Mathew Deshotel

Five Brooklyn Coffee Bean Shops

If you're a coffee enthusiast, you should go to a coffee shop. These shops offer a variety of whole beans from around the globe. These stores also offer unique trinkets, kitchenware and other products.

Some of these shops offer subscriptions to their coffee beans. Some shops offer coffee beans in bulk.

Porto Rico Importing Co.

Veteran coffee beans unroasted seller that is a specialist in international brews, loose teas, and a wide selection.

The scent of freshly roasting beans fills the air once you enter this West Village shop. The shelves are lined with jars and bags of dark brown beans, along with tea-making equipment, coffee accessories and sugar.

Porto Rico, originally opened in 1907 by Italian immigrant Patsy Albonese. Greenwich Village at the time was witnessing an influx of Italian immigrants, who established businesses to meet 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.

Today, Porto Rico sells 130 varieties of beans from all over the world at three locations in New York City including their Bleecker Street location, Essex Market and online. The company roasts its own beans and provides wholesale distribution for 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 ran Porto Rico. He continues to run the business in the same way like his father and grandfather.

Sey Coffee

It is located on 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 began roasting in a fourth-floor loft around the corner from their new location in 2011 under the name Lofted Coffee (with local clients including Greenpoint's Budin and Soho cart service Peddler).

Sey's reliance on micro-lots -- or even whole harvests from a single farmer has earned it the praise of the most discerning New York City coffee aficionados. In 2011, Sey purchased a six-bag micro lot of Danilo Dones Sitio Catucai from Brazil's Espirito-Santo region. The beans were handpicked at peak ripeness and removed by flotation to eliminate defects, then dry fermented for 36 hours before being dried on the farm. The result is a cup with hints of berry lemongrass, and melon.

Sey's dedication to holistically improving the well-being of employees, customers and growers extends beyond the walls of the shop. It uses composts and biodegradable disposables in order to keep waste from the landfills. This helps to reduce greenhouse gases and nourish the soil. It also reduces gratuity. This lets baristas focus on their craft and help sustain their livelihoods.

La Cabra

La Cabra, a modern specialty coffee bean coffee company, was founded in Aarhus in Denmark in 2012. They began with a small shop and a dedicated staff. Their innovative and honest method of providing an exceptional gourmet coffee beans experience has earned them a devoted following, not just in their own town and across the globe.

La Carba follows a strict method to select their best beans. They scour hundreds of varieties every year to find beans that meet their ideals. They then roast them very lightly, dialing in their desired flavor profile. This gives the coffees a more intense flavor and clarity.

The East Village store opened last October with a sleek and minimalist design. It's been praised worldwide by coffee lovers for its precise pour-overs and baked goods supervised by head baker Jared Sexton, who's previously worked at Bien Cuit and Dominique Ansel.

The shop employs the La Marzocco modbar, and the cups and plates are designed specifically for 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 a year, and typically has seven or eight varieties available at any given moment.

The Roasting Plant Coffee

The Roasting Plant, a multi-unit coffee retailer, roasts and brews the coffee bean Shop coffee on site. Each cup is roasted and brewed according to your specifications within less than an hour. It searches the world far for the finest quality specialty beans, which are directly sourced, offering customers choice and quality.

Their on-site roaster is an automatic fluid bed machine that is distinct from the classic drum machines used in UK coffee shops. The beans are blown around the heated box by high-speed air, which keeps the beans suspended and allows roasting to happen at a consistent rate as they move through the machine.

I tried the Sumatran coffee and it was a rich cup with velvety mouthfeel. Dark chocolate from the fragrance was present, and the coffee began to cool down as you sipped delicate citrus flavours fruit were evident.

The roasted coffee is then transported to the store's Eversys super-automatic brewing machines and the coffee is brewed according to your preferences in less than a minute. Customers can pick from nine single origins as well as a variety blends.

Parlor Coffee

Founded in 2012 in the back of a barbershop equipped with one espresso machine in a single group, Parlor Coffee has become a burgeoning roastery whose beans can be found in top restaurants, cafes and home brewers all over the city. Parlor Coffee is committed to sourcing the highest-quality beans, that have all been through a long journey before they reach its roasters.

In their own words in their own words, they "have a relentless passion for craft and a conviction that good coffee should be available to everyone." They achieve this with their earthy street space, which includes compost bins, chalkboards hand-made up-cycled goods, and low-frills deco.

They roast their own blends (there were six at the time I was there) and single-origins, but they also host cuppings on Sundays, which are open to the general public. Imagine it as a brewery tasting room--you can smell and taste the beans, from chocolatey to earthy (one was very tomato-like!). It's a bit off the beaten path, but worth the journey.