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Cream being poured into cold-brew coffee at Gentle Brew Coffee Roasters...

Cream being poured into cold-brew coffee at Gentle Brew Coffee Roasters in Long Beach. Credit: Yvonne Albinowski

Long Island is pretty well saturated with artisanal coffee shops, but one of its very first small-batch roasters, Gentle Brew in Long Beach, has closed.

“We made it through COVID with PPE and other loans,” said general manager Mel Chiusano, “but we still owed money and back rent and just couldn’t make it work."

Back in 2011, when Gentle Brew owner Bryan Baquet started to roast beans in a tiny storefront in Hicksville, most local aficionados were buying their beans at Starbucks or Fairway. 

In July 2012, Gentle Brew relocated to a prime spot in Long Beach. Baquet and his then-partners, Mike Shcherbenko and Patrick Luyster, had been selling coffee at the Long Beach farmers markets. “It seemed like there were a lot of people around here who were looking for this — a place where you could get a real, authentic product,” he said at the time. (Baquet is now the principal owner.)

The shop added homemade pastries and comfortable seating to the lineup of expertly prepared beverages and quickly established itself as a community focal point. When superstorm Sandy ravaged Long Beach three months later, Gentle Brew opened two days after the storm hit even though it had no electricity or water. Using bottled water, shelf-stable milk and gas-powered burners, the partners served coffee and much more: As the town’s ice rink began to overflow with donations of clothing and toiletries, Gentle Brew took up the slack and transformed itself into a community relief center.

As Long Beach began its recovery, baristas at Gentle Brew adopted and mastered each successive coffee trend: Hand-pulled from the espresso machine, dripped, cold-brewed, tapped nitro brew, vaccum-siphoned, French-pressed, poured over, Chemex-carafed and AeroPressed. 

During the summers of 2017 to 2019, Gentle Brew also operated a location on the boardwalk. In 2019 both locations were shuttered by the state for nonpayment of taxes; a settlement was reached a week later but the debt continued to put a drag on the shop’s finances. Chiusano said that she and Baquet were in talks with a new partner and have their sights on a nearby Long Beach location.

 
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