Inside Bird Rock Coffee Roasters’ Big New Bar in Little Italy, San Diego

Bird Rock Coffee Roasters Little Italy location. All photos courtesy of Bird Rock Coffee Roasters.

Bird Rock Coffee Roasters has soft-opened its coffee bar inside shiny new mixed-use building on Kettner Blvd., in the northern section of San Diego’s Little Italy.

The second retail outpost for Bird Rock reflects a long-formed vision through 12 years in specialty coffee, including the previous eight years at the company’s original location in the Bird Rock community between Pacific Beach and La Jolla, says founder and owner Chuck Patton.

“It represents everything we have learned in that time,” Patton tells Daily Coffee News. “We focused on equipment, ergonomics for baristas and optimal work flow.”

(related: A Sunny ‘Caffeine Crawl’ through San Diego Micros and Cafes)

The Little Italy shop will soon be supplied by a new Morena Blvd. roasting headquarters — including a training lab and a third retail bar — that will dramatically increase capacity and programming space for the Roast Magazine 2012 Micro Roaster of the Year.

Everything inside the new 1,400-square-foot space is oriented toward the bar, where two multiple-group Synesso machines coated in Bird Rock’s signature Carolina Blue power the espresso drink program.

(related: Bird Rock Coffee Roasters Aiming for ‘Awe-Inspiring’ With New San Diego Space)

“We went with equipment that actually works and does not just look pretty,” Patton says. “We have been very pleased with the durability and consistency of Synessos, so we stuck with those. On the pourover bar, we wanted to eliminate the clutter of the typical stand and scale set up, and we are still dialing in the Modbar under-the-counter boiler. We are using 3 Baratza grinders for the pourover options.”

For batch brewing, the Little Italy shop is employing Curtis G4 brewers and a Mahlkonig 3 phase VTA6 grinder.

For now, the Little Italy shop’s hours are 7 a.m. to noon, with expanded hours coming shortly. Here’s a peek inside: