Five Brooklyn Coffee Bean Shops
If you’re an avid coffee drinker, you should go to a coffee shop. These shops offer a variety of whole beans from around the globe. They also sell unique trinkets and kitchenware.
Some of these shops offer subscriptions to their coffee beans. Others offer coffee beans in bulk at their retail stores.
Porto Rico Importing Co.
Veteran coffee retailer specializing international brews as well as a range of loose teas
The aroma of freshly roasting beans fills the air as you walk into this West Village shop. The sacks of dark brown beans line the shelves alongside jars of sugar coffee-making equipment, tea and other accessories.
Porto Rico, originally opened in 1907 by Italian immigrant Patsy Albonese. At the time, Greenwich Village was seeing an influx of Italian immigrants who established businesses to serve their culinary needs. Albanese named her shop after the well-known Puerto Rican coffee she imported (and sold) – – a drink that was so famous at the time that even the Pope consumed it.
Today, Porto Rico sells 130 varieties of beans from around the world at three locations in New York City including their Bleecker Street location, Essex Market and online. Porto Rico also roasts its own beans and offers wholesale distribution to 350 restaurants in NYC and Brooklyn.
Peter Longo, the current owner and president of the business was raised over his family’s bakery located on Bleecker Street where his father operated Porto Rico. He still runs the shop in the same way like his father and grandfather.
Sey Coffee
Located along Grattan Street in Morgantown, Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, Sey Coffee is both a coffee shop and roaster. Co-founders Tobin Polk and Lance Schnorenberg, both 33 began roasting in a fourth-floor loft around the corner at their new location in 2011 under the name Lofted coffee beans unroasted (with local clients including Greenpoint’s Budin and Soho cart service Peddler).
Sey’s preference for micro-lots or even whole harvests from single farmers has been praised by discerning New York City coffee aficionados. Last year, they made a six-bag micro-lot purchase of Danilo Dones Sitio Catucai 785 from Brazil’s Espirito Santo region. The beans were handpicked at their peak ripeness, floated to remove defects, then dry fermented for about 36 hours before being dried on the farm. The result is a cup with hints of berry lemongrass, and melon.
Sey’s dedication extends beyond its shop to improve the overall well-being of employees and growers as well as its customers. It uses biodegradable disposables and composts to keep waste out of landfills and converting it to agents that lower harmful greenhouse gases as well as nourish soil. It also eliminates gratuity, a move that puts baristas in a position to sustain their livelihoods as well as encourage them to concentrate on their craft.
La Cabra
La Cabra, a modern specialty coffee brand, was founded in Aarhus in Denmark in 2012. They started with a small store and a team of dedicated employees. Their honest and creative approach to providing a unique coffee experience earned them a following, not just in their own town but all over the world.
La Carba follows a strict process to find their perfect beans. They scour hundreds of lots each year in order to find the ones that best meet their standards. They roast them lightly, dialing in their desired flavor profile. This gives the coffees more vibrant taste and clarity.
The East Village store opened last October, with a minimalist and sleek design. It’s been praised worldwide by coffee bean near me aficionados for its exacting pour-overs and baked goods overseen by head baker Jared Sexton, who’s previously worked at Bien Cuit and Dominique Ansel.
The shop uses the La Marzocco modbar and the cups and plates are designed by Wurtz ceramics in Horsens, the son and father studio. In a recent Q&A interview with Atlanta Coffee Shops, General Manager Ian Walla reveals that La Cabra serves approximately 250 different coffees per year, and usually has seven or eight varieties available at any given point.
The Roasting Plant Coffee
The Roasting Plant is a multi-unit coffee retailer, roasts and brews coffee on-site. Each cup is brewed and roasted according to your requirements in less than one second. It searches countries far and far to find the finest specialty beans, which are directly sourced that offer customers a variety and good quality coffee beans.
Their on-site roaster utilizes fluid bed technology which is a bit different to the drum-type machines that are commonly used in the majority of UK coffee houses. The beans are blown around a heated box by high-velocity air that keeps the beans in a suspended state and allows them to be roasted in a steady manner as they move through the machine.
I tried the Sumatran Coffee and it was incredibly rich and velvety with a smooth taste. Dark chocolate was evident from the aroma and as you sip the coffee there were subtle citrus fruit flavours.
The roasted coffee is then whisked to the store’s Eversys brewing machines that are super-automatic and can be the coffee is brewed according to your preferences in under a minute. Customers can pick from nine single origins as well as various blends.
Parlor Coffee
Parlor Coffee was founded in 2012 in a barbershop using a single espresso machine. It has since morphed into a flourishing strong coffee beans roastery, whose coffee beans are available in top cafes and restaurants as well as home brewers all over the city. Parlor is committed to procuring high-quality coffee beans from across the globe, each of which has had to endure a lengthy journey before arriving in the roasters.
The owners, who are self-described as “passionate about coffee and believe that great coffee should be accessible to all,” have created a space that is grounded, with chalkboards, compost bins, recycled handmade products, and a minimalist interior.
They roast their own blends (there were six when I was there) and single-origins, however they also have cuppings on Sundays, which are accessible to the public. Think of it as the tasting room of a brewery. You can smell and taste the ground beans, ranging from chocolaty earthy (one was almost tomato-like!). It’s a little away from the main roads, but worth the journey.