Are these guys full of beans, or what? At artsy new coffee joint Extraction Lab, on Brooklyn’s Sunset Park/Industry City waterfront, a 12-ounce cup of brew set me back $14.75.
That’s the priciest cuppa joe in town, except for an $18 number they expect to offer in the next few weeks.
A Starbucks “tall” (also 12-ounces) goes for $2.11. Extraction Lab’s “Jeremy Zhang Gesha,” from Panamanian beans grown on plants transplanted from Ethiopia, was better. (Mr. Zhang is a renowned, China-born barista who supervised production at an estate in Panama.)
But was it $12.64 better?
I know my way around coffee — I’ve enjoyed marvelous Kenyan coffee in the Nairobi highlands before it lost its mojo in the passage to America, and I’ve tried funky Seattle brews meant to show up Starbucks.
Extraction Lab’s Gesha — a “varietal” strain of prized, high-altitude, Ethiopian Arabica coffee — might be the best I’ve tasted. It’s a powerful drink without a hint of the bitter, burnt complexion common to fancypants brands sold all over town.
It needed no milk or sweeteners. I tasted earth, wine and grain. At least I think I did: Coffee impressions are more subjective and fleeting than they are for vino.
Extraction Lab brews coffee in a device called a Steampunk. Temperature-controlled water is showered over the coffee, which is then stirred up by steam pulses and “extracted” by a steam-created vacuum.
“I’m messing with the agitation,” friendly barista Cory Bogos said of the spa-like spectacle, which he controlled using a iPad-like device.
Extraction Lab won’t extract your last dime unless you want it to.
But if you schlep on the D train to a remote industrial block where you’ll never likely return, you should go for the bank-buster. And great little pastries will sweeten the pinch.