Stumptown Coffee Roasters Tasting Room

The most overrated coffee ever. Its one of those things people are compelled to say they like in fear of retribution just like political correctness. There coffees are all horrible and taste over roasted. Absolute garbage. Made for the tourist used to drinking Sanka and those buying terrible donuts at Voodo in the shape of a male genitalia.

It was their packing day. No coffee serving… too bad…

I’m rating on their coffee quality. Not the place. Could be the best coffee in the NY area you can buy!

I really wanted to like Stumptown’s entry into the New York market and was particularly excited that the coffee bar here focused on brewed coffee.
But the coffee just wasn’t terribly good. I had consistently bad cups, regardless of brewing method, including a syphon that was almost undrinkable.

Sad that they closed this location. I think they just roast and bag ‘em here nowadays.

This is the best coffee you’ll get anywhere. Except the café at this location has closed so you can’t get it here anymore. Still, that shouldn’t stop you from seeking out the exquisite coffees of Stumptown whenever and wherever possible.
It is worth every cent you tightfisted curmudgeon.

Well I had meant to get over here for some time, so on a little bicycle tour of Brooklyn last week, I decided to stop over here and see what was brewing.
Turns out there wasn’t a tasting going on today, and unfortunately they don’t have an espresso machine and café in front. I *was* able to see the operation though, and some of the roasting going on in back, so that was kind of cool. Still not a whole wowing type of experience.
I asked one of the people working there if they could recommend a café, and he pointed me to Baked down the street, but flinched when I asked if the espresso was any good. I think he might have said half-​heartedly that it was *not bad*. Ummm… ok. I’ll give it a try, I’m here in Red Hook after all.

This place is a joke. After walking in with a friend and waiting 10 minutes on line, we were no closer to drinking a cup of coffee than when we had entered, and the place wasn’t that crowded. The guy behind the counter appeared to be busy with some kind of experiment involving a Bunsen burner.

I hated this place from the moment I walked in.
I’ve seen coffee shops get snootier and snobbier and farther and farther up their own sphincters, but this place in too much. I thought Grumpy was bad.
What kind of narcissist refuses to comply with customer demand? Who is right in Capitalist society? Money is right. Therefore, I, being the customer and being accustomed to milk (as coffee is generally consumed in Western Society) am right. Not you, Stumptown. Get over it.
I couldn’t enjoy my coffee. I NEED milk in Melitta cone coffee, and I’ve been drinking this for over a decade now. I tried sweetening it, I tried drinking it while smoking cigarettes, but I needed milk. God dammit.
Their prices for roasted beans are insane. I pay $ 8 – 9 for what I consider to be a superior product at Porto Rico (or Fairway in Red Hook for that matter) and that’s for a full pound. $ 13.50 for 12 oz is a markup ratio I would accept from a different kind of brown powder…

I wish they wouldn’t sell fake pound bags of coffee. It’s like $ 15 for a bag of coffee which is like ²⁄₃ of pound.
They’re going corporate big time now… 90% of the company was purchased by TSG and their MO is buying small companies like stumptown and flipping in 2 years.

Recently, I stopped by while the staff was busy roasting coffee. A friendly individual walked up to me and explained that the tasting room wasn’t open to the public during the week. He then asked me if I wanted some coffee to «hold me over.» He returned with a fresh bag of roasted beans from Costa Rica and then refused my offer to pay for the coffee. To say the least, I thought that was really nice of this particular individual. The coffee tastes great too. I certainly plan on buying Stumptown coffee in the near future.

So hip they’ve gone around the other side, but a worthwhile experience nonetheless. Take a few friends and prepare your self for a caffeine infused ride as high as you are willing to go.

For all coffee snobs who feel as if they could easily win mastermind with coffee as their specialist subject. Go here but go alone! You will feel shamed and humiliated that you thought you could join the ranks of connoisseur or aficionado…
However, in your hands you will have one Delicious cup of black gold.
They take it to a new level! So swallow your pride and you’ll be sippin happy.

I’ll admit that some of my distaste for this place is just based on personal preference (and I’ll explain, incase your preferences match mine), but the snobby service and odd menu played a huge part in the 2 star assessment.
Before we get into it, here are our preferences:
My Fiancé’s Coffee Novice Preference:
He is into single origin coffees and even took a cupping class to learn more about them. On a coffee nerd scale with 10 being the highest, he’s maybe an 8.
My Girly Coffee Preference:
I am into cutesy coffee shops with flavored girly drinks. I enjoy and have an appreciation for single-​origin coffees, but not on a coffee-​nerd level. I’m maybe a 5 in the coffee-​nerd world.
The Atmosphere:
If you like a rustic warehouse look, you’ll like the look of this place. It’s an open space with only one giant wood table in the center to be shared among customers. I liked the communal vibe, but the place was a bit dirty and awkwardly set up. You had to walk around the table to get to the counter and anytime someone new walked up, whoever was sitting at the table had to get up or move around to let them by. If you’ve ever been to a NY restaurant, you’re used to this but their space was large enough that had the seating been arranged differently, this wouldn’t be the case. On the bright side, they have some cool old signs hanging and the space is, well — bright.
The Service:
That however was all overshadowed by the rude, snobby and off-​putting service. Like I said, my fiancé knows about single-​origin coffees and can generally guess what flavor comes from what region. To me, their menu of coffee processes and regions was like reading a menu in a foreign language, so a little customer service would have been nice. He reluctantly asked us what our flavor preference was, but his demeanor throughout serving us felt as if we were bothering him with our patronage.
The Bottom line:
When I leave a coffee shop, I want to feel relaxed and ready for the day, not annoyed. You’d think a shop out in the middle of nowhere in Red Hook that’s only opened for limited hours would be a little more appreciative of it’s clientele, but I guess not. I thought that maybe my preferences attributed to me not enjoying the experience as much but even my fiancé left feeling disappointed. To put it into perspective even more, we are frequenters of Intelligentsia Cafes in Chicago where they happy chat about and explain their coffees, so it enriches the experience a bit more. I think that’s what we were expecting.
Bonus Gripe:
What kind of coffee shop doesn’t have pastries? I’m sure they’re hard to keep for a place that’s only open on the weekends but there was literally not even a biscotti in sight. Lame!

If you consider yourself a coffee aficionado, there really is no better place to go than Stumptown. It was the main source of coffee for me in Portland and am ecstatic that it’s available in NYC. The ACE hotel offers the same variety of beans and same excellent service. However, what makes this hidden, off-​beat hours, Red Hook location so great is the drip brew presentation. Each cup is made pour drip Chemex style (as seen in the pictures). Everyone on staff is extremely knowledgeable on every aspect of coffee brewing and they offer some of the most unique home brewing machines in-​store (as opposed to vaguely shopping online). Plus, they carry almost every roast available in bag and they can grind it for you too! The décor is rustic and homely with a wide open table in the middle for customers to enjoy their brew cafeteria style which is great for the Sunday/​family crowd.
The best part of it all are the baristas. Most are Portlanders and that unique blend of charm, savvy, funny and mellow personality is a welcome break from the mad dash of city life.

I took the small journey from Greenpoint down to Red Hook a short while back specifically to visit this place. I’m a big fan of their coffee, and though there are several places to buy bags of Stumptown beans in my neighborhood, I wanted to go here and see if they had more to offer.
As it turns out, I was misinformed. Upon arriving at noon on a Friday, saw that they were closed. As it turns out, they are ONLY OPEN FROM 10AM-​5PM ON SATURDAYS & SUNDAYS. Make a note of that, Unilocalers.
I was about to walk away, downtrodden & defeated, when someone working inside saw me looking in the window longingly. He opened the door and explained they were closed, but still happily invited me & my girlfriend inside. Nice! So yes, they do have MANY different varieties of coffee available. And if you’re looking to get started with serious at-​home brewing, they also appeared to sell a variety of coffee grinders, as well as everything you need to brew coffee any way imaginable. It was very impressive.
Although they were unable to sell me anything because they didn’t have a till in place, they made each of us a complimentary cup of our choice of coffee to go and thanked us for coming by. The coffee was delicious (as always) and it was some of the friendliest customer service I’ve ever experienced. I will definitely be back there on my next available weekend to do some serious shopping. If you’re serious about coffee and don’t mind going off the beaten path a bit, this is an absolute must.

It took me about two months to make it to Stumptown’s new coffee bar, attached to their roasting operation in Red Hook, Brooklyn. (For any Sydneysiders, Van Brunt Street in Red Hook is a little like Danks Street in Waterloo, but further behind in the gentrification process). The reason for my foot-​dragging is that they don’t serve espresso at the new outlet. «You can get an espresso anywhere, we thought we’d do something different» said the guy behind the counter (dressed in the same retro attire as the staff at the Manhattan location). A rather unsatisfactory explanation, and probably not the full story, but I didn’t press them any further and decided to just order a coffee.
So what do they offer instead of espresso? A lot. Every roast they produce (nearly 20 different kinds) can be brewed multiple ways: pour-​over, chemex, French press, aeropress or siphon. Which, to someone like me, is basically saying filter coffee five different ways. But they spent quite some time explaining the differences between the methods and I, recognizing that I was in unfamiliar territory, asked the barista to choose my drink for me. What he selected was their Kenya Nguguru coffee brewed via chemex (a slow pour-​over method using a thicker than normal filter). It wasn’t bad, and I drank half of it black so I could identify the «pineapple» and «sparkling white wine» characteristics they told me it contained. But it’s a completely different drink to what I usually have, so I’m not going to rate it here as it’s not really comparable.
Regarding ambiance and service, no complaints. People who love coffee love to talk about it, and the staff made amicable chit chat about flat whites and such (if you don’t know what a flat white is, here’s the New York Times definition). The space itself is pretty cool: lots of unvarnished wood, sacks of unroasted beans lying about and shelves of coffee paraphernalia to geek out over. They don’t serve any food at all, which relays the message that this place exists solely for coffee and nothing else. Similarly, the patrons who journey to the industrial, desolate and somewhat inconvenient location are there for one thing and one thing only. I can respect that.
— Coffee Hunter

If you aren’t familiar with Stumptown coffee, then you should know that they are one of the best roasters out there. I regularly purchase whole beans from them (available at their Ace hotel location, Union Market and a few scattered coffee shops throughout the city) for home brewing.
This Red Hook outpost isn’t a coffee shop in the traditional sense. It’s not a café. This is where they actually roast the coffee. The walls are lined with giant burlap bags of whole beans that get dragged to the back room, where plastic drums are filled with roasted beans, then brown bagged and labeled.
They only have one table — beautiful, giant and wooden — and it’s communal. Nearly every Stumptown Coffee variety is available to be brewed. Choosing a coffee is almost as difficult as choosing a brewing method. They have them all — Chemex, french press, aeropress, etc. Prices vary according to the chosen coffee + brewing method. Most combinations are in the $ 3.00 to $ 4.00 range. At the moment, they only serve coffee (no coffee derived drinks or espresso) but I did see a beautiful, classic espresso machine sitting in the front waiting to be hooked up, so perhaps that will change.
I ordered a cup of Guatemala Finca El Injerto Pacamara, Chemex brewed and served in a nice heavy bottomed «diner mug.» The barista was spot on in his description of the coffee. It was delicious but I opted to take home a bag of the Ethiopia Suke Quto instead, as the Finca El Injerto was too similar to what I’ve been brewing for the past month and I was looking for a change.
Yes, the place is a bit prentious in that classical hipster fashion, but the baristas are geniunely helpful and extremely knowlegable about the coffees and brewing methods. My biggest complaint about the Stumptown café at the ACE hotel is that their baristas aren’t very approachable. When you do try to pick their brain for some suggestions, they almost always fall flat. For that reason alone, I’ll be coming here instead.

I saw this weekend that Stumptown opened a tasting room right smack dab across the street from me in Red Hook. I am a coffee fan — I go to McNulty’s especially to get their Mexican Altura.
I tried the Costa Rica Montes de Oro, however for someone who takes milk and a little sugar in their coffee, I was a little floored when I found there was none there — not even on a separate table. I know the idea is to get you to really taste the coffee before polluting it with whatever your poison is, however, it’s kind of hard for me to drink a whole cup of black coffee «straight.» They want you to buy a bag and make it at home rather than have the tasting room be a coffee house to hang around in, but still some milk or cream, or hell I’d take soy milk if they had it, and a little something sweet would be nice for a $ 2.50 cup.
Staff is very helpful and it smells heavenly inside. Lots of coffee making supplies for sale as well as coffee.