412
Foundry
Lane

First Crack Coffee Roasters started in 2019 in a leased corner of a Portland machine shop, with one drum roaster and a rule that has not changed since: roast what has been ordered, and nothing more.

The shop is gone; the drum is still here, on the concrete floor at 412 Foundry Lane. Two days a week it runs, twice, from charge to drop, and the rest of the week it sits cold while the coffee it made is in the post.

We do not run a house blend. Three lots is what one drum and two roast days can carry honestly, and a fourth would mean either buying worse coffee or roasting it in a hurry.

If you want to see what that actually means, the cafe is open five days a week and the cupping table is open on Saturdays. Both are on this street.

Every Saturday at 10:00 the bowls go out on the bench and the week comes off the drum in front of whoever is standing there. Everything roasted that week is on the table, and so is whatever we are thinking of buying next.

It costs nothing and it is not a class. You will be handed a spoon and told when to break the crust, and that is the whole of the instruction.

It runs in the roastery, not the cafe. The bench is cleared at ten and the bowls go down on the same floor the drum stands on, which is the point: the coffee is tasted where it was made, by the people who made it.