Written by Jordan Michelman.
Oakland is not San Francisco, Orange County is not Los Angeles, Jersey ain’t New York City,
and Vancouver isn’t Portland. On this last account, a point of order: the city of Vancouver,
Washington sits directly across the mighty Columbia River from Portland, Oregon, and the
two cities share an airport, a freeway, and a drizzly climate. Residents of the two cities often
cross back and forth for work or play, and by and large, they support the same professional
sporting franchises (the Blazers, the Timbers). Yet there is a distinct identity between the two
conurbations, and you can see one dramatic example of this in the proudly local, proudly
self-identified Vancouver specialty coffee scene.
There is so much great coffee in Vancouver, WA, right now! Roasters and espresso bars, big
of my favorites is a place called Brewed, which feels like a specifically Vancouver iteration of the
modern public house. Here, you’ll find a little bit of everything: a cafe food menu, thoughtful and
delicious, with a focus on sandwiches and salads; a rotating set of beer taps, serving locally
brewed craft beer; and delicious coffee, roasted in-house by founder Kody Baker, and served on
a custom appointed La Marzocco three-group Linea. Best of all, at least as far as I’m
concerned, is the cafe’s hours—they’re serving food, beer, and yes, a tasty espresso shot, all
the way up to 9 pm on the weekends. As a committed lover of coffee after dark, this is exactly
what I’m looking for in a cafe-bar hybrid.
If I were going to send you to just one place in the ‘Couv that feels most like itself, it would be
here, to Brewed in downtown Vancouver. I chatted with Cody Baker to learn a little more.
Hi Kody—thanks so much for talking with me. You’ve had Brewed open since 2012; talk to me about how the concept has grown and changed in that time and how you’ve refined your all-day, all-night beer-and-coffee experience.
Honestly, the concept is the same as when we opened. I was in college when I started this place,
right before graduation, when we signed the lease, and the concept was completely built out of my own
experiences in college and what I’d want to go do and see as a customer. I was living up in Olympia
then and going to Oly Coffee a lot, and also going to Coava in Portland a lot too—and then after having
coffee, we’d go have a beer. And so this place was just this idea of saying, “Oh, I’ll have this at the same
time, and with a bit of food, too”—that’s the idea. To me, in my personal life, coffee and beer kind of go
hand in hand. Not necessarily at the same time, but I can be sitting there with a coffee or a conversation, and it evolves into getting a beer.
We have definitely evolved a few things since we opened. The food menu has probably changed and
evolved the most. But the concept of doing in-house roasting and specialty coffees mixed with rotating
taps of local beers and a food menu, that concept has stayed the same since opening day.
Talk to me more about your approach to roasting.
When we first opened up, we had the roaster delivered right into the cafe, but when we came to have
inspections for permits, there was a lot of red tape. We’re in a historic building, and getting all the
permits right for the venting and whatnot wasn’t very easy to do. So, we built
out a home roaster. And I’ve been roasting there ever since.
Today, I have a US Roaster Corp 3 kilo roaster, and I roast so much every week just because of how
much we’ve grown. Right now, we’re in the process of deciding what to upgrade to, and when we get a
larger roaster, we want to open a small retail space for it. That’ll be our second location, and very
different from the original.
We are surrounded by great roasters here in Vancouver and across the Pacific Northwest. I’m not
oblivious to that, but I’m also very confident in my roasting skills and coffee sourcing. Buy really good
coffee from great farms, and don’t fuck it up. You have to start with great coffee and then work to get the best out of it.
You do so much at Brewed—how much does coffee play into that? Are people really drinking coffee late at night?
It’s actually the number one thing we do. It’s the base for the whole concept to build around. We’re open
until 9 pm every night, and the espresso machine is on right up until close. I think people assume that at
night, we focus on alcohol, but actually, one of our most talented baristas (he happens to be my cousin) is working those evening shifts, and he is a phenomenal barista. We take coffee at night really seriously,
and I think when people come in at night, they’re blown away by the quality of coffee service.
Tell me a little bit more about what you have going on behind the bar at Brewed.
Right now, we have a custom three-group Linea—we have it powder-coated blue to switch it up a little
bit—and we also have a three-group GB5 that’s from the original production runs of GB5—it’s around
number 1000 on the production sequence. Black Rabbit completely redid the innards and guts of the GB5 for us. We’re having that powder coated now, and then we’ll decide which one is in the shop and which one will be in a cart for future events and different things. I’ve realized in this industry that anything can happen at any time, so it’s nice to have a backup.
We run Mahlkonig EK43 for drip and pour over, and that’s also what we use to grind whole bean coffee
for people on request. We have a Mhakkonig K30 Twin for single origin and decaf, and then we run an
Anfim for our everyday Trinity Blend espresso for lattes, mochas, pretty much anything milk-based
except cortados, which we do with a single origin.
For folks reading this that are unfamiliar with Vancouver, what do you really recommend people
should check out? What’s on your must-visit list?
You gotta check out the waterfront, and you gotta go check out Esther Short Park, and then you have to
check out the area from Officer’s Row down to the Airport Museum and Fort Vancouver—the history
behind it and the beauty there is just absolutely phenomenal. It was the first commercial airport and Fort
Vancouver’s history is incredible. The beauty of those old buildings and houses, mixed with the green
and trees around it, is so epic—and you can’t get it in many other places, especially on the West Coast.
There are so many shops here, too. Vancouver is great for beer and great for coffee. Brothers Cascadia
and Lewit Brewing are good to start; they’re both downtown and they make great beers, are run by
great people, and have a really great atmosphere. If you’re stoked on coffee, definitely come see us, but
I’m also always recommending Compass Coffee, and I think Relevant is doing really cool shit uptown,
too. I feel like the community of coffee should be open to one another, and having more options around
helps build a place people want to come to. It makes it better for everyone, and that sense of community
is really something we have to offer here in Vancouver.
