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Water Avenue Coffee

1300 Southwest 5th Avenue

SPECIALTY

Water Avenue Coffee is a specialty coffee shop located in Portland. Check in here with the Pulled Coffee app to earn real cash rewards. Specialty shops count toward all challenges including Pulled 50, Pulled 100, and Pulled 300.

Water Avenue's downtown shop sits at 1300 Southwest 5th, on the ground floor of a Portland office building two blocks from the river. The company started in 2009 with a vintage French-built Samiac drum roaster and a vision to bring decades of Portland coffee craft directly into one cafe. The flagship is across the river on SE Water Avenue. The 5th Avenue location runs as the downtown bar, smaller and faster, serving the same beans roasted at the SE 8th roastery. Espresso is dialed for clarity. Pour-over is the move when you have a few minutes. Cold brew runs year round. On weekday mornings the room fills with people walking up from the office towers around Pioneer Square. Order the espresso if you came for what Water Avenue is dialing in this week. Order a pour-over if you want to taste the single origin rotation in something other than a milk drink.

About Portland

Portland built its specialty register on roasters who never moved off the Eastside. Stumptown Coffee Roasters opened on SE Division in 1999 and set the city template for the decade that followed. Coava Coffee Roasters opened in 2008 in a Matt Higgins garage, then moved into the working roastery and Public Brew Bar at 1015 SE Main, a block off the Hawthorne Bridge. Roseline opened in 2011 on SE 11th across from Kachka, with a second cafe on NE Alberta in Concordia. Water Avenue Coffee runs a downtown shop at 1300 SW 5th and the original flagship across the river on SE Water Avenue with a vintage French Samiac drum roaster.

The neighborhood map covers most of the city. Central Eastside and Buckman hold the working roasteries. Hawthorne, Division, and Sellwood-Brooklyn run the slower neighborhood bars. Alberta and Concordia in Northeast carry the second-wave Eastside cafes. The Pearl District covers the Italian and downtown register through Caffe Umbria on NW 12th, which opened in December 2007. Foster-Powell holds Space Monkey Coffee on the corner of SE 72nd and Foster, anchoring that quadrant since 2004.

Portland is also the city where the multi-roaster bean bar started. Barista on NW 13th opened in 2009 in a Pearl District storefront and ran multiple top roasters on the same bar instead of one house roast. The model spread across the city. The result is a market where most serious cafes pour two or three rotating roasters and the bar conversation rotates with them.