Five Brooklyn Coffee Bean Shops

If you’re a coffee lover then you’ll want to check out a coffee bean shop. These stores offer a wide variety of beans that are whole from all across the globe. They also sell unique kitchenware and trinkets.

Some of these shops offer subscriptions to their coffee beans. Others sell them in bulk at their retail stores.

Porto Rico Importing Co.

Veteran coffee shop that specializes in international brews, as well as a variety of loose teas

The scent of freshly roasting beans fills the air when you enter this West Village shop. Open sacks of dark-brown beans line the shelves alongside sugar jars, coffee-making equipment and tea accessories.

Porto Rico, originally opened in 1907 by Italian immigrants Patsy Albonese. At the time, Greenwich Village was seeing an influx of Italian immigrants who established businesses to meet their culinary requirements. Albanese named her shop after the popular Puerto Rican coffee she imported (and sold) – – a drink that was that was so popular at the time that even the Pope drank it.

Today, Porto Rico sells 130 varieties of beans from all over the globe at three locations in New York City including their Bleecker Street location, coffee bean shop Essex Market and online. Porto Rico also roasts its own beans and provides wholesale distribution to 350 restaurants in NYC and Brooklyn.

Peter Longo, the current president and owner of the company was raised above the bakery of his family located on Bleecker Street where his father was the owner of Porto Rico. The business is still run by the business in the same fashion as his father did and grandfather.

Sey Coffee

The shop is located along Grattan Street in Morgantown, Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, Sey Coffee is both an espresso bar and a coffee roaster. Tobin Polk, Lance Schnorenberg and their co-founders, who are 33 years old, started roasting coffee in a loft on the fourth floor, just across the street in the year 2011. The name was Lofted Coffee. Local clients included Greenpoint’s Budin, and Soho cart services Peddler and Peddler.

Sey’s decision to buy micro-lots, or even entire harvests, from single farmers has earned him the respect of New York City coffee enthusiasts. The last time Sey was in the market, he purchased a six-bag micro lot of Danilo Dones Sitio Catucai from Brazil’s Espirito Santo region. The beans were picked at their peak ripeness, floated to remove defects and then dried fermented for a period of 36 hours before being dried on the farm. The result is a blend with hints of berry melon and lemongrass.

Sey’s mission extends beyond the shop to improve the overall well-being of staff and farmers, as well as customers. It utilizes biodegradable disposables as well as composts, keeping waste out of landfills and turning it into substances that reduce harmful greenhouse gases and nourish soil. It also does away with gratuity, a move that puts baristas into a position to provide their livelihoods and encourage them to focus on their profession.

La Cabra

La Cabra is a modern specialty coffee business that was founded in Aarhus, Denmark in 2012. They started with a small store and a dedicated staff. Their innovative and honest approach to providing an outstanding coffee experience has earned them a loyal following, not just in their home town but all over the world.

La Carba follows a strict procedure to find their perfect beans. They scour hundreds of lots each year in order to select the beans that best meet their ideals. They roast them in a very light style before dialing the roast to create their desired flavor coffee bean shop profile. This results in more clarity and a better taste.

The East Village store, which opened in October last year it has been praised 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 is equipped with a La Marzocco modbar and the cups and plates are custom-designed at Wurtz ceramics in Horsens, an artist-run by a father and son. In a recent Q&A session with Atlanta Coffee Shops, General Manager Ian Walla reveals that La Cabra serves about 250 different varieties of coffee each year, and typically has seven or eight varieties on offer at any given moment.

The Roasting Plant Coffee

The Roasting Plant is the only multi-unit retailer of coffee that roasts its own coffee and brews according to your preferences, with every cup of coffee roasting and brewed to your specifications in less than a minute. It scour countries far and far to find the finest, directly sourced specialty beans that offer customers a variety and quality.

The on-site roaster employs fluid bed technology which is quite different from traditional drum-type machines found in many UK coffee shops. The beans are blown around in an enclosed box heated by high-speed air that keeps the green beans suspended and allows roasting to happen in a steady manner throughout the machine.

I tried the Sumatran Coffee and it was rich and velvety with a velvety taste. Dark chocolate was evident in the aroma and as you sipped the coffee there were subtle citrus fruit flavours.

The coffee that has been roasted is whisked to the Eversys super-automatic brewing equipment and brewed to your specification in just a few minutes. Customers can select from nine single origins as well as different blends.

Parlor Coffee

It was founded in 2012 in the back of a barbershop that had an espresso machine with a single group, Parlor Coffee has become an energizing roastery whose coffees can be found in top restaurants, cafes and home brewers throughout the city. Parlor Coffee is committed to sourcing the highest quality beans that have been through a lengthy journey before reaching its roasters.

According to their own words according to their own words, they “have an unrelenting passion for craft and a belief that good coffee should be available to everyone.” They accomplish that by creating a simple streetscape that is a mix of residential and commercial. Think compost bins, a chalkboard welcome handmade up-cycled items, and a minimally-decorated space.

They roast and brew their own blends and single-origins (there were six on the menu when I was there), but they also do cuppings Sundays, which are open to the public. Imagine it as a brewery tasting room, where you can taste and smell the beans as they are roasted. They are a mix of earthy and chocolate (one was almost like tomato!). It’s a bit away from the main roads, but well worth the trip.