Five Brooklyn Coffee Bean Shops

If you are an avid coffee drinker, then you should go to a coffee shop. These shops sell a range of whole beans from all over the globe. They also sell exclusive trinkets, kitchenware and other products.

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

Porto Rico Importing Co.

Veteran coffee seller specializing in international brews as well as a range of loose teas

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

The first restaurant opened in 1907, Porto Rico was founded by Italian immigrant Patsy Albanese. At the time, Greenwich Village was seeing an increase in Italian immigrants who set up businesses to serve their culinary needs. Albanese named the shop after the famous Puerto Rican Coffee she imported and sold - a beverage that was so well-known that at the time, even the Pope would drink it.

Porto Rico offers 130 different varieties of beans, including beans from all over the world, at three locations, including Bleecker Street, Essex Market and online. Porto Rico roasts their own beans and provides wholesale distribution to 350 restaurants in NYC, Brooklyn and Brooklyn.

Peter Longo, current owner and president, grew up in the family bakery located on Bleecker Street, where his father was the owner of Porto Rico. He runs the business in the same manner like his father and grandfather.

Sey Coffee

Sey Coffee, a coffee shop and roaster 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 the fourth-floor loft across the street 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 entire harvests, from farmers who are one has earned it the praise of New York City coffee enthusiasts. In the past they made a six-bag micro-lot purchase of Danilo Dones Sitio Catucai 785 from Brazil's Espirito Santo region. The beans were picked when they were ripe and then floated to eliminate any defects. They were then dried on the farm following a 36-hour dry fermentation. The result is a cup that is fragrant with hints of fruit and melon.

Sey's dedication to holistically improving the health of staff, growers and customers extends beyond the shop. It makes use of composts and biodegradable disposables to keep waste from the garbage dumps. This helps to reduce greenhouse gases and helps nourish the soil. It also does away with gratuity, which puts the baristas in a position to provide their livelihoods and encourage them to concentrate on their craft.

La Cabra

La Cabra is a modern specialty coffee company that was founded in Aarhus, Denmark in 2012. The company started with a modest store and a team of dedicated employees. Their honesty and ingenuity to delivering an extraordinary coffee experience has earned them a following that was not only in their home town but also around the world.

La Carba has a rigorous process to find their perfect beans, searching through hundreds of different varieties a year to find the ones that match their ideals. Then they roast them in a very light manner, dialing them in to achieve their desired flavor profile. This gives the coffees more vibrant flavor and clarity.

The East Village store, which opened in October last year, has been praised for its high-quality pour overs as well as its baked goods, overseen and managed by Jared Sexton. He previously worked at Bien Cuit, Dominique Ansel and various coffee houses.

The shop is equipped with the La Marzocco Modbar and the cups plates, and bowls are custom-designed by Wurtz ceramics, a father-and-son studio located in Horsens. In a recent Q&A interview with Atlanta coffee bean shop near me Shops, General Manager Ian Walla reveals that La Cabra serves approximately 250 different types of coffees each year, and usually has seven or eight varieties available at any given moment.

The Roasting Plant Coffee

The Roasting Plant is the only multi-unit coffee retailer that roasts on-site and brews to order, with every cup of coffee roasted and brewed to your specifications in less than one minute. It searches far and across the globe for the highest-quality specialty beans, which are directly sourced that provide customers with a choice and high-quality.

Their on-site roaster utilizes fluid bed technology that is a bit different to traditional drum-type machines found in many UK coffee houses. The beans are blown around a heated container by high-speed air, which keeps the green beans in suspension and allows them to be roasted in a steady manner when they pass through the machine.

I tried the Sumatran coffee and it was a rich cup with an enveloping mouthfeel, dark chocolate aroma was present, and the coffee began to cool down as you sipped and subtle aromas of citrus fruit were evident.

The roasted coffee is then whisked to the Eversys super-automatic brewing equipment and it is brewed to your requirements in just a few minutes. Customers can pick from nine single origin selections and a variety of blends.

Parlor Coffee

Founded in 2012 in the back of a barbershop that had a single-group espresso machine, Parlor Coffee has become a rapidly growing roastery whose beans are sold at top restaurants, cafes and home brewers throughout the city. Parlor is dedicated to sourcing high-quality beans from across the globe each of which has been through a long and difficult journey before getting into the roasters.

The owners, who self-described as "passionate about craft and believe that great coffee should be accessible to all," have created a space that is down-to earth and has chalkboards, compost bins and up-cycled products, and low-frills decor.

They roast and create their own blends and single-origins (there were six at the time I was there) However, they also have cuppings on Sundays that are open to the public. Imagine it as a tasting room, where you can taste and smell the ground beans. They vary from earthy to chocolaty (one was almost like tomato!). It's a little off the beaten path but worth the trip.