Driftaway Coffee

Anu Menon and Suyog Mody ran Driftaway as a mail-subscription roaster for over ten years before opening a retail tasting room in the front of their East Williamsburg production space, across from Brooklyn Steel. The shop opens Saturday and Sunday only, and the coffee is open-priced, which is the first signal that this isn't a normal cafe and not trying to be one. The decade of mail-order experience before the retail open is the context that makes the rest of the setup make sense.

The room is a high-ceilinged windowless production space brightened by a skylight pouring onto white-painted brick. Stadium-style wood riser seating runs along one wall for the tasting groups. The pour-over bar is pink-tiled with a speckled white top, and the design choices look deliberate rather than coincidental. The booked tasting flights ($30 and $35) are the move, described as omakase for coffee, and the peach cobbler pour over with notes of passion fruit, peach, lychee, and cherry is the one to ask the bar staff about when you arrive. Creative coffee mixed drinks round out the menu for customers who want something other than a flight.

This is for pour-over geeks who want a guided session with someone who knows the bean roster end to end, and for coffee enthusiasts who came specifically for the flight rather than a quick latte. Subscription buyers know the name already from years of monthly deliveries. Casual drop-ins should note the weekend-only retail hours before showing up Tuesday at noon and finding the door locked. Book ahead if you want the omakase; walk in for a single pour over if you didn't. Either way, this is one of the more deliberate coffee experiences available in Brooklyn, and the open-priced model and the production-space setting make it feel less like a cafe and more like an invitation to the back room of an operation that's been quietly running for over a decade.