🟧 Light roast vs. dark roast
Reviewing two local coffee roasters.
Kyle Chayka: One of the delights of a city is seeing what its local coffee roasters have to offer. Like microbreweries, they are geographically specific, even though their products ultimately come from international supply chains. In moving to DC, one of my great discoveries has been Small Planes coffee, a “specialty roasting company” (boutique!) based in the District. I might have first had it at Wydown, one of the better DC cafes, but I really got to know the roaster at my local Streets Market, DC’s version of Brooklyn’s Korean grocers. (Behind any cup of coffee is a whole local retail ecosystem.) Every few weeks I would buy another bag, with its minimalist, brightly colored label, appended with specific but accurate tasting notes. I knew I was addicted one day when I got upset that Streets was out of stock.
Small Planes excels at lighter-roast coffee; my favorites are any of their Ethiopian beans but I think they interpret any region’s coffee very well. I’d compare them favorably to Ceremony, which used to be my favorite roaster, before they seemed to fall off over the last few years. (Is there any gossip on that, did they lean too hard into instant coffee?) Both are part of the overall vogue for Nordic roasting styles. It’s difficult to describe a roaster’s aesthetic, but here is my attempt at playing coffee sommelier: Small Planes has an air of lightness and freshness, really embracing the sweet, fruity, and tea-like aspects of a bean. Some people dislike that; they want the bitter, muddy, chocolate. But I like coffee that tastes more like a Sourpatch Kid, which Small Planes absolutely delivers.
Maybe I’m just a minimalist through and through. Light roasts offer a more direct experience of the bean. I feel like they’re less cooked, more raw. They also contain a bit more caffeine, which isn’t the only thing I’m looking for, but it certainly helps on tough mornings. More days than not, I grind some Small Planes, put the grounds in a Bialetti moka pot, and then cut the resulting stovetop espresso with some more hot water, like a tiny Americano or the coffee equivalent of those gin & tonics where the tonic comes on the side. I’m pretty precious about coffee, but you’re never going to catch me weighing the beans.
Nate Gallant: I am of the volume school of coffee. I would prefer, if possible, to embrace the maximalism of coffee's import in Renaissance Europe. To drink thirty-six muddy espressos a day, yelling to a friend over the angry froth and steam of a giant copper octopus. For this reason, I am deeply partisan to a dark roast, with less caffeine, and to most, a less drinkable, bitter taste. Personally, I prefer the diesel fuel. The mud. The "good bean juice taste like chocolate make me go fast." The Platonic version of this, for me, is Café Bustelo, which is the most accessible and strongest of the grocery store variety. But as a new resident of the District of Columbia, I wanted the particular, intimate connection of yoking my caffeine addiction to a local brick-and-mortar roastery. As a result I have become very committed to Lost Sock Roasters, who have, by my admittedly unstudied palate, the best and most accessible local dark roast in town.
Kyle graciously recommended a few local coffee brands when I first moved to the capitol. However it took a twist of fate to make such an extreme, important, and relatively arbitrary partisan decision, given the overstock of bougie coffee in the age of the boutique internet. One day, while visiting my favorite cidery in town, the very unique, Basque-style Ānxō, and their bar/pizzeria in Brightwood, I noticed that they were also serving as a kind of pop-up for Lost Sock. I was enthused by this Pizza Hut-KFC-Taco Bell of local brands, and immediately bought their "Western House Blend," which veers towards a darker roast, and was instantly and deeply hooked.
To me, coffee does not need to be excellent, though their house blend is very good — very freshly roasted and sold. I like that they have a house brand of beans which is quite tasty, alongside other specialty batches from smaller growers for a special occasion or a thank-you-for-hosting-me gift, or for the true coffee snob. I can order a five-pound bag of their house blend, which in bulk saves the cost of one 16-oz bag of beans. Their coffee has thus unburdened me of a fruitless search for a truly standout espresso in the US, especially in cities overrun by millions of dumb and soulless coffee shops, all making the same pretty good but not great $7 latte. I am equally disinterested in the culture of the pour-over, which has the same effect on me as a light roast, sending me into a new dimension of space-time, a chemical state of anxiety moving faster that any synapse in my brain can fire, and giving me the most terrifying and vivid dreams I have ever experienced, if I can sleep at all.
For what it's worth, Lost Sock’s brick-and-mortar also has solid WFH-millennial-coffee-shop credentials. Their main physical location in Takoma Park, MD, where I am acting the part and currently writing, is a very nice place to work or have a coffee with a friend, though short on workable table space. I have been enough to see that it appears a neighborhood mainstay, catering to several different rounds of regulars throughout the day. Their merch is fun and well designed, and you can even buy a single, presumably lost, sock. The aesthetic is earthy, reflecting the light mud of their house roast with darkish-wood tones, green and cedar furniture, and plenty of brick, though never tilting full post-industrial loft. Down to earth enough, but the requisite caffeine for liftoff.