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The weather’s already started to cool off, but cold-coffee season never dies. And when a certified sommelier runs a coffee shop, there’s even more promise of expertly crafted caffeine.
Republik Coffee Bar opened in Arlington about two years ago, launched in Tysons Corner about three months ago and will open another in Capitol Hill next year, plus another two or three spaces are being researched in Fairfax and Chantilly.
Alex Andrade, the operating partner, creates custom blends (roasted by Dillanos in Seattle) and plays with nitrogen for drinks that are particularly balanced and bring out the coffees’ flavors while leaving the bitterness behind. After working in fine dining restaurants and at Starbucks for 13 years, he says he wants to position Republik in coffee’s “middle ground [between] the artisan craft of a mom and pop shop but with the efficiency of Starbucks.”
Next month, Republik will roll out a happy hour of coffee- and tea-based cocktails, like an espresso Old Fashioned and a hibiscus tea margarita. There will be beer and wine too, plus “nitrose,” a rose poured from a nitro tap.
Next week, watch for a spiced pumpkin latte (cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and, Andrade says, it will be “more on the spicy side than that sweet pumpkin latte”) with jack-o-lantern latte art.
Until then, here are three cold drinks to sip from Republik:
1. Cold Brew Coffee from the Yama Cold Brew Drip Tower
This Taiwanese-made contraption uses a slow-drip process—one drop per second—in making cold-brew coffee. The first chamber holds ice water, which then drips through the light-roasted grounds and then into the bottom glass chamber, making up to 3,000 milliliters of coffee in 12 hours. At the Arlington shop, they run three towers twice a day to keep up with demand. The resulting drink, says Andrade, is a cup with almost no acidity.
2. Vietnamese Nitro Cold Brew
Andrade always ordered a Vietnamese iced coffee after meals of pho, and wanted to figure out how to create it himself. He says, the “struggle was to find a way to make it taste strong enough, but sweet enough.” He blends medium-light-roasted beans from Central America and the Pacific Islands for complexity and that signature chocolatey finish.
3. Arnold Palmer Nitro
Tea gets the nitro effect, too. The ratio of 74 percent black iced tea (English breakfast), 25 percent lemonade and 1 percent simple syrup is a barely sweetened, creamy take on the classic concoction.
