I went to meet a friend and colleague recently at a cool, new local coffee shop.
She was parked in the back of the place when I arrived, ensconced amid thrifty furniture. I put my stuff down and was about to go order when she held up her drink, a mystery wrapped in a nondescript recycled paper cup.
“I got this beet thing,” she said. “It’s really good!”
“Beet coffee?” I said.
I actually like beets. And in a Forrest Gumpian way (roasted beets, beet salad, beet juice, beet kombucha, borscht …).
“I don’t think there’s coffee in it,” she said. “Try it.”
I did. And it was nice. Warm, creamy, a hit of ginger. But sweet.
Brown sugar shaken espresso, iced, and its hot alter-ego, the brown sugar latte at Qreate Coffee. (Photo Courtesy Quay Hu/@AroundQ)
“It’s good,” I said. “But it’s definitely got sugar.”
“Honey,” she said.
Potato, po-tah-to. I didn’t say it, but I thought it.
I don’t want dessert for breakfast.
The practice of the 7 a.m. frappuccino perplexes me, but the more I visit coffee shops the more in the minority I feel.
Lineage Coffee Roasting inside the East End Market. (Willie J. Allen Jr./Orlando Sentinel)
Qreate Coffee + Studio owner/founder Quay Hu assures me that I am not, but even so, both his locations — in Mills 50 and Creative Village — sell more “craft coffee beverages” than the stuff I drink.
In fact, Qreate doesn’t even do “drip” coffee anymore.
Tops for grab-and-go situations and large gatherings, “drip” is the present-day term for what you’d simply order as “coffee” in a Waffle House or self-pour from an urn at a Wawa.
They don’t even do “pour-overs,” which is the fancier version of drip, where the barista brews a single cup by hand.
Joe Burbank / Orlando Sentinel
Pour-over coffee at Lineage Coffee Roasting in the Mills 50 district. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
“That’s what you’re looking for if you want to taste the bean and how its roasted, with no sugar unless you add it yourself,” Hu explains.
Back when Qreate first opened it had six or seven single-origin coffees for pour-overs.
“But it just wasn’t popular. We were making maybe 10 a month.”
At Qreate the closest thing to plain, old coffee is an Americano, made by pouring hot water into one or two shots of espresso. In some places you fix it yourself, but at Qreate it’s full service. They’ll add the milk and/or sugar to order.
There’s even something called an Aerocano, which takes the Americano next-level by steaming it.
Ask Amy Drew: These are a few of my favorite things
“This adds air into the mixture and it gets smoother and creamier and a little bit thicker,” he explains.
It’s 10:29 p.m. as I type this and I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. It sounds like heaven.
Not too many places do pour-overs, says Hu, noting that downtown’s Deeply Cafe and Bottle Shop, a venue he cites as one of his favorites (and one with a nicely curated natural wine selection) among those that do.
So, too, does Lineage Coffee Roasting, in many of the city’s caffeindish minds, the O.G. of local coffee roasting — which quite a few shops around town do these days.
Lineage debuted inside East End Market in 2013 and although it has grown into three locations — adding shops in Mills 50 and at the University of Central Florida — and supplies wholesale product to many of the city’s culinary heavy hitters (the Lineage-based coffee service at The Foreigner remains one of the best cups I have ever had outside of my own kitchen), it still offers both drip and pour-overs.
“What people want when they go to cafes has shifted, but Lineage has bucked against that trend a little bit in that we try to remain pretty coffee pure,” says founder Jarrett Johnson.
Downtown the mother-daughter-owned Stemma Craft Coffee pairs its warm vibe with beautiful coffee sourced from their family hacienda in Nicaragua. (Amy Drew Thompson/Orlando Sentinel)
Lineage even balks on the current trend of co-fermenting (where freeze-dried berries and other things are comingled with beans in washing tanks, imparting wildly fruity notes) “because we are cocky purists, essentially,” Jarrett jokes.
“In my eyes … it’s no different in my mind than adding strawberry syrup to the coffee.”
They’ve always done seasonal coffee beverages with housemade syrups, he says, “but I’m seeing more people now coming in wanting almost a cocktail-like coffee experience versus just a pour-over black.”
Hu agrees.
Brown sugar shaken espresso, iced, at Qreate Coffee’s Creative Village Location. (Photo courtesy Quay Hu/@AroundQ)
“Cafes are in many cases like craft cocktail bars now and it’s been trending that way for a long time,” he says. “Seasonal flavors … and in our case, because we’re an Asian-influenced coffee shop, we find a lot of inspiration in boba and tea shops.”
The brown-sugar shaken espresso, one of Qreate’s most popular flavors for quite some time, was inspired by the brown sugar boba flavor.
I only heard of it about a week or so ago, when into my inbox came a study by Coffeeness, which analyzed Google Trends search interest to uncover the most popular festive drinks across the U.S., which cited it as “Florida’s favorite holiday beverage.”
I asked readers and followers on Facebook where I could find one. It took maybe 30 seconds for someone to say “Starbucks.” And a minute later, “Dunkin’.”
Aromatic Mufawar and Saudi-style coffees alongside za’atar bread and savory pastry at Haraz Coffee House in East Orlando. (Photo courtesy Lisa Wilk/TasteCookSip.com)
I am clearly not the specialty beverage demographic. But it is large. And largely young. And though it’s been widely reported that Gen Z drinks far less alcohol than those previous, it loves its tea and boba and coffee beverages — in some places hybrids of all three — quite fiercely.
“It’s crazy what social media has done for coffee houses,” says Michael Quigley, owner of Quigley Coffee Company up in Sanford. “Now you have Instagram matcha girls running around finding all the matcha places, I mean places that are just for matcha.”
Avo toast, pickled onions and a beverage at Easy Luck Coffee & Bodega. (Photo courtesy Lisa Wilk/TasteCookSip.com)
Hu says social media are trend drivers for sure and it’s mostly about aesthetics.
“Cold drinks look prettier,” he says. “You can do cool stuff with them and garnish them really nicely. The younger people see it on TikTok and they want it.”
Quigley does it all, including drip and pour-overs, but also green coffee extract energy drinks with fruit and herbs, and a drink called the Koda Brew, a brown butter cold brew with pistachio cold foam. Both are pretty sweet.
The affogato: a cool, caffeinated celebration of espresso
Cold foam is a hot new trend. Well, it’s cold, but you know what I mean.
I love the sound of so many of the coffee beverages, but for me, they hit best late night, in place of dessert. One exception, an iced, beautifully layered concoction from Haan Coffee in Mills 50 melded espresso with elderflower tonic. Garnished with a dehydrated lemon wheel, it was herbaceous. Cocktail-like. Refreshing.
Quite possibly my favorite-ever “craft coffee beverage,” Haan’s refreshing Endless Summer drinks like an herbaceous cocktail, a beautifully layered refresher of espresso and elderflower tonic. (Amy Drew Thompson/Orlando Sentinel)
But that morning after tasting “the beet thing,” and spying several cold foam options and a seasonal somethingorother with gingerbread in the name, I was about to seize up at the counter. Until I saw two words on the menu board that soothed me:
DRIP $3.50
Sold.
Christmas Coffee Curious?
‘Tis the season for catching up with friends we’ve missed throughout our busy year. The holidays are a time to slow down and meet up — often for coffee. Dozens of places have opened in recent years around the metro. I’ve hit a few, missed more. Every time I catch up another couple open. Below: A roster of some old, newish and new cafes. Whether you’re looking for cold brew or cappuccino, flat white or cold foam, or fancifully named crafty concoctions, you’ll find just about all at any of the below.
For the craft coffee curious …
Águila Coffee: 1215 N. Orange Avenue in Orlando; aguilacoffee.square.site
Blackbird Comics & Coffeehouse: 500 E, Horatio Avenue in Maitland, 321-316-4296; theblackbirdroost.com
Deeply Cafe and Bottle Shop: (located inside CIBER) 11 N. Magnolia Avenue in Orlando, deeplycafeandbottleshop.com
Dr. Drips Coffee Lounge: 1618 N. Orange Avenue in Orlando; instagram.com/dr.drip.coffee
Easy Luck Coffee & Bodega: 2425 E. South Street in Orlando; easyluckorlando.com
Framework Craft Coffee House: 1201 N. Mills Avenue in Orlando; frameworkcoffeehouse.com
Haan Coffee: 1235 E. Colonial Drive in Orlando, 407-906-5119; haancoffee.com
Haraz Coffee House: 1737 N. Alafaya Trail in Orlando, 407-203-5002 and (soft-open as of last week) 1561 Lee Road in Winter Park; harazcoffeehouse.com
Lineage Coffee Roasting (located inside East End Market): 3201 Corrine Drive in Orlando, 321-236-3316; lineageroasting.com
Mariam Coffee: 361 N. Rosalind Avenue in Orlando, 407-270-4613; mariamcoffee.com
Qreate Coffee + Studio: 1212 Woodward Street in Orlando, 407-601-1796 and 591 Chatham Avenue in Orlando, 407-286-4481; qreatecoffee.com
Quigley’s Coffee Company: 1730 Rinehart Road in Sanford,407-687-1915; quigleycoffeeco.com
Rosso Coffee Bar: 840 E, State Rd 434 in Longwood, 407-687-8128; rossocb.com
Stemma Craft Coffee: 328 N. Orange Avenue in Orlando, 407-440-3018; 407-440-3018; stemmacraftcoffee.com
Zayn & Co.: (trailer parks at Digress Wine) 1215 Edgewater Drive in Orlando, 407-333-0543; instagram.com/zayn.and.co