Five Brooklyn Coffee Bean Shops

If you're a lover of coffee You'll want to go to a coffee bean shop. These stores offer a wide selection of whole beans from all over the world. They also sell unique trinkets, kitchenware and other products.

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

Porto Rico Importing Co.

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

As you enter this old-school West Village shop, the scent of freshly coffee beans fills your nostrils. The shelves are lined with jars and sacks filled with dark brown beans, with tea-making equipment, coffee accessories, and sugar.

The first restaurant 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 set up establishments to cater to their dietary needs. Albanese named her shop after the famous Puerto Rican coffee she imported (and sold) the beverage was that was so well-known at the time that even the Pope consumed 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 roasts its own beans and offers wholesale distribution to 350 restaurants in NYC 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 operate the shop in the same manner as his father and grandfather.

Sey Coffee

It is located along Grattan Street in Morgantown, Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood, Sey Coffee is both a roaster and coffee shop. Co-founders Tobin Polk and Lance Schnorenberg, both 33 started roasting in a fourth-floor loft just around the corner from their new store 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 single farmers earned it the acclaim of highly discerning New York City coffee aficionados. Last year they made a 6-bag micro-lot purchase of Danilo Dones Sitio Catucai 785 from Brazil's Espirito Santo region. The beans were handpicked at the peak of ripeness, then removed by flotation to eliminate defects, then dry fermented for 36 hours before being dried on the farm. The result is a blend that has hints of the melon and berry.

Sey's dedication to holistically improving the health of staff, growers and customers extends beyond the retail store. It makes use of biodegradable disposables and composts, keeping waste out of landfills and converting it to agents that reduce harmful greenhouse gases as well as nourish soil. It also removes gratuities. This allows baristas to concentrate on their work and to earn a living.

La Cabra

La Cabra, a modern specialty coffee bean suppliers near me company, was founded in Aarhus in Denmark in 2012. It started with a small shop and a dedicated team. Their honest and innovative approach to providing an exceptional coffee experience has earned them a following that was not only in their hometown but all over the world.

La Carba has a rigorous process to find their perfect beans, searching through hundreds of different lots a year to find the ones that match their ideals. They roast them in a very light manner and dial the roast to create their desired flavor profile. This gives their coffees more clarity and a better taste.

The East Village store opened last October with a sleek minimalist design. It has been praised by international coffee enthusiasts for its scrumptious pour-overs and baked goods that are overseen by head baker Jared Sexton, who's previously worked at Bien Cuit and Dominique Ansel.

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

The Plant Coffee Roasting Plant Coffee

The Roasting Plant is a multi-unit retailer of coffee, roasts and brews coffee on-site. Each cup is roasted and brewed according to your preferences in less than a second. It searches the globe for the highest quality specialty beans that are sourced directly providing customers with choice and quality.

Their onsite roaster uses fluid bed technology, which is quite different from the drum-type machines commonly found in most UK coffee houses. The beans are blown around the heated box by high-speed air, which keeps the beans in a suspended state and allows roasting to happen in a steady manner throughout the machine.

I tried the Sumatran Coffee and it was velvety and rich with a smooth taste. Dark chocolate was evident in the aroma. As you sip the coffee you could taste subtle citrus fruit flavours.

The coffee is transported to the Eversys brewing machines that are super-automatic and can be you can have your organic coffee beans brewed to your specifications within less than a minute. Customers can pick from nine single origins and several blends.

Parlor Coffee

It was founded in 2012 in the back of a barbershop, complete with a single-group espresso machine, Parlor Coffee has become a rapidly growing roastery whose beans can be found in top rated coffee beans cafes, restaurants and home brewers throughout the city. Parlor Coffee is committed to sourcing the highest-quality beans, which have gone through a long journey before reaching its roasters.

According to their own words the owners "have an unrelenting passion for craft and a belief that good coffee should be available to everyone." They achieve that with their down-to-earth area on a residential street. Think compost bins, chalkboards handmade up-cycled products, and low-frills deco.

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