Location: Various in Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Tokyo Welcome back my caffeine addicted friends! The next couple of posts will be during my adventures when I was living in Santa Cruz for school. This was a period where I recently stopped working at Starbucks and started heading into third wave coffee shops. If you don't know what third wave coffee is, it's basically the movement to create high quality coffee and consider coffee as an artisan food. Third wave coffee shop owners want to treat their coffee similar to how wine connoisseurs treat their wine. Verve happened to be the first stop on my adventure because they had something I have always been wanting to try at the time: Cold Brew. I knew LA had shops that had cold brew as well, but I was never able to get around to try it since I had always been working. Up north, I had more freedom to explore and experience different coffee shops that were abundant throughout Santa Cruz county. Pictured above is their Downtown location which is on Pacific and their third store to open. Verve is a company founded and based in Santa Cruz where they roast and package their fair trade beans. There are currently four shops open in Santa Cruz and the dominant chain throughout the county. Santa Cruz has a heavy coffee culture which goes to show how good of a quality their stuff is since the company was only founded in 2011 and rapidly expanded in a short amount of time. All of the locations I went to are very hip and modern with lots of exposed wood (which I love). With Santa Cruz tending to be a sunny city, all of their locations have large windows to allow the natural light to come in and gives you a very beachy feel. Their baristas are excellent at their craft, friendly, and experts at describing their products. There have been times when I went in and heard some ask about what makes the difference between each bean they use in their pour overs or difference between a macchiato and an affogato. They would then explain in an energetic and knowledgeable manner to the customer. You would always feel welcome whenever you visited to any of the locations, but they do get packed on the weekends as it is a popular spot to catch up with friends and family. The location pictured on the left is their newest store in Santa Cruz that just opened in the spring of 2016 which is across the street from many breweries and wineries as well as a few block from the beach. Since moving back home, I learned that they opened three locations in LA back in 2015, one location in Tokyo in April of 2016, and now one in San Francisco that just recently opened literally earlier this week. Verve is rapidly expanding and rightfully so. So I had only one picture of the many drinks I got here but I will review all the drinks I tasted. The one pictured was one of the beans they had listed for the day. Whenever you order your coffee, the default way is a pour over. It may take longer than other pour overs but that's because they are setting up everything for you to enjoy it. As you can see above, they don't give you the coffee in a mug, but rather a cup. This makes it easier for you to perform a "cupping" which basically is the process for you to take in the smell of the coffee and sip it to identify all the notes and characteristics of the bean you chose. Along with your coffee, they give you a little card giving you descriptions of their notes, where they're grown, and what pairs well with it. This is something that I was really appreciative of because Verve is very open and willing to educate people who may just be entering into the world of specialty coffee without sounding too arrogant or condescending. The next drink to review is of course the cold brew. This drink is so widely popular in Santa Cruz that even the Starbucks in the area had cold brew on their menu even before it became company wide. Even though this was the first cold brew I tried, I can confidently say that it is still one of the best I've had in retrospect. They are just able to keep in tact all of the notes of their beans in their cold brew without diluting it with water and ice. Their drink is always consistent and never varied from location to location. I don't know what they did, but I still sometimes wish I can grab a cold brew from them as effortlessly as I was able to when I lived near one. The last drink to review is their cappuccino. There were sometimes where I wasn't feeling a cold brew (it got really cold and wet during the winter) so I would opt out to order a capp. Their capps are solid and tasted the same whenever I ordered it no matter which barista I got it from. It wasn't mind-blowing good but it was great regardless. That's all that can come to mind when I try to describe the drink. It's just solid and would never disappoint you. There you have it folks. Little insight of my beginnings of entering the world of third wave coffee all thanks to Verve Coffee Roasters. What they have going on there is really special and what they are doing to train their baristas to be consistent despite the locations you go to is impressive as hell. If you live near one, I suggest you stop by and try one of their drinks while talking to one of the baristas (if they aren't busy) because it'll be a unique experience. Once you make a visit, you will easily be able to tell why they are able to expand so quickly in such a short amount of time. I mean they opened SIX new locations in a period of two years. That's pretty damn impressive and shows you that they can fight with the behemoths like Blue Bottle.
Atmosphere and Decor: 10/10 Coffee: 9/10 Recommend: Pour Over
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Coffee SenpaiJust an Otaku who also loves his coffee. Grab some coffee and watch anime with me ٩(θ‿θ)۶ Blog is currently on hold. Sorry for the inconvenience ._.
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