15 Gifts For The Coffee Bean Shop Lover In Your Life

Five Brooklyn Coffee Bean Shops

If you're a coffee connoisseur then you'll want to check out a coffee bean shop. These stores offer a wide variety of beans that are whole from all over the world. They also offer unique trinkets and kitchenware.

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

Porto Rico Importing Co.

Veteran coffee seller who concentrates on international brews, loose teas and a selection.

The scent of freshly roasted beans fills the air as you walk into this West Village shop. The shelves are packed with jars and sacks of dark brown beans, along with tea-making equipment, coffee accessories, and sugar.

Porto Rico, originally opened in 1907 by Italian immigrant Patsy Albonese. At the time, Greenwich Village was seeing an increase in Italian immigrants who set up businesses to serve their culinary needs. Albanese named her shop after the popular Puerto Rican coffee bean company 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 around the globe at three locations in New York City including their Bleecker Street location, Essex Market and online. Porto Rico roasts its own beans and provides wholesale distribution to 350 restaurants in NYC and Brooklyn.

Peter Longo, the current owner and president of the company, grew up above his family's bakery located on Bleecker Street where his father was the owner of Porto Rico. He still runs the shop in a similar way to his father and grandfather.

Sey Coffee

It is located along Grattan Street in Morgantown, Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood, Sey Coffee is both an espresso bar and a coffee roaster. Co-founders Tobin Polk and Lance Schnorenberg, both 33 started roasting in a fourth-floor loft just around the corner from their new shop in 2011 under the name Lofted Coffee (with local clients including Greenpoint's Budin and Soho cart service Peddler).

Sey's focus on purchasing micro-lots, or even whole harvests from single farmers has earned it the praise of knowledgeable 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 hand-picked at peak ripeness and floated to get rid of any imperfections, then dry fermented for a period of 36 hours before being dried on the farm. The result is a coffee with hints of berry, lemongrass and melon.

Sey's commitment to holistically improving the wellbeing of employees, customers and growers extends beyond the walls of the shop. It makes use of biodegradable disposables and composts, keeping waste out of landfills and converting it to agents that lower harmful greenhouse gases and enrich the soil. It also eliminates gratuity. This allows baristas to focus on their craft and help sustain their livelihoods.

La Cabra

La Cabra is a modern specialty coffee company founded in Aarhus, Denmark in 2012. The company started with a modest store and a dedicated staff. Their open and creative approach to providing an exceptional coffee experience earned them a following not only in their own town but also around the world.

La Carba has a rigorous process for finding their perfect beans, scouring through hundreds of different varieties every year to locate 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 clearer and more vibrant taste.

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

the coffee bean shop shop is equipped with a La Marzocco modbar, and the plates and cups are designed specifically for Wurtz ceramics in Horsens, the son and father studio. In a recent Q&A 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 different varieties available at any given time.

The Roasting Plant Coffee

The Roasting Plant is the only multi-unit coffee retailer that roasts on site and brews on demand, with every cup of coffee roasted and brewed to your specifications in less than minutes. It searches countries far and across the globe for the highest-quality specialty beans that are directly sourced that offer customers a variety and quality.

The roaster on site uses fluid bed technology, which is a bit different to the classic drum-type machines used in the majority of UK coffee shops. The beans are blown through an enclosed box that is heated and has high-speed, circulating air. This keeps the beans suspended and allows for a constant roasting rate.

I tried the Sumatran coffee and it was a rich cup with a velvety mouthfeel, dark chocolate from the fragrance was present. The coffee began to cool as you sip the coffee. The subtle scents of citrus fruit were evident.

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

Parlor unroasted coffee beans

Parlor Coffee was founded in 2012 in a barbershop equipped with a single group espresso machine. It has since grown to become a burgeoning roastery, and its beans can be found in a variety of great cafes as well as restaurants and home brewers across the city. Parlor is dedicated to sourcing high quality coffee beans-quality beans from all over the world each of which has been through a long and difficult journey before reaching the roasters.

According to their own words, they "have an unrelenting love of craft and a conviction that good coffee should be accessible to everyone." They do just this by putting their home-like streetscape that is a mix of residential and commercial. Think compost bins, chalkboards handmade up-cycled items, and low-frills deco.

They roast their own blends (there were six when I was there) and single-origins, however they also host cuppings on Sundays, which are open to the general public. Imagine it as a brewery tasting room, where you can smell and taste the beans as they are roasted. They are a mix of earthy and chocolate (one was similar to tomato!). It's a bit off the beaten path but well worth the trip.