Finding the right piece of coffee equipment can be daunting. For those not willing to drop hundreds of dollars into every new gadget they can get their hands on, figuring out that one perfect and exciting brew device to best suit their tastes is hard. Never mind actually finding a place nearby that stocks it. But for Dallasites, the task has become much less daunting with the opening of Oak Cliff’s Coffee Goods, a storefront dedicated solely to coffee brewing and coffee brewing accessories.
Oak Cliff’s Coffee Goods, or OCCG for short, is one of the newest side projects of Oak Cliff Coffee Roasters’ owner Shannon Neffendorf (the other being MotoKofe, a three-wheeled motorcycle with a Bosco two-group lever machine built into the sidecar). The store sits adjacent to Oak Cliff Coffee’s flagship cafe, Davis Street Espresso, occupying the front quarter of the roastery’s green coffee storage facility.
The 400-square-foot showroom has it all: pour-over devices, presses, grinders (both hand and electric), kettles, filters, even the unsexy but very necessary cleaning supplies required to keep any size of coffee setup humming. The collection is thoughtful, with no small brewing niche left unserved. But what is most impressive is the sheer volume of goods at OCCG, best visually surmised by what can only be described as The Chemex Wall—a shelf covering the westernmost wall displaying a variety of Chemex brewers and their associated bleached filters (PSA: friends don’t let friends use unbleached filters).
General Manager Will Riggs tells me the shop grew out of necessity. “We’d constantly have people wanting to have really in-depth conversations [at Davis Street] about brewing coffee at home, and it would always be on a busy Saturday, making it hard for our baristas to juggle drink service and sales service. Coffee Goods gave us the space to expand options, bring in some unique brewing devices and gear, plus it is a dedicated space to really talk about what people want out of their home coffee and how we can get them there.”
Though they focus primarily on filter coffee equipment, OCCG will also serve as a retail outlet for a variety of home espresso machines, which will come as no surprise to anyone who has seen Neffendorf’s collection of single-group machines in the back of Davis Street. Currently, only the Rocket Giotto is available in store, but Riggs tells me they will be carrying the La Marzocco Linea Mini, as well as the lever-operated one-group Bosco Sorrento, in the near future.
Having all this gear under one roof opens up a ton of hands-on instructional opportunities upon which Riggs and OCCG look to capitalize in the coming months. Instead of offering weekly brewing classes that have become somewhat common, OCCG will be able to provide customers with ad-hoc one-on-one training with the brewing device they are looking to purchase. A small bar area with water and electricity is currently in the works, allowing OCCG to demo just about anything they sell in-store.
“The hope for the space is to absolutely be a wonderful learning environment,” Riggs says. We haven’t quite nailed down what that looks like from a customer training perspective, but all our folks here are always excited to hand out their favorite Chemex recipe or talk through THE BEST AeroPress method they’ve ever done.”
Oak Cliff’s Coffee Goods represents the next step in the evolution of the home coffee geek. Gone are the days of feverishly searching through internet forums to glean some small insight into why your brews are running too long or tasting too astringent. Perhaps it will lead to a more informed consumer base, which could then create a better coffee culture at large and make cafes step up their game. Or maybe it’ll just be a local spot where I can (finally!) buy bleached round Chemex filters. I’m happy with either result.
Zac Cadwalader is a Sprudge.com staff writer based in Dallas, Texas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
