Ohm Coffee Roasters Turns It Up in California Wine Country

Inside the new Ohm Coffee Roasters shop in Sonoma, California. All images courtesy of Ohm Coffee Roasters.

Rock-themed coffee company Ohm Coffee Roasters just rolled from its mobile retail operation into two permanent cafes in California wine country. 

The openings follow Ohm’s acquisition of the Monday Bakery & Cafe company last year. Two former Monday cafes, one in Napa and one in Sonoma, opened under the Ohm name within a month of one another in October.  

The company worked with Richard Von Saal of Vonsaal Design Build to reimagine both shops as something more “rock n’ roll with a touch of upcycled retro-futurism,” according to Ohm Coffee Co-Founder Jennifer Knight.

The new shop in Napa.

Von Saal helped set the tone in both new shops with Ohm’s bold red color, while artwork references local music history. A giant guitar headstock sculpture in one corner of the Napa shop is autographed by members of Jane’s Addiction, The Black Keys and other artists who performed at first Bottlerock music festival in Napa Valley.

Tabletops in Napa are shaped like guitar picks, while the Sonoma shop features the hood of a 1957 Morris Minor mounted on the wall. Von Saal also worked with Ohm on its roastery cupping lab, finished last year, where a full wall mural shows the inside of a 1979 Fender Vibrolux guitar amp.

The Ohm cupping lab.

Beyond the obvious Ohm energy, the new cafes generally maintain the physical spaces for work flow and customer flow established by Monday. 

“We wanted to open right away so we didn’t opt for much build out,” Knight told Daily Coffee News. “We kept the general layout of the existing cafes, for now.”

Ohm Coffee Roasters Co-Founder and Roaster Derek Bromley was previously a sommelier in New York City, where he started as a brand manager and moved on to various senior management roles in the wine business.

These days, outside of his coffee day-job, Bromley plays lead guitar for the rock band Mama Said. Knight, Bromley’s wife, is one of two lead singers in the band, which is currently recording its second album with Los Angeles-based Jimmy McGorman, an acclaimed producer and touring member of the Goo Goo Dolls.

Ohm Coffee Roasters Co-Founder and Roaster Derek Bromley at the company’s roastery.

While the sensory skills developed over Bromley’s wine career remain central to what Ohm does, it’s the couple’s shared passion for rock music that informs the branding and marketing. 

“I get to have some fun with the branding and the blending and get to be both a coffee nerd and guitar nerd at the same time,” Bromley told DCN. “Each of my blends attempts to capture the sonic personality of a different guitar amplifier, in a cup.

For example, Ohm’s “Full Stack” blend — which marries an Ethiopian coffee, an Indonesian coffee and a Papua New Guinea coffee — is explicitly intense, “just like a vintage Marshall stack cranked to 11,” Bromley said. Conversely, the “Tweed Blend” — with coffees from Rwanda and Guatemala — is intended to be more nuanced, “with a personality waiting to be revealed to the player.”

Bromley launched Ohm Coffee Roasters in 2016 after a year of coffee studies, training and research. Initially using the services of a co-roasting facility to roast for a mobile truck, the company moved into a 1,800-square-foot roasting facility in Napa’s Rail Arts District last year. 

Roasting occurs on two Loring machines, one S35 Kestrel and an early model S15 Falcon. The roastery occasionally opens to the public for classes and tastings. 

In coffee, Bromley has perceived a chasm between the old-school, dark, smoky style of roasting and more contemporary light roast approaches. 

“You don’t see that stark contrast with wine. There is a seemingly infinite spectrum of flavor profiles within the world of, say, Chardonnay,” said Bromley. “You don’t have to choose between a lean, crisp Chablis or a 100% new oak, full malo, high-alcohol butter bomb. There is so much variety between those extremes that no matter where your personal tastes lie, there is likely some combination of region and winemaking style that will appeal to your palate. I thought to myself, ‘why should coffee be any different?'”

Therefore, Ohm’s roasts attempt to find a groove in which fruitiness, acidity, sweetness, roastiness and textures all work in harmony. 

Said Bromley, “I think of my coffees more like Napa Valley Cabernet or Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir: Sourced from exceptional quality ingredients, but much more readily appreciated by someone who doesn’t have a professionally trained palate.”

Ohm Coffee Roasters is located at 1412 Second Street in Napa and 117 E. Napa Street in Sonoma. Tell DCN’s editors about your new coffee shop or roastery here. 

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