Nobletree Coffee Opens Tasting Room and Labs at Its Red Hook Roastery

The Nobletree Coffee Roastery and Tasting Room in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Photo by Kevin Hatt, courtesy of Nobletree.

Vertically-integrated coffee company Nobletree Coffee, which own farms and mills in Brazil, a roastery in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and two retail cafes in New York, has always been in a unique position to highlight transparency in its closed loop of supply.

This month that spotlight widened to include a full spectrum of roasted coffee production, as Nobletree’s third retail space opened to the public in the form of a tasting room within the company’s 8,500-square-foot roasting facility at 499 Van Brunt St.

The Nobletree Coffee Roastery and Tasting Room in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Photo by Kevin Hatt, courtesy of Nobletree.

The roughly 2,500 square feet of the facility now accessible to public includes the tasting room, quality control and training labs, and a lounge. Along with striking views of the New York Bay and the Statue of Liberty from the handsome mid-19th century industrial brick building, patrons can also take in the sites of Nobletree’s vintage restored and modified Probat roasters; a Probatino used for profiling, blend development and for featured, smaller-batch coffees; and two BRZ2 sample roasters in the company’s QC Lab.

The Nobletree Coffee Roastery and Tasting Room in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Photo by Kevin Hatt, courtesy of Nobletree.

Another transparency-oriented spectacle takes place at the café service counter, where a two-group Modbar espresso and steam system rises alongside the eye-catching crucibles of an Alpha Dominche Steampunk MOD2 for brewed coffees and teas, a Mythos Climapro grinding for the former and a Mazzer ZM filter grinder for the latter. Kalita Wave manual pourovers are also an option, while select espresso and whole-bean coffees are also ground by Mahlkonig EK43.

The Nobletree Coffee Roastery and Tasting Room in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Photo by Kevin Hatt, courtesy of Nobletree.

“The Tasting Room is our chance to share with the public what’s in development, whether that’s new coffees coming online from our farms or elsewhere, or signature beverages — what we’re calling ‘Coffee in a New Light’,” Nobletree General Manager Eric Taylor told Daily Coffee News. The new light includes such crafty concoctions as the Sweet Rosalie (cold brew, lemon, and rosemary tonic syrup) and a Cold Brew Dark ‘n Stormy (cold brew, Brazilian rapadura sugar, and ginger beer).

The Nobletree Coffee Roastery and Tasting Room in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Photo by Kevin Hatt, courtesy of Nobletree.

With the tasting room now open, Nobletree’s next move is to develop a variety of coffee courses for the public, as well as training opportunities for aspiring professionals and for wholesale clients. They hope to expand those offerings in 2018 to include Q-certification courses. Taylor also said that a fourth retail location is also in the works in a stall inside the Dekalb Market Hall in Brooklyn, where the company’s second location opened earlier this summer.