MNfusion: Blackeye Roasting Co. Opens S. Minneapolis Location

When it comes to craft beverages, Minnesota's market is burgeoning. Now, consumers can enjoy any number of locally handcrafted drinks straight from the tap – including coffee.

And they won't have to go to a bar to get it.

In just one month, Blackeye Roasting Company opened two new cafes that serve its signature cold brew on tap. Along with a number of other offerings.

Launched in the basement of Quixotic Coffee in St. Paul, Blackeye Roasting Co. grew rapidly in just 18 months.

"It all started with bottles and kegs," owner and founder Matt McGinn said.

McGinn, who also co-owns Quixotic, began roasting beans, brewing cold press and bottling his brews in the beginning of 2015. That summer, bottles turned to cans and by spring 2016 Blackeye Coffee had its own traveling taps – a cart filled with kegs and cans of cold brew.

If that wasn't enough, also in May 2016 McGinn purchased the building that would house one of two new Blackeye Roasting café locations, and within two months it was up and running.

The building sits just north of the intersection of Chicago Avenue and 38th Street, in the site of a – what else – an old coffee shop.

"I jumped on this opportunity because it was previously a coffee shop and my background is kind of flipping coffee shops," McGinn said. "So, I saw this as a good opportunity to flip."

Spared from having to gut the building and reconstruct pluming, lighting and other things, McGinn and his team were able to focus on the cosmetics of the café and create a space all his own.

"I flipped Quixotic," McGinn said. "But this is totally me. I had full control from everything from the operations to the design to the menu, so it's truly my coffee shop and my kind of vision."

From the outside, the renovated shop has the feel of an urban coffee place – floor to ceiling windows allow passersby to peer in and see people typing away on Macbooks or reading novels with a beverage in hand. But from the inside, it looks more like a bar than coffee shop and the beverages look more like beer than coffee. (Of course, it is all non-alcoholic coffee beverages.)

View more images from Blackeye Roasting Company here.

Large booths line the southern wall and a line of ten taps is the first view customers get of the coffee bar. As for the beverages, the frothy, nitro cold brew is served in a brandy goblet.

"That's on purpose," McGinn said. He wants to emphasize that Blackeye is a beverage company that specializes in cold brew.

It also specializes in putting things on nitro.

The ten taps serve Blackeye's Signature Cold Brew, the Nitro Cold Brew, the Blackeye Reserve, three Prohibition kombuchas and three nitro iced teas.

McGinn said the iced teas have been particularly intriguing to customers. But a favorite drink has been the White Lightning.

"[It's] nitro cold brew, our homemade vanilla simple syrup and a dash of cream," McGinn said.

The cream is from Crystal Ball Farms Organic dairy farm in Wisconsin, and the syrups are all made in house.

"We focus on every drink," McGinn said. "That really creates the specialty aspect, that and everything we have here is made in house or comes from a local provider."

While cold brew and nitro are their bread and butter, McGinn wants to assure all coffee lovers that they make regular beverages too, and if you order them you won't be snubbed.

"We do traditional espresso drinks and lattes, so don't be afraid to come in and get whatever you usually get," he said. "We roast our own coffee, so we show off our coffee."

And, if the fact that Blackeye roasts their own beans, or the nitro iced teas isn't enough to draw you in, McGinn said there are a few reason you should at least give it one try.

"Our cold brew is really good," McGinn said. "And our baristas are really good looking."

Blackeye Roasting Company is located at 3740 Chicago Avenue S. in Minneapolis' Powderhorn neighborhood. They also have a Skyway location located in Suit 210 on 330 Avenue South.

For more information on where to find Blackeye, visit Blackeye Roasting Company online.