Five Brooklyn Coffee Bean Shops

If you're a coffee connoisseur and you're looking for a place to shop, then you'll need to visit a coffee bean shop. These stores offer a wide range of whole beans from all over the world. They also sell unique trinkets, kitchenware, and other things.

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

Porto Rico Importing Co.

Veteran coffee seller that specializes in international brews, loose teas, and a variety.

When you walk into this old-school West Village shop, the smell of fresh roasting beans fills your nostrils. The shelves are filled with jars and sacks of dark brown beans, along with tea-making equipment, coffee beans london accessories, and sugar.

Originally opened in 1907, Porto Rico was founded by Italian immigrant Patsy Albanese. At the time, Greenwich Village was seeing an influx of Italian immigrants who had opened establishments to cater to their dietary requirements. Albanese named her shop after the famous Puerto Rican coffee she imported (and sold) which was that was so well-known 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, Essex Market and online. The company also roasts their own beans and provides wholesale distribution for 350 restaurants in NYC, Brooklyn and Brooklyn.

Peter Longo, the current president and owner of the business was raised on the top floor of 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 shop in a similar way as his father and grandfather.

Sey Coffee

The shop is located along Grattan Street in Morgantown, Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood, Sey Coffee is both a cafe and a roaster. Co-founders Tobin Polk and Lance Schnorenberg, both 33 started roasting in a fourth-floor loft just 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 commitment to buying micro-lots, or even whole harvests, from single farmers has earned it the praise of New York City coffee enthusiasts. In the past, Sey bought a six-bag micro lot of Danilo Dones Sitio Catucai, a Brazilian coffee from the Espirito-Santo region. The beans were hand-picked at their peak ripeness, floated to remove defects, then dry fermented for 36 hours before being dried on the farm. The result is a coffee that is fragrant with hints of the melon and berry.

Sey's dedication extends beyond its shop to improve the overall wellbeing of staff and farmers, as well as customers. It utilizes composts and biodegradable products to keep waste from landfills. This helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also nourish the soil. It also does away with gratuity, which puts the baristas in a position to provide their livelihoods and motivate them to focus on their craft.

La Cabra

La Cabra, a modern specialty coffee company, was established in Aarhus in Denmark in 2012. It began with a tiny shop and a dedicated team. Their honest and creative approach to providing a unique coffee experience has earned them a following, not just in their own town however, but across the globe.

La Carba follows a strict procedure to find their perfect beans. They scour through hundreds of beans each year in order to find those that best fit their ideals. They roast them lightly, adjusting their desired flavor profile. This gives the coffees more vibrant flavor and clarity.

The East Village store, which opened in the month of October last year was praised for its top-quality pour-overs, as well as the baked goods, which are overseen by Jared Sexton. He previously worked at Bien Cuit, Dominique Ansel as well as other coffee establishments.

The shop is equipped with a La Marzocco Modbar and the cups plates and bowls are designed by Wurtz ceramics, a father-and son studio in Horsens. In a recent interview, Atlanta Coffee Shops General Manager Ian Walla revealed that La Cabra serves 250 different types of coffee per day and typically has seven or eight coffees available at any time.

The Roasting Plant Coffee

The Roasting Plant is the only multi-unit coffee retailer which roasts on-site and brews to order, with each cup of coffee being roasted and brewed according to your preferences in less than minutes. It searches the world for the highest-quality coffee beans specialty beans that are sourced directly to give customers the option of choices and high-quality.

Their onsite roaster uses fluid bed technology that is a bit different to traditional drum-type machines found in most UK coffee shops. The beans are blown around in the heated box by high-speed air, which keeps the green beans in suspension 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 smooth taste. Dark chocolate was evident in the aroma, and as you sip the coffee, there were subtle citrus fruit flavours.

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

Parlor Coffee

Parlor Coffee was founded in 2012 behind a barbershop, with a single group espresso machine. It has since grown into a flourishing coffee roastery, whose beans are sold in top cafes and restaurants as well as home brewers throughout the city. Parlor Coffee is dedicated to sourcing only the highest-quality beans, which have been through a lengthy journey before arriving at its roasters.

According to their own words the owners "have a relentless passion for craft and a belief that great coffee should be available to anyone." They achieve that with their down-to-earth streetscape that is a mix of residential and commercial. Think compost bins, a chalkboard welcome hand-made up-cycled goods, and a minimalist deco.

They roast their own blends (there were six when I was there) and single-origins. But they also have cuppings on Sundays, which are open to the general public. Imagine it as a tasting area--you can smell and taste the beans in the ground. They are a mix of earthy and chocolate (one was almost like tomato!). They're off the beaten track, but worthwhile to visit.