Five Brooklyn Coffee Bean Shops

If you're a coffee lover and you're looking for a place to shop, then you'll need to try out a coffee shop. These stores offer a wide variety of beans that are whole from all across the globe. They also have unique kitchenware and trinkets.

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

Porto Rico Importing Co.

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

The aroma of freshly roasting beans fills the air when you enter this West Village shop. Open sacks of dark-brown beans are stacked on the shelves along with jars of sugar, 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 increase in Italian immigrants who established businesses to meet their culinary needs. Albanese named her shop after the famous Puerto Rican coffee she imported (and sold) - a beverage so famous at the time that even the Pope consumed 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. Porto Rico also roasts their own beans and offers wholesale distribution for 350 restaurants in NYC, Brooklyn and Brooklyn.

Peter Longo, current owner and president, was raised in the family bakery on Bleecker Street, where his father ran Porto Rico. He continues to operate the business 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 cafe and a roaster. Tobin Polk, Lance Schnorenberg and their co-founders of 33 years, began roasting coffee in an apartment on the fourth floor, just around the corner, deals in the year 2011. They named it 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 it the respect of New York City coffee enthusiasts. Last year, they made a six-bag micro-lot purchase of Danilo Dones Sitio Catucai 785 from Brazil's Espirito Santo region. The beans were picked at the peak of ripeness, then removed by flotation to eliminate defects and then dried fermented for 36 hours before being dried on the farm. The result is a blend that is a little melons and berries.

Sey's dedication to holistically improving the well-being of employees, customers and growers extends beyond the walls of the shop. It makes use of biodegradable disposables and composts, preventing waste from landfills and turning it into substances that reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions and feed the soil. It also does away with gratuity, a move that puts baristas in a position to support their livelihoods as well as encourage them to concentrate on their craft.

La Cabra

La Cabra is a modern specialty coffee brand that was established in Aarhus, Denmark in 2012. It began with a tiny shop and a dedicated staff. Their honest and creative approach to delivering a truly exceptional coffee experience earned them a following, not just in their hometown however, but across the globe.

La Carba has a rigorous method of identifying their ideal beans, scouring through hundreds of different lots a year to find the ones that fit their ideals. They then roast them very lightly, adjusting their desired flavor profile. This gives their coffees an enhanced taste and clarity.

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

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

The Plant Coffee Roasting Plant Coffee

The Roasting Plant is the only multi-unit retailer of coffee that roasts its own coffee and brews to order with each cup of coffee being roasted and brewed to your specifications in less than minutes. It scour countries far and far for the finest quality specialty beans, which are directly sourced providing customers with choice and quality.

Their roaster on site is a fluid bed machine, which is different from the traditional drum machines found in UK coffee shops. The beans are blown into a heated container with high-speed air, which is circulated. This keeps the beans in suspension and allows for a consistent roasting rate.

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

The coffee is transported to the Eversys super-automatic brewing systems and you can have your coffee brewed to your specifications within less than a minute. Customers can select from a selection of nine single origin choices and a range of blends.

Parlor Coffee

Parlor Coffee was founded in 2012 behind a barbershop, equipped with a single group espresso machine. It has since grown into a bustling coffee roastery, whose beans can be found in great cafes restaurants, cafes, and home brewers throughout the city. Parlor is dedicated to procuring high-quality coffee beans from all over the world, each of which is a long, arduous journey before it reaches the roasters.

The owners, who are self-described as "passionate about the craft and believe that a good cup of coffee should accessible to everyone," have created a environment that is simple with chalkboards, compost bins, recycled handmade items, and simple decor.

They roast their own blends (there were six at the time I was there) and single-origins. However, they also host cuppings on Sundays that are accessible to the public. Imagine it as an artisanal tasting room in which you can smell and taste the ground beans, ranging from chocolaty to earthy (one was very tomato-like!). It's a little off the beaten track, but worth the trip.