Bent Tree Coffee Roasters won the first Nuts About Coffee event hosted by the Kent Alumni Association on Friday at the Williamson Alumni Center.

Aunt Mary Ann Donuts and Café, Scribbles, Bent Tree and Dunkin’ Donuts were the four vendors that participated in the coffee tasting.

“We asked each vendor to bring a type of signature coffee to be tasted,” said Carrie Circosta, assistant director of Student and Recent Graduate Programs in Alumni Relations. “We said that if they wanted to bring other, different types of coffee or pastries, they were more than welcome, but there is one signature coffee that is being judged.”

Students, faculty members and alumni sampled each vendor’s coffee and then voted on whose sample they thought was best.

The idea for the event was formed because “everyone in the Alumni Association loves coffee,” Circosta said. “We did a coffee cup thing in Cleveland a couple of years ago, and we were wondering if students would like that. We kept talking and it evolved into making it a competition.”

The winning signature blend from Bent Tree is their “black squirrel blend,” owner Mike Mistur said. “We made it in collaboration with the university, and we sell it at the Student Center in the little marketplace there.

“It’s a fair-trade organic coffee, and it’s a blend of a darker roast and a medium roast, and the two of them just kind of play together to make a nice coffee. It’s not roasted too dark, so you get a lot of flavor out of the coffee,” Mistur said.

Bent Tree is located on 313 N. Water St. They have a little shop that they do all of the roasting in.

“It’s simple and straightforward, and it’s all about the coffee,” Mistur said.

According to the Alumni Association Facebook page, 200 people attended the event.

“We’re always looking for new and fun ways to get people excited about homecoming. It’s an opportunity for people to taste all of the different coffees in town and people would know where the Williamson Alumni Center is,” Circosta said. “It’s another great event to bring us together.”

Senior nursing major Holly McNulty drinks a lot of coffee but was sad Tree City Coffee and Starbucks did not attend the event.

“I feel like it wasn’t completely representative of all the coffee shops in the city,” McNulty said. “I have had a lot of these coffees before, but I’ll continue to go there. I like them all.”

Contact Carolyn Pippin at [email protected].