Burnside Coffee Boldly Goes Cold in Downtown Sacramento

Inside the new Burnside Coffee shop in downtown Sacramento. All images courtesy of Burnside Coffee.

The entry hatch is wide open for customers at the retro-futuristic first cafe from Burnside Coffee in downtown Sacramento, California.

Inside, the coffee purveyor is offering an almost other-worldly coffee experience, with shots of espresso that are shaken and chilled, much like a space ship escaping the earth’s atmosphere.

Aviator lounge chairs plated with aircraft-like metal beckon guests to sit back, while a tree bearing glass-enclosed luminescent foliage rises over a working 1950s-era Philco TV. Within the otherwise low-key hangout, the imaginative time-and-space-travel vibe is designed to open customers’ minds to coffees of unique and unexpected character.

No fewer than 20 coffees form the intricate constellation that is Burnside’s multiroaster menu, with the majority having been subjected to experimental post-harvest treatments such as “thermal shock anaerobic fermentation,” fruity co-ferments, special yeast inoculations, barrel-aging and more.

All coffees are dosed and vacuum-sealed, with many of the offerings no longer available anywhere else on earth.

“What I like to do is vacuum seal it, put it in the freezer, wait for it to get wiped from existence, and then I’ll bring it out when it feels right,” Burnside Coffee Founder Bob Lytle told Daily Coffee News. “The whole idea while we were running our coffee cart and gearing up for our brick and mortar was that I would just buy fun coffees and set them off to the side, so that when we opened, not only do we have a massive collection of interesting coffee, but also we would be the only people most likely in the world who would have them.”

Most of the 25 coffees on the current menu date back to 2023, while some in the freezer go back even farther. For Lytle, the growing library of rare and envelope-pushing coffees is the stuff of personal obsession.

“I really have to control myself. I’m at a point now where whenever I see something super interesting, like a banana wine yeast co-ferment from Moonwake or a really crazy barrel-aged from House of Funk in Canada, I just have to have it,” said Lytle, who maintains numerous freezers off-site. “Honestly, it’s hard to keep [the menu] at 20.”

At Burnside, beans ground in a Bentwood Vertical 63 grinder and extracted inside a 2-group Mavam counter-mounted espresso system are added to cocktail shakers, either purely with ice or with additional ingredients before cascading over large house-frozen ice cubes in customers’ cups.

The shop also offers siphon brews for longer and higher-ratio extractions, which are served either hot or flash-chilled to approximately 34°F.

“In all the experiments that I’ve run, there’s just something special about brewing hot and then instantly chilling it,” said Lytle, who plans to eventually add a Fetco batch brewer for the grab-and-go morning crowd. The shop also offers traditional cold brew and other canned RTD drinks.

Infused maple syrups and flavored cold foams are made in house with fresh ingredients. The seed-oil-free business is developing its own coconut-based non-dairy milk option, while all dairy at Burnside is A2-type cow’s milk.

The shop features an on-site kitchen, where freshness and locality drive a menu with hot egg and meat dishes, plus sandwiches.

Prior to launching a coffee business, Lytle worked in the parallel dimension of medical marijuana, where he focused on commercial cultivation and extraction methods, as well as branding, marketing and packaging.

“Honestly it’s been very similar to what I was doing before,” said Lytle. “It’s just a different medium, but pretty much exactly the same.”

One key difference between the two retail industries, according to Lytle, is that dispensaries always offered a wide range of options for immediate consumption, while specialty coffee shops tend to only offer a few at the bar and the rest as whole beans for customers to prepare at home.

Each pre-dosed coffee among the wide selection at Burnside is labeled with the Bentwood grinder’s settings, speeding up service.

The lineup also includes decaf and barrel-aged coffees, which will soon help contribute to menus of evening and late-night drinks as the coffee shop expands its hours.

Mylo the golden doodle, who serves as the shop’s greeter and mascot, is a certified therapy dog.

“We really try to toe the line between cocktail and coffee, so the idea is to press on that cocktail side a little bit more in the evening hours, coming up with very fun, zero-proof cocktails all based around coffee,” said Lytle. “The idea of having a really cool spot to go hang out late at night and enjoy a caffeine-free drink, that’s somewhere that I would personally go all the time.”

[Editor’s note: This story has been updated. The original version incorrectly named owner Bob Lytle as Ben Lytle.]

Burnside Coffee is located at 902 K St. in Sacramento. Comments? Questions? News to share? Contact DCN’s editors here. For all the latest coffee industry news, subscribe to the DCN newsletter.