Editor’s Note: This story was initially published on Feb. 23, 2009.

With midterms, studying and a good cup of coffee usually go hand-in-hand.

Capanna Coffee and Gelato, 3329 Lincoln Way, opens early and stays open late to accommodate the typical college student’s study habits, providing the needed caffeine-fix within only a few steps with their in-house fresh-roasted coffee.

Capanna has an in-house coffee bean roaster, which means they roast each coffee bean themselves. Owners David and Pam Smith roast fresh coffee beans into a rich-flavored bean that brews into their signature fresh-roasted coffee that lasts, they say, until the last sip.

“It’s very important to us to keep it fresh the pure way,” David said. “The good thing about doing it in-house is that you can control the process as compared to bringing it in from somewhere else or having someone else provide you with what you need.”

Along with the fresh roasted coffee, they pride themselves with the addition of gelato, which is also made by Capanna. David said having gelato sets Capanna apart from other coffee shops. There are 18 different flavors of gelato ranging from the traditional vanilla and chocolate and fruit flavors to mixing it up a bit with raspberry chocolate.

“Chocolate gelato is very popular because it’s familiar and it’s also very rich, deep chocolate,” David said.

Capanna also specializes in making espresso drinks such as lattes and mochas. Unique to Capanna is creating Italian soda, which combines club soda with any of their coffee or fruit flavors.

David said all of their food, including pastries and soup, are all “homemade from scratch.” Pam said once spring comes, they will be offering more food options such as salads to top off the coffee and gelato combination.

The Capanna name comes from two coffee shops in Iowa City. David said he and Pam knew the owners and started to work together to get the Ames Capanna up and running. He said the need for a coffee shop like his in west Ames and the desire to open one inspired him to get advice from the owners of other Capanna shops.

“We teamed up with them because we knew them and we liked the gelato product, so that was something, for me, convinced we could differentiate ourselves from the average, everyday coffee shop,” David said.

Capanna opened up in mid- November 2008 and has since seen a very “diverse” crowd. David said getting to know the customers is one of the best parts of owning Capanna.

“I think we just enjoy, you know, meeting the variety of people we have out here, in terms of this part of town [it’s] pretty diverse, this community: professors to students, grad students, the working Joe. And so that’s been just a fun thing we have enjoyed; just getting to know people,” David said.

Capanna offers a small room to reserve to hold club meetings or small discussion groups. It’s placed off to the side with couches and chairs. David said even though there’s not a lot of room, “it’s comfortable for a small meeting.”

David and Pam said they hope Capanna can grow with Ames in the years to come. David said Capanna has a lot to offer Ames and can offer students a quiet, freshly roasted cup of coffee kind of atmosphere for students to study early and late.

“In my opinion, there’s really nothing quite like a fresh-roasted cup of coffee,” he said.

Fresh-roasted coffee vs. regular coffee

“Fresh roasted has more of its flavors in it,” David said. At Capanna, once roasted, the coffee beans will only be in a jar ready to be brewed for a week or two. “Regular coffee, as it sits longer will become more bitter … it may become more acidic. You start tasting the negative parts of the coffee rather than the good parts — fresh roasting tastes good until the last drop.”

Gelato vs. ice cream

“The process that creates [gelato] lets less air into it so it’s denser and the flavors are very rich and intense because of that. We don’t use cream, we use two-percent milk, so that makes the milk-based ones 60 to 70 percent less in fat than traditional ice cream … but the flavors are still really intense,” Pam said.