Hardly into its second year as a roaster in the city where locals roast their own green beans, Seattle’s Slate Coffee Roasters has made its mark amongst the masses. With high-quality coffee from varying countries and continents “in order to highlight the diversity inherent in coffee,” Slate’s mantra is proudly printed on their website and titled as “exposure roasting.” According to their site, the concept is to roast the beans just enough to showcase the individual characteristics of each seed and its terroir. Naturally a lighter roast based on this philosophy, the folks at Slate believe this allows the coffee to be more distinguishable amongst their peers, and thus paying tribute to the producers and growers behind those specific beans.
Beyond the meta, reflective thought process, Slate is also damn good coffee. Try their espresso of the day—typically Ethiopoian—in the Deconstructed Coffee, a breakdown of your daily latte that has your espresso (mung bean, grapefruit, earth, floral notes and underlying herbaceous tones for my visit) in one miniature tasting stem, your non-homogenized local steamed milk (about as opulent as milk could ever be from Pure Éire Dairy in Othello, Wash.) in another and the combination of the two in the third glass. Taste them in an arbitrary order, taste them left to right, just taste them separately to get the full effect of what the components of your latte bring to the glass when they are expertly roasted and blended together.
Follow on Facebook: Slate Coffee Roasters
Track on Twitter: @slatecoffee
