Roast of the coast: Craft your own coffee

Published 9:00 am Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Express espresso is just the thing when in a hurry, but coastal life has a slower pace. Other brewing options, though more time-consuming, create a smoother cup of joe.

However, few coastal coffee shops offer alternatives like French press, AeroPress or pour-over preparation.

Burly and the Bean, a new coffeehouse in Seaside, offers all three brewing alternatives. Visitors also have the opportunity to roast their own beans in the shop’s fluid bed coffee roaster. The experience includes choosing single-origin raw beans, roasting instruction, customizing the coffee bag and enjoying a 12-ounce pour-over as well as a photo opportunity.

Burly and the Bean opened a stand two years ago, but their booming coffeehouse along U.S. Highway 101 is only six months old and is about to expand.

For co-owner Justin Boone, who roasts the shop’s coffees in-house, it’s a passion. “We’re trying to give people more availability and knowledge about their coffee,” Boone said. He notes that about half of the coffeehouse’s sales are prepared in a way other than by using an espresso machine.

It only takes a minute for a barista to prepare and pull an espresso shot. While other processes can take a little longer, Boone is confident that they are worth the wait, creating a smoother, less acidic brew.

Espresso coffee is made by forcing hot water through a fine, tightly-packed, powdered grind. It produces an intense, highly-caffeinated and concentrated beverage that is frequently blended with additional water or milk. The grind for the other methods is coarser, allowing for better absorption.

A typical AeroPress has a chamber that holds both the grounds and 200-degree Fahrenheit water. The brew is produced by pushing down on a plunger, forcing the brew out of the chamber and leaving the grounds behind.

The device makes one cup of coffee per minute and makes a darker, richer, smoother and less acidic drink. Some people find it less intense or more delicate tasting than espresso.

In a French press, the grounds are steeped in 200-degree Fahrenheit water in a pitcher-like vessel for 2 to 3 minutes. The grounds are then pressed away from the brew with a screen-type filter. Several cups of coffee are produced. The result is a little more acidic than the AeroPress and allows more of the coffee’s oils and sediment to remain suspended in the brew, contributing to a creamier feel.

Pour-over coffee takes the longest and requires the most attention, but it “creates a more sophisticated cup (and) allows you to enjoy the coffee without any cream or sugar,” Boone said.

In this process, the ground beans are placed in a filter over a glass vessel. The hot water is slowly poured into the paper cone from a kettle with a thin, curved neck. The slow process creates a bloom that allows for the gases to aerate bringing out the flavor nuances of the coffee. The consumer controls the time, temperature and texture of the finished product.

Burly and the Bean also makes cold brew and nitro brew coffee as well as preparing teas and Lotus drinks. The establishment is somewhat of a throwback to the coffeehouses of the 1950s and 1960s in that they offer live music in the evening hours.

Though the shop is open from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, it frequently reopens on Fridays and Saturday evenings for jam sessions and concerts. According to Boone, the evening’s music offerings began three months ago.

Boone said of today’s coffee culture, “I think that there’s a more popular interest in it… more like a winery.” Thus, Burly and the Bean is embracing the arrival of coffee aficionados.

Burly and the Bean

1545 N. Roosevelt Drive and 1803 S. Roosevelt Drive, Seaside

Open 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., evening hours on occasion

www.burlyandthebeancoffeecabin.com