“Thanks for coming in. My name is Tony. Would you like a free cup of coffee?”
Lexington-raised Tony Davis knows how to welcome the regulars, locals and world wanderers who find themselves drawn in by the aroma and spirit of Kentucky Knows. Situated on the corner of Washington and West Broadway streets, it’s part of a lively strip of downtown Frankfort that sings of local business.
Visitors entering the store are greeted with an entire sensory experience. Kentucky bourbon- and French cognac-barrel woodcrafts fill every corner. Newspaper and magazine articles, blown up on canvas and framed, are propped up on handcrafted easels. A glowing video screen rotates through some 3,000 images. The low beat of music entices customers toward the counter at the back of the store. The fragrances and flavors of the coffee, intermingled with those of a bourbon barrel, herald the sound and sight of the red locomotive chugging down the tracks outside, evoking feelings of Kentucky—and of connection. All of it tells a story.
“I was working on a barrel,” Davis recalls. “My dad had died at a really young age … and I was drinking coffee from his mug … I went to go set the coffee cup on the barrel, and I wasn’t looking, and I hit the chime,” or the lip of the barrel, he explained, “and [the mug] slid down. And I looked around—I thought it was going to fall off—so I grabbed it, and then I set it down [on the barrel], and then I looked, and it clicked. And I thought, ‘How could I create my own label, my own coffee, that tells the story of Kentucky on this side of the barrel?’
“And, of course, that’s when Kentucky Knows came along, because we’re telling the story of what Kentucky does know, one cup at a time.”
And what better way to tell stories than with coffee?
“My dad drank—I don’t know how he did it—he drank four or five pots of coffee a day,” Davis says. “I don’t understand it, not one bit.” But, he says, “Emotion’s everything,” and loving coffee and his father’s memory go hand in hand.
“Coffee’s a big deal,” he says. “It brings family, it brings strangers together. Conversations are started.” Stories get told.
And like many great stories, it began with a cowboy.
Nineteen months into trying to create Kentucky’s first real bourbon-barrel coffee, Davis purchased a concrete mixer from Harbor Freight Tools in Lexington. “Essentially, this acted as a tumbler and an aerator for my coffee,” Davis explains. “Twenty-six months later is when my coffee started to take shape with my customers, and it all began with Cowboy,” his first flavor of Kentucky bourbon-barrel-aged coffee.
Davis started his business just as many people start things—as a hobby, in his barn. “I had all the wrong tools at that time,” he reminisces, “but I had tools.”
Fast-forward six or seven years and Davis was working out of the James E. Pepper Distillery off Manchester Street in the heart of Lexington’s historic Distillery District. Six and a half years after that, Kentucky Knows began maturing into what it is today. Davis wrestled through 13 months without a space, working out of his barn and selling product out of his van, before landing where he is now. For the past two years and counting, he has been serving up java in his Frankfort shop.
In addition to Cowboy, Kentucky Knows has grown to offer from the barrel Cinnamon, Kentucky Bourbon, Caramel, Chocolate Chipotle, Bourbon Ball, Bourbon Butterscotch Pecan, Bourbon Butterscotch Cream, Praline and Crème Brûlée barrel-aged coffees. It also offers a coffee not aged in the barrel called Black as well as Barrel Mo-Ky (pronounced “moka”), a 35-year-old recipe for hot chocolate. Coffee is sold in quarter-pound, half-pound, three-quarter-pound and 1-pound bags, ranging from $5.50 to $19, and Barrel Mo-Ky is sold in 2-pound bags for $12.
When newcomers walk into Kentucky Knows, the first thing many ask is: “Is this a coffee shop?” “And sometimes I’ll go”—Davis inhales deeply, tasting the coffee in the air—“ ‘Yeah, it’s a coffee shop’—you know, just to get them thinking.
“When people see ‘caramel, barrel-aged coffee,’ some of those folks may think, ‘Well, is there bourbon in it?’ and that’s good … because it prompts the question,” Davis says. “It opens the window so that their ears can be told, and that story be conveyed in a different way than they’ve ever been told, as far as with coffee.
“When people come in and they ask if this is a coffee shop, I think they ask that because they’ve never had an experience with the actual owner and with the barrel.”
The thing is, Kentucky Knows isn’t just a place to get a cup of coffee; it’s an experience—and it’s different from any coffee experience to which Kentuckians are accustomed.
Davis sources Arabica coffee beans from the Highland region of Antigua, Guatemala. He uses clean, washed, premium beans, which are then roasted weekly inside a 75-year-old German gas belt-fed Probat drum roaster. The coffee at Kentucky Knows is never more than seven days from the roast, likely much fresher than coffee on any supermarket shelf. And the flavors of Kentucky Knows coffee come from inside the barrel.
“All of our coffee sleeps inside of the Buffalo Trace Distillery bourbon barrels,” Davis says, “long enough to pick up those barrel-aged flavors.”
Kentucky Knows doesn’t offer any pre-ground or pre-bagged coffee. When people come in, the coffee is specially ground using German Mahlkönig grinders for the type of coffee maker each customer has and then bagged in front of the customer. Kentucky Knows grinds for Keurig, French press, espresso, percolator, auto-drip, slow pour and Turkish, and also offers whole-bean coffee.
And “the Knows” stands watch over the whole process. “Our character logo, Kentucky Knows, tells the story of our people, our culture and our history through word of eye,” Davis says.
The idea struck Davis back when he was cutting open the first barrel in his barn. “Just as I cut the last band on the barrel, working from the bottom up, the barrelhead popped off,” Davis recalls. “And when I looked down into the barrel, there was the Kentucky Knows. He’s always been there. It took us to let him out, and now we’re taking it, creating a character from the spirit that’s always aged in the barrel, one cup at a time.”
The body of the character is made from Kentucky bourbon barrel staves. The eyebrows are made from the ends of the barrel, charred side out, telling the story of the inside of the barrel. In the eyes are Blanton’s racehorse bourbon bottle toppers from Buffalo Trace. The horses are running left, in the counter-clockwise direction of horse racing in America. The long, corncob nose represents the 51 percent or more of corn in Kentucky bourbon, and on the tip of the corn nose is the original 1792 bourbon bottle topper, referencing the year Kentucky gained its statehood. Just under the corncob “K-N-O-W-S” (nose) are miniature bourbon bottles embedded into the chest, “because Kentucky knows bourbon, horses, and we now know coffee,” Davis says.
In addition to the Knows, Davis repurposes bourbon barrels into handmade woodcrafts. These include small barrels equipped with coffee scoops for housing bourbon-barrel coffee in the home; easels, lights, cutting boards, wooden sunglasses, grills, smokers, tables and stools; the Bourbon Derby, a tabletop or bar-top décor piece featuring the eight racehorses on Blanton’s bottle toppers; and jockey silk jackets, which memorialize the family crest or the name of a farm, horse or jockey as well as the shoes and saddle the horse was wearing during the event. Everything in the shop is handcrafted, down to the coffee bags, which are hand-stamped with the character logo and the type of coffee.
“So the coffee comes first,” Davis says, “and then we take the barrels and dismantle them and reclaim them into gifts.”
Davis says he owes everything to his humble beginnings, which he calls the foundation of where he is today. “It definitely teaches you a lot without telling you anything. It’s much later, when you look back and you see … what your story was through those humble, impoverished beginnings—which is really the foundation of success—that you can use it as a … tool.”
Davis strives to treat people like people, not customers. That’s why, he says, “Everybody has always gotten a free cup of coffee. We do that so that you don’t have to pay to be a part of what we do … We sell cups of coffee, and we give away coffee.”
He will be breaking ground on some big plans soon: building a legacy. “That’s the next chapter for me,” he says, “and one way to be able to do that is to, of course, share the stories.” Davis aims to continue to “nurture the story of Kentucky Knows, so that my legacy can live on and tell other people and inspire them, to give them hope with whatever dream they may have.”
Kentucky Knows will be spilling over into the two lots on either side of the shop. To the right of the entrance will be a space for serving coffee, two windows where people can order coffee to go, and an outdoor patio. The patio will accommodate firepits for roasting chocolate-dipped, espresso-bean-stuffed marshmallows, spaces for local food trucks, free Friday and Saturday movie nights, and fireside chats over bourbon-barrel coffee and Barrel Mo-Ky—all in the spirit of community and storytelling. To the left will be a 2,500-square-foot space containing the coffee roaster and woodworking equipment, overlooked by a balcony and fronted with glass garage doors allowing visitors to watch and participate in the process, Davis says, “so that you can be a part of that and actually see it, experience it, touch it, and then be able to take that experience home with you—and that’s really what it’s about. It’s about experience, I think.”
Davis says once construction is finished, “people will really start to see what I’m trying to convey. It’s going to be more about community and the service and what we’re wanting to offer.
“I want to be a landmark in the community so that when people come to Frankfort, [or] the community wants a place to go [and] they want to have a place to experience and be proud of where they are, instead of driving to Lexington or Louisville, they can stay here. We want to be able to create an experience here so that people write home about it and they tell their family to come visit.”
Kentucky Knows Coffee Tips
Try microwaving Kentucky Knows coffee that has gone cold. The flavor will not be compromised.
Try Kentucky Knows coffee cold. The flavor gets even better.
Try reusing grounds. Store them overnight in the fridge, then sprinkle one scoop of fresh grounds over the top.
Enjoy coffee over a story.
Robusta beans are bitter and acidic. Buy Arabica.
“Freshly brewed” doesn’t mean much if the coffee is not freshly roasted.
Get the right grind for your type of coffee maker. If it’s too fine or too coarse, the water won’t pull the coffee out just right.
Keep your coffee out of the fridge and freezer; it will pick up unwanted odors and flavors.
Typically use one scoop per cup.
Stir coffee clockwise to take everything from the top to the bottom, then stir counterclockwise to take everything from the bottom to the top.
Add unflavored liquid creamer to bring the temperature down, so you can taste what you’re drinking. Hot temperatures mask the palate.
At three minutes, you can start to really taste the coffee. At six minutes, you tip up your cup and drink it. Around nine minutes, people typically throw it out or reheat it.
Brew iced coffee the night before and allow it to cool to room temperature. Store unrefrigerated in a covered carafe for up to two days.
Kentucky Knows 337 West Broadway, Frankfort | 859.621.5261 | kentuckyknows.com
Photos by Rebecca Redding