True Beans’s Classic Espresso being pulled from a bottomless portafilter.

8:00am | NOTE: This is the first part of a three-part series examining coffee culture and its shifting facade in Long Beach.

Coffee is never just coffee. 

In fact, I encourage you to think about your tastebuds and what they enjoy most — be it fries or foie gras, pizza or Pinot, cake or caviar — and think of your favorite version of that ambrosially sapid object. Got it? Now think of the worst version you’ve had of your favorite ingestive object and the nuances that made it, in your culinary opinion, bad: too much of this, too little of that, overcooked, undercooked, cheap ingredients, tacky presentation… The idiosyncratic nature of your critique astounds even you, doesn’t? This is why coffee, at least for me, is never just coffee; everything that applies to what made that thing bad can be applied to coffee: too much roast, too little roast, over-brewed, under-brewed, cheap beans… Coffee is, after all, cuisine — a cuisine that some 150 million Americans partake in daily.

For that exorbitant number of caffeinators, coffee is some common elixir one intakes to wake up: its perked-up-bitterness jolts the senses to a lurid liveliness in the long, gloomy loom of the waking hour. I used to be one of those people (somewhat like the way I was before I discovered Sriracha and how, like salt and pepper, a meal is incomplete without spice) — until, of course, the Culinary Gods descended upon me with my first taste of specialty coffee: Blue Bottle Cafe in San Francisco. I ordered an espresso and, much like the time I first had a high-end red wine (Justin Isosceles for those who are curious — still one of my favorite wines to date), I found myself elated. The ill-conceived pretentiousness of the joint — when I said, “To go,” a compulsive response driven by Starbucks Syndrome, I was immediately told they only serve their espresso in demitasse chinaware and I was to enjoy it onsite — was immediately thrown off after my first sip. Rolls of citrus and berries followed by deep coats of chocolate enlivened my tongue. And what a concept: enjoy your cuisine, partake in the social atmosphere that the history of coffee is so engrained in… A complete antithetical notion to the on-the-go mentality of nationwide coffee corporations.

And for a while, Long Beach was frustrating for me: it feels like a coffee city, it seems like we have coffee people, but there was not a specialty coffee joint in sight. And True Beans is trying to change exactly that.

Located in an entirely odd location, True Beans is roasting some of the best coffee in town by the Catalina Express and CSU Chancellor’s Office in downtown Long Beach. Even further, they do it ethically: entirely organic, they only procure beans from farms that are environmentally sound and sustainable, showcasing that they hope their philosophy of “ethical coffee-ing” can be extended the businesses they interact with. 

Clancy holds a just-pulled shot of True Beans’s Classic Espresso. 

And when you meet Clancy Cramer, educator and sales rep for True Beans, you’ll get the hint quickly that coffee is not just coffee. His lanky, excessively animated frame and gestures exemplify why this independent roaster is changing the coffee game in Long Beach. “It’s like when you’re in a really bad relationship where they treat you like nothing but you stay in the relationship because you think they love you and you think that the relationship is a real one. That’s coffee for me in Long Beach. You like the people that serve you — as you should, they’re probably great people — but as far as the coffee they’re serving to you… If you have to put a ton of cream, sugar, you have to throw in a couple of ice cubes, you’re not having that moment with coffee that I think exists.”

True Beans, whose classic espresso scored an impressive 91 by Coffee Review, isn’t downsizing their audience either, refreshingly advocating the idea that one shouldn’t limit an idea for a consumer because they “aren’t ready for it.” Cramer, along with the entire True Beans crew, isn’t afraid to tell a habit-driven coffee drinker at a chain or ill-equipped coffeehouse that they could be enjoying something else, something that is amazing. He does this through what he affectionately calls “coffee ambushes,” where he goes into a coffeeshop, sets up a makeshift operation, and hopes to make a customer simply say, “Wow!” — and all for free and in the hopes of expanding people’s taste into specialty coffee, an idea he borrowed from fellow coffee guru, Jason Dominy of Georgia.

And he’s succeeding, as businesses throughout Long Beach are beginning to serve True Beans with customers beginning to notice the difference.

For more information, visit www.truebeans.com.