Coffee was in her blood. As much as she tried to stay away, owner Sandra Wolter was drawn to all things coffee: the aromas, the flavors, the culture, the history. From that love, she finally opened her subterranean paean to coffee.
Sweet Science Coffee (1847 Columbia Rd NW) began operating just two months ago, but is very much an Old World establishment. Wolter brings generations of experience, born into a fifth-generation coffeeshop and patisserie family business in Berlin.
She grew up in her family’s store, roasting, grinding, pouring, and serving. But as any rebellious teen, Wolter left the family business, to pursue television journalism. And just like many others, the call of family was too strong, and she returned to coffee. She ran a tiny shop on 18th Street under the same name for most of 2015, before finally opening the permanent location where it exists today.
Sweet Science sits in an unassuming spot just below the Afghan restaurant Lapis. The Lapis owners approached her last year about working on the coffee program for another restaurant they own, Malmaison. Out of that came the idea to collaborate in a specialty coffee venture, combining what Sweet Science does with the Lapis vision for the space. It was a perfect pairing. Lapis, as a family-run restaurant, wanted to work with someone who had a long history of family in the coffee business.
Omar Popal, a Lapis owner, waxed poetic about the Sweet Science space. “It is a cultural salon,” he said, “bringing together people through the art of coffee, books, ideas and music.”
While Wolter provides the excellent beverages, Lapis brought the design inspiration, from the azure walls to the Oriental rugs adorning the floor. Handcrafted, alluringly mismatched furniture and long bookshelves round out the space, but the biggest eye-popper may be the America-shaped mural using words from dozens of languages.
Given that background, this is no in-and-out coffeeshop. Wolter urges customers to listen to their coffee needs, lingering over steaming mugs.
“The first question we get so many times is, ‘do you have wi-fi?’” she says with a smile (they do).
But this shop isn’t about plugging away at the laptop. Sweet Science boasts seven brewing methods and nine rotating specialty coffees. Each week, Wolter prepares her batches, combining the right methods and tools with the right coffees, such that each method brings out the most salient qualities of each set of beans. To drive this point home, she also teaches classes on the usage of these methodologies, so that customer-students can craft their favorite brews at home.
On a recent visit, Wolter guided me through her coffee process at her famous Brew Bar section of the shop, where she shows off her expertise. It’s not simply a hand-pulled espresso (though this certainly happens too, and with skill by the talented baristas).
Five small containers of beans sit out in front of the manual brewing station. Each has its unique aroma, and each requires a different mechanism for brewing. On this trip, Wolter walked me through three Colombian varietals, each small-batch and single-farm.
“It’s a full-bodied experience,” she says.
This concept of coffee interactivity is at the heart of the shop. The focus is to bring out the best in the bean, as the last stop in the long coffee production process. But it’s also to educate and travel with each person who walks down the stairs into her space.
Sometimes, she prefers pour-overs, like the German-import Karlsbad device, originally manufactured more than a century ago. It’s a manual three-piece coffee brewer handcrafted entirely of porcelain that runs upwards of $100 and does not use paper filters, allowing an enormous amount of original flavors, and even oils, to come through.
The showiest piece is the Syphon, a stunning, museum-worthy machine which uses heat compression to drive hot water into a chamber containing the grounds, but must be watched and timed precisely, lest the coffee sit too long.
Wolter is so certain about her extraction methods that she says “our coffee doesn’t need room for milk, but we always give you room for thought.”
Traditionally, coffeehouses have been revolutionary places. They served as salons in Europe and the Middle East, where people would meet to exchange and explore ideas. Sweet Science follows in those footsteps.
“It’s all about bringing people together and enabling them to take a breath, take a break and mute that phone for a second,” Wolter implores. “It has and will always be about two simple things: human contact and shared time.” And a great pour.
Sweet Science Coffee is located at 1847 Columbia Rd NW. They are open Wednesday through Friday from 7 a.m.-7 p.m.; Saturday from 8 a.m.-7 p.m.; and Sunday from 9 a.m.-7 p.m.
