Spokane has a lot of coffee options.

This can be a good thing (lots to pick from) and a bad thing (not sure where to go).

But it means finding the best coffee in Spokane can be difficult.

As a Spokane native and a specialty coffee connoisseur, I have high standards on how I like my coffee.

I also have strong opinions on how coffee should be roasted and served.

With all of that in mind, here are a few places that I like to frequent (when I’m not going to our place of course!) when I’m looking for the best coffee in Spokane.

Hatch Beaker & Burr

This is a great specialty coffee spot downtown in the Saranac Commons.

They serve great coffee from roasters outside the local area, bringing in different flavors and roasters than many might be accustomed to.

They craft their drinks with care and detail.

When people ask for a good place in Spokane, this is one of the few I recommend.

The only downside is the parking, but that’s not their fault, being downtown.

That aside, I recommend checking these folks out.

Derailer Coffee

Derailer is a coffee stand in the United Building in the Hillyard district. They are another great local spot run by a couple of guys that love coffee.

On top of that, they use a rebuilt lever action espresso machine which makes their coffee taste unique, harkening back to that classic Italian flavor.

They also craft high-quality, cocktail-style coffee and tea drinks, and are a hidden gem on the northside.

So if you’re in those parts, I would definitely check them out.

Cedar Coffee

Cedar Coffee is a great spot just on the northside of the Spokane River.

Their coffee style is different from ours, so don’t expect Nordic-style roasts, but the owner and staff do a great job of supplying a nice place to meet friends and coworkers for some locally roasted coffee.

Revel 77 Coffee – What Makes Us Different

Even though I love all 3 of these places, and I know and respect the owners of all of them, in our attempt to make the best coffee we can in Spokane, we have taken a different road when it comes to our coffee.

It’s called Nordic style Specialty Coffee.

The Nordic (or Scandinavian) approach to coffee is different in its roast profile and what beans it uses.

As I’ve discussed in other posts, when you specialty coffee in Europe, you quickly discover that it’s quite different from American Specialty coffee.

It’s much lighter in its roast, yet very flavorful and balanced.

It isn’t a sour, grassy mess. It’s fruity and floral, yet chocolatey and smooth.

It took us quite some time to figure out why their coffee was so different, and it became apparent that it was the quality of their unroasted, green coffee beans.

They are on a different level.  

For whatever reasons, and I speculate as to those in other posts, we get lower quality beans in the United States.

And the only way to get any flavor out of them is to roast darker.

So even many “specialty” shops and beans in the United States roast their beans darker than anything you would find in northern Europe (or other parts of the world).  

It is possible to find those higher quality beans here, but it takes a lot of work. And many American roasters don’t even know there’s a difference.

Plus, when an American supplier says their beans are specialty, they often lack any distinct flavor and fall well short of the quality they have in Europe.

I’ve sampled a lot of “specialty” beans from US importers, only to be woefully disappointed when compared to what you can find in Europe.

As an anecdote to this, in our efforts to source beans from Europe, we contacted a sales rep for Nordic Approach (a big, high quality supplier in Europe) to see if we could get their beans in the US.

The rep told us they had shut down their US operations, and that part of the reason they moved to Europe (they were from the US originally) was because they got such better beans.

That’s quite the reason to hop across the pond!

And says something about their coffee (and/or the rep, lol).

All of that to say, we have worked very hard to emulate the Nordic Style of coffee both in bean source and roast profile.

It is still more difficult to find those beans in the US, but we’ve located a few diamonds in the rough.

Hopefully, as more people are exposed to it, demand will grow and they will become easier to obtain in the US.

That being said, besides our shop, Revel 77, Hatch, Derailer, and Cedar are great spots when looking for the best coffee in Spokane, and I hope you enjoy them too.

Happy sipping,

Sean Edwards

Owner/Head Roaster