. Even so, when the Grand Excursion reenactment of Fillmore’s expedition arrives in St. Paul next summer, you can get a shot of the future with an otherwise historically correct cuppa Joe. This is something you could not have found in the metro area as recently as last year: a bean roasted with solar power.
The solar roasting recently began at Old Man River Café on Smith Avenue, just south of the High Bridge. Historian, publisher, and restaurateur Jon Kerr admits the roaster won’t be powered directly by the bank of six photovoltaic panels installed on the café roof in October. “Truth be told,” he said, “it goes into our general electrical supply.” But the 1.1 kilowatt array will deliver thirty amps, roughly the same amount of power required to run the roaster Kerr and co-owner Chuck Debevec use for the shade-grown organics they sell.
When The Rake arrived to have a look, electrician Mike Berg was boring a hole through the Victorian-era brick foundation to admit a conduit that will carry the current from the roof. One of the fifteen-square-foot “Sunny Boy” solar panels was on display inside the café, looking like a blue formica table-top propped against a wall. Nearby, a charity-fundraiser-style thermometer poster showed the cost of the project—an impressive and daunting $12,030.
Like the 1854 expedition, the Sunny Side Project, as it’s been dubbed, has been a bit of an odyssey. Kerr was approached about a year ago by neighbors who thought someone ought to showcase solar technology. On St. Paul’s West Side, environmental causes take on extra clarity in the shadow of Xcel Energy’s High Bridge coal burner. The plant has operated for decades under the EPA’s grandfather clause, which grants exemptions from emission control requirements to older facilities that have not been remodeled. When Kerr agreed to let the café be the poster child for solar power, a small group formed to raise funds. Memberships in “the Sunny Side Club” were sold for fifty dollars and up. More than seventy-five donors have now brought the total to within five hundred dollars of the goal. The end product? Sunny Side Blend, an aromatic medium-light roast of Nicaraguan, Peruvian, and Colombian beans.
It’s unlikely that members of Fillmore’s expedition had much in common with the activists behind the Sunny Side Project, some of whom reportedly chafed at the apparent male bias in the brand name of the solar panels. Fillmore was noted for sponsoring compromise slavery legislation that included the Fugitive Slave Act, which required the return of escaped slaves to their owners even if they were captured in the free North. Fillmore ran for a second term as a member of the evanescent Know-Nothing party on the rather narrow platform of seeking to ban Catholics from holding public office and increasing restrictions on immigration. The expedition reenactment reaches St. Paul next summer, and Kerr has already developed a coffee to bridge the gap: Expedition Coffee is a darker roast than Sunny Side and features the grim countenance of “the Last Whig” himself printed on every bag of beans. Even if the reenactment carries a little baggage from Fillmore’s dubious views, the team will be treated to the most politically correct cup of coffee in Minnesota, and they’ll like it.—Joe Pastoor
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