Five Brooklyn Coffee Bean Shops
If you’re a coffee lover You’ll want to go to a coffee bean shop. These shops offer a broad variety of beans that are whole from all across the globe. They also have unique trinkets and kitchenware.
Some of these shops offer subscriptions to their coffee beans. Others offer large quantities of coffee beans at their retail stores.
Porto Rico Importing Co.
Veteran coffee seller that specializes in international brews, loose teas and a selection.
The scent of freshly roasting beans fills the air when you enter this West Village shop. The shelves are packed with jars, sacks and dark brown beans, along with coffee-making equipment, tea accessories, and sugar.
Porto Rico, originally opened in 1907 by Italian immigrant Patsy Albonese. At the time, Greenwich Village was seeing an increase in Italian immigrants who established establishments to cater to their dietary requirements. Albanese named her shop after the popular Puerto Rican coffee she imported (and sold) which was that was so popular at the time that even the Pope drank 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. The company also roasts their own beans and offers wholesale distribution for 350 restaurants in NYC, Brooklyn and Brooklyn.
Peter Longo, the current president and owner of the company was raised over the bakery of his family on Bleecker Street where his father operated Porto Rico. The business is still run by the shop in a similar fashion as his father did and grandfather.
Sey Coffee
Sey Coffee, a coffee roaster and shop is located on Grattan Street, in Morgantown. The neighborhood, which is part of Brooklyn’s Bushwick district is located on Grattan Street. Co-founders Tobin Polk and Lance Schnorenberg, both 33, started roasting in a fourth-floor loft around the corner at their new location in 2011 under the name Lofted Coffee (with local clients including Greenpoint’s Budin and Soho cart service Peddler).
Sey’s preference for buying micro-lots, or even whole harvests, from single farmers has earned him the respect of New York City coffee enthusiasts. Last year, Sey purchased a six-bag micro lot of Danilo Dones Sitio Catucai from Brazil’s Espirito Santo region. The beans were handpicked at their peak ripeness, removed by flotation to eliminate defects, then dry fermented for a period of 36 hours before being dried on the farm. The result is a blend with hints of melons and berries.
Sey’s dedication to holistically improving the well-being of employees, customers and growers extends beyond the walls of the shop. It utilizes composts and biodegradable plastics to keep waste from landfills. This helps reduce greenhouse gases and helps nourish the soil. It also eliminates gratuity, which puts baristas in a position to support their livelihoods and motivate them to concentrate on their art.
La Cabra
La Cabra is a modern specialty coffee company founded in Aarhus, Denmark in 2012. It began with a tiny shop and a dedicated staff. Their honest and innovative method of providing an exceptional coffee experience has earned them a loyal following not just in their hometown but also around the world.
La Carba follows a strict process to find their perfect beans. They scour through hundreds of lots each year in order to find the ones that best meet their ideals. Then, they roast them in a very light style, dialing them in to achieve their desired flavor profile. This results in an enhanced taste and clarity.
The East Village store, which opened in the month of October last year and has been praised by critics for its premium pour-overs, as well as the baked goods, overseen and managed by Jared Sexton. He previously worked at Bien Cuit, Dominique Ansel, and other coffee establishments.
The shop employs the La Marzocco Modbar as well as the cups, plates and bowls are designed by Wurtz ceramics, a father-and-son studio located in Horsens. In a recent Q&A session with Atlanta Coffee Shops, General Manager Ian Walla reveals that La Cabra serves approximately 250 different coffees per year, and typically has seven or eight varieties on offer at any given moment.
The Roasting Plant Coffee
The Roasting Plant, a multi-unit retailer of coffee roasts and brews coffee on site. Each cup is brewed and roasted according to your specifications within less than a second. It is a search engine for the highest-grade specialty beans that are directly sourced to give customers the option of the choice and quality.
The roaster on site uses fluid bed technology, which is quite different from the drum-type machines that are commonly used in the majority of UK coffee shops. The beans are blown inside a heated box with high-velocity air that is circulated. This keeps the beans in suspension and allows for a constant roasting speed.
I tried the Sumatran coffee and it was very rich with an enveloping mouthfeel, dark chocolate aromas were present, and the coffee beans price began to cool while you sipped and subtle aromas of citrus fruit were evident.
The coffee that has been roasted will be whisked into the store’s Eversys Super-Automatic brewing Machines, and brewed to your specifications in less than one minute. Customers can choose from nine single origins and various blends.
Parlor Coffee
Parlor Coffee was founded in 2012 in a barbershop with a single group espresso machine. It has since morphed to become a burgeoning roastery, with beans that are available in top cafes, restaurants, and home brewers across the city. Parlor Coffee is dedicated to sourcing only the finest quality beans, which have all been through a long journey before arriving at its roasters.
According to their own words according to their own words, they “have an unstoppable passion for craft and a conviction that good coffee beans unroasted should be available to anyone.” They accomplish that by creating a simple area on a residential street. Think compost bins, chalkboard welcome hand-made up-cycled goods, and a minimalist deco.
They medium roast coffee beans and create their own blends as well as single-origins (there were six at the time I was there) However, they also hold cuppings on Sundays, and are open to the public. Imagine it as a tasting room, where you can smell and taste the ground beans. They vary from earthy to chocolatey (one was similar to tomato!). They’re off the beaten track and worthwhile to visit.