calling the shots
a guide to micro roasters + cozy cafes
Words by Jennifer Dorothy
Photos by Julie Rings
The Seattle region is famous for its coffee culture and Kitsap county is no exception. While cozy coffeehouses abound in the West Sound, these three local shops also source and roast their own beans. Each venture has its own unique story of risk-taking and creativity and all share a passion for serving high-quality, artisanal brews.
Caffe Cocina
Poulsbo
“Hey boss, why don’t you roast?” a young barista asked Eric Mahler, owner of Caffe Cocina. Mahler replied with a long-winded list of reasons why not but couldn’t shake the thought brewing in his head. At 4 a.m., he found himself Googling how to roast coffee. He then approached a roasting master and offered to work for free for two years as an apprentice. After telling him to take a hike, the master eventually acquiesced.
Thus Mahler began commuting to Seattle eight years ago to learn from the experts. The financial risks of roasting his own made him feel like throwing up. He had just quit a corporate job to experience the illustrious freedom of working with people of his choice: people who wanted to educate themselves on roasting.
“The coffee roasting process is a series of romantic intricacies that can be expressive, just like music,” says Mahler, a musician himself. “I approach coffee roasting and blending coffees in musical tones. It’s all just coffee until it’s not—until somebody does that one thing that says, ‘Oh wow, this is more.’”
He sees himself as an ally in the North Kitsap coffee micro-roasting scene, operating two locations in Poulsbo, the roastery and café on Finn Hill Road and a downtown café on Front Street, opened in 2023. “Our job is to be passionate, creative artists who are trying to crack the code of an ever-evolving and changing thing,” says Mahler, whose Seattle influences surface when asked to describe his business. “We try to bring that metropolitan flare—that sexiness, that creativity—back to the cafés.”
Over The Moon Roasters
Kingston
It was March of 2020 when the mother-daughter team that owns Over the Moon Coffee Roasters signed the lease on their Kingston storefront. Lee Maevin had just sold her house and moved into a trailer with no utilities. She and her mother Joanne Shumake assumed the shop would be bustling with business by April and the roaster (dormant for years) would be humming away with toasty coffee beans. Instead, the COVID pandemic stopped everyone and everything in their tracks just days later. It was devastating for a brand new business.
By September, neighbors stopped by to say, “We smelled it! Is it happening?” Maevin had gotten her “antique” (circa 1991) roaster fully functional. “It’s a good thing Lee’s small,” says Shu- make. “Because I don’t know how many times she’s climbed completely in and out of that thing.” Maevin knew what she was doing. She was one of Eric Mahler’s young workers at Caffe Cocina, thirsty to learn everything she could about roasting.
At a London coffee expo in 2019, Maevin was inspired to “concentrate on flavors that are smooth with warm spicy notes and don’t make your mouth light up with acidity.” She uses primarily Peruvian coffee beans and describes her Moon Shadow Espresso as “chocolatey, with cloves and spices”— flavors that go well in a dirty chai (an espresso drink with chai tea and steamed milk).
Maevin makes the drinks, while Shumake does the eats. The duo are delightful. Maevin will show you the back room with the antique roaster—her pride and joy—if you request. Ask too about how the shop got its name and watch the sparkle in their eyes. Then ask what’s freshly baked.
Pegasus Coffee
Bainbridge Island
“Part of the reason I ended up buying this company is because it’s so historic, yet nobody knows how important it is. How connected to the source it is,” says Matt Grady, who purchased Pegasus Coffee in 2019. His enthusiasm is infectious when he describes how the café’s ivy-covered, brick legacy descends directly from the man who introduced dark roast cof- fee to America, Alfred Peet, of Peet’s Coffee.
Pegasus founder David Dessinger was a regular “Peet-Nik” at Peet’s Coffee Bar in Berkeley, California, in the 1960s. When he moved to Eagle Harbor as a liveaboard, he complained about the lack of good coffee so fervently that his friends told him to stop talking about it or do something. So he started roasting coffee beans on his boat until he made a brew that tasted like Peet’s.
Dessinger then started a correspondence with Peet, asking for help importing a roasting machine. The letters were fruitful and decorate the walls of the café today. By 1980, inside the same historic building that once served as a registration center for Japanese Americans during World War II, Dessinger installed the first espresso machine on this side of Puget Sound, opening Pegasus Coffee.
“At today’s Pegasus, we roast as artisans, brew with precision, care about quality and have long-term relationships with our farmers,” says Grady, who left a stable corporate career to be an entrepreneur and has never looked back. “I’ve worked pretty hard in my life, but this is the hardest I’ve ever worked. It’s also the most fun I’ve ever had.”
more west sound coffee roasters
GROUNDS FOR CHANGE
POULSBO
PUGET SOUND COFFEE
POULSBO
STORYVILLE
BAINBRIDGE ISLAND
OOTOPIA
BREMERTON
PORT TOWNSEND
ROASTING
PORT TOWNSEND
SUNRISE COFFEE
COMPANY
PORT TOWNSEND
CUTTERS POINT
COFFEE CO.
GIG HARBOR
RAINSHADOW COFFEE
ROASTING COMPANY
SEQUIM
ESSENCE COFFEE
ROASTERS
SEQUIM