Ocean Grounds
Unit 327, 3rd floor, U-Town, 2 Sanfeng Bei Li, Chaoyangmen, Chaoyang District
Open: 10 am – 10 pm
Tel: 8561 0961
悠唐生活广场三层327室
I am grateful for the arrival of Ocean Grounds, Beijing’s newest and most authentic coffee shop, which imports organic beans that are roasted in the huge coffee roaster right on the spot in the shop.
Ocean Grounds is the labor of Jim Lee, an American-Chinese with a deep interest in coffee, who bought into Java Jones, a small coffee chain headquartered in his native San Diego so he could master the art of coffee.
“I really wanted to learn the coffee business from ground up,” said Jim, who says he started as a barista, then learned how to roast coffee beans, and later became a certified Q-Tester.
Jim gave me a guided tour of the 700sqm Ocean Grounds. He showed me the cupping room, equipped with a huge glass round table where he tests coffee aroma and taste. A display of raw coffee beans shows which beans are good and which are bad. The cupping room is the area to learn all about coffee.
I sat at the cozy Discovery coffee bar, sipping a glass of artisanal iced coffee now known as New Orleans ice coffee, a drink that’s almost a dessert, and reason enough to make the trip here.
Here is how this amazing New Orleans is made. First and foremost is the coffee and chicory iced ball, which requires 24 hours of soaking to extract its flavor before freezing it into an ice ball a bit bigger than a golf ball.
The next step is to add the hand-crushed spices: ancho chili, nutmeg, and cinnamon. The grounded spices mix is added to the milk in a cocktail shaker. Before pouring the milk into the iced coffee, Jim baptized the coffee ball with agave nectar, followed by organic bean vanilla syrup. Then the milk is strained so that the drink is free of the granule spices. With a few gentle stirs my New Orleans iced coffee was ready.
A whiff of the mixed spices awakened my nostrils. I took a small sip, another and another. I took my time sipping it, because I enjoyed the gradual transformation of the drink as the ice ball melted--an evolution from mild and mellow to rich and seductive. It was amazing. One will never get bored by this drink because of the taste brought by the melting coffee ball. When it gets too rich, you can add some more of the milk mixture which is served in a small flask.
Also excellent is Ocean Ground’s traditional coffee--which really should be consumed without adding any milk so one can enjoy the real taste of the coffee.
Ocean Grounds’ organic coffee beans, bought directly from small coffee growing estates, are roasted once a week. I bought a half pound bag of Peruvian coffee beans and I’ve been brewing it in the OG modified French press, on sale at the cafe, which does a good job of in dripping the coffee without leaving much of a coffee sediment at the bottom of the cup. Guess what? My morning coffee experience has been terrific. To borrow from the Maxwell commercial, “Good to the very last drop.”
Visit Ocean Ground’s weibo to find out about Ocean Ground’s activities, classes, specials and coffee promotions. Jim says that he doesn't want to keep the weekly roasted coffees on the shelves for too long and so will offer discounts--watch the shops microblog for more news.