Orange Bike Brewing Partners With Tandem Coffee on Gluten-Free Stout Benefiting Maine Audubon

Orange Bike Brewing Co.'s Diamond Street taproom will host a release party tomorrow, April 8, for a new collaboration coffee stout brewed with Tandem Coffee, one of Portland's most recognized specialty roasters. A portion of draft sales from the beer will go to Maine Audubon, anchoring the launch to a local conservation cause before the first pint is even poured.

The stout centers on Tandem's roast profile layered over Orange Bike's gluten-free base. Coffee stouts typically pull their espresso, cocoa, and roasty character from dark-roast additions introduced via cold-brew or whole-bean steeping during whirlpool or fermentation, and the Orange Bike/Tandem version works along those lines. Orange Bike has held its formal tasting notes and serving recommendations for the release party itself, making the Diamond Street event the first place anyone gets the full read on what the brewery built.

The collaboration makes particular sense for a gluten-free operation. Orange Bike has always served a community that finds much of the craft beer world inaccessible by default, and Tandem brings a built-in audience that cares about origin, roast precision, and craft sourcing. The overlap between specialty coffee drinkers and gluten-sensitive beer drinkers is real, and a co-branded release gives both roaster and brewery a route into each other's regulars.

The Maine Audubon connection adds a dimension that separates this from a standard new-release launch. Draft proceeds will support the organization's bird and habitat programs, tying a taproom event directly to statewide conservation work.

For homebrewers, the release is a legible template: identify a local roaster, develop a bean profile together, then experiment with extraction method. Cold-brew addition, whole-bean steeping, and espresso-shot additions each produce different intensity and texture in the finished beer, and specialty roasters often have roast levels already suited for brewing. At Diamond Street tomorrow, that kind of cross-discipline information-sharing will happen in real time, over the stout itself.