NOMAD COFFEE LAB & SHOP, PASSATGE DE SERT 12, 08003 BARCELONA

Rating: Third Wave coffee shop in Barcelona, Spain.

Of course after Satan’s Coffee I headed over just a few minutes away to Nømad Coffee’s Lab & Shop locale. This is probably the most lauded after café and roaster in Barcelona, so I had to see what the hype was about. The Passatge de Sert is a pain to locate as it’s very easily passed by. So after finding it, it was really worth the extra 2 minutes it took me.

This place, like the ‘Everday’ Nomad locale, has no internet Wi-Fi available, and this locale has no food nor pastries to offere. Neither does it serve sugar with any of its coffee. Bravo, excellent, and it takes a lot of balls to try to pull of a coffee-only locale. The barista that was serving my espresso, who gave his name as Marc, was very open to discussing coffee and was very polite. Of course at first he thought I knew absolutely nothing about coffee, even after I told him I am from California and have had third wave coffee for years. Yeah, the snobbish attitude of ‘coffee hiptsers’ is felt here as well, and while Marc wasn’t outright snobbish, you could indeed tell he was tired of giving out the same lines to the hundreds of tourists that come in week-in and week out. When I was waiting for him to prepare my espresso, he had to explain to a couple from Venezuela that there is no sugar served here and that this coffee is actually sweet, and not bitter. But that’s what you get living in a tourist city like Barcelona… Either way, he was very polite in explaining the coffee and his brewing of the espresso. And while he was talking, he was trying to hone in a new coffee with a colleague of his. As you can see from the menu they offered the following:

Espresso, Cold brew, iced latte, Nitro, and cold drip. Also filter, kalita, V60 and Chemex. Five different in-house roasted coffee was available for consumption. The espresso was limited to the three that you can see: Costa Rica Cipres, Costa Rica Candelilla, and Kenya Kugumoini. I had the chance to try the Everday Nomad locale with a different espresso, and then got to come back to the Lab & Shop for some nitro and normal cold brew. This will be a long review, but worthwhile. When I went in it was packed with people, and as soon as I left, somebody took my spot immediately.

So for my first experience here I decided to go for the Costa Rican Candelilla, and this is how it was served:

Presentation: Yup, no saucer, no spoon. The small monolocale has green marble slabs as ‘plates’ and the presentation was sleek, simple and nice. The cup was large as is the custom in locales outside Italy.

Temperature of Cup: It was excellent. Warm, not cold, and simply just right.

Quantity: Yeah, another long espresso in my book. But this shot was weighted, and the barista told me it was at 34g so right in the upper range of the 30-34g target. Whatever, it was great.

Temperature: Also very nice, quite on the lower end of the temperature scale, not above 90C.

Volume/Consistency: It was slick, elastic, smoothly oily, yet creamy and juicy. It coated my mouth every so gently and gave me the sensation of having an almost alcoholic drink in the refreshing sense it created in my mouth.

Crema: Very uniform, only some slight bubbles to the outer perimeter. Yellow, almost orange in color, super uniform.

Odor: Very floral, very bright, I felt almost as if I got the wrong coffee served as I couldn’t sense in the smell the ‘brown sugar and chocolate’ that was advertised in the description on the wall…

Taste: It was very fruity, but also very acidic up front. Too acidic at first. But then it opened up to a vibrant, punchy cup of what I tasted as molasses, but here in Barcelona they have no idea what that is so.. maybe that’s why its not in their description.

Overall: Simply a great espresso, so good that I forgot to take a photo of the empty cup, as I was busy simply enjoying the ambience of people talking coffee and enjoying these great brews. This espresso was comparable, if not just as good as the Right Side Coffee roasted Satan’s espresso I had only 30 minutes before. It was a bit too acidic for me, and not as balanced as the former espresso. But definitely very good, and a long ways away in quality from the darker, sharper coffees we have in Rome.

The setup: They were using of course, what else than a humming La Marzocco Strada model.

The grinders were massive Malhkönings, with one for drip as you can see on the far left of these:

And the Candelilla was roasted a good good 9 days before I had it (early August).

I then happened to return to this place and try the nitro. They had a Burundi Butihinda cold brew that they served bottled or nitro, or simply by the cup. I tried the nitro for the hell of it, and see below:

It was served with water, and a napkin. The cup was large, and very nicely presented.

It was very smooth, thick to the feel as the froth from the nitro made a nice contrast to the cold coffee. The best part of it was that there was no acidity at all, no astringency, simply smooth balanced coffee flavor.

I then went for the kill with a cold brewed bottle of the same coffee.

Funny enough, this was better. It was richer, more voluminous, and not heavy. It was a real mouthful and yet extremely light as cold brewed coffee is. I didn’t taste much of the citrus like notes, but rather, a warm honey like peppery-cinnamon like taste. It was very delicate and mild. Very nice.

On my second time to Barcelona I got to taste the coffee being brewed at the ‘Nomad Everday’ locale.

It is a larger locale than the Lab & Shop, and different, more ‘practical oriented’ in terms of servings, see the menu below:

They also had some croissants and the like to eat.

I had the Costa Rica Tarrazu El Cipres Estate.

The presentation was different, here we get a saucer and no spoon again. As no sugar is to be found on the premises.

In terms of taste, it was brighter, fruitier than the first espresso I had.

But again, a lot more acidic.

It was only slightly oily, and could feel raspberries, and darker scents of chocolate in it. It was very nice, but overall not as well executed as in the Lab & Shop.

Overall, very decent offering, and really lots of coffee types being turned over every week in this locale. Definitely worth stopping by.

Here are some pictures from the Everyday Nomad cafe:

I hopefully will be able to return when it’s not August, as most cafes were closed for the month. I wanted very badly to pass by the True Artisan Café but it was totally closed… And another café, the Fab Café had closed and a new, different operation was running in it (I’ll review that tomorrow).

Here some general photos from the Nomad Lab & Shop locale: