Crafty Coffee

[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]T[/dropcap]he River North Arts District in Denver is known for its rich art scene, historic buildings, innovative breweries and unique businesses. One small coffee shop is serving coffee, sandwiches and cannabidiol (CBD) with exceptional care and respect for the coffee it pours daily.

Blue Sparrow Coffee is nestled in the thriving Backyard on Blake business community, where the petite coffee shop is located among a restaurant, gym and co-working space. “It’s a really cool community within the neighborhood,” said Blue Sparrow Coffee Café Manager Kevin Piaskowski. “We’re just a little piece of that.”

“We’re just a small coffee shop,” Piaskowski said. “A small business being a part of the community and serving the best coffee we can to the people that work and live around our shop.”

“This neighborhood, it’s really changed over the years,” he said, mentioning that the art community is now also full of breweries and businesses. Blue Sparrow Coffee is open five days a week, from 6:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

The cozy shop with muted but fresh blue seating offer pastries daily from Enzo the Baker (who makes “the best pastries in Denver” according to Piaskowski) and sandwiches from Marczyk Fine Foods, Monday through Friday.

Blue Sparrow Coffee has always used Sträva Craft Coffee for its regular expresso drinks, brewed coffee and nitro cold brew, but also serves a special blend from the company. Sträva Craft Coffee was recently highlighted in the Netflix documentary The Legend of 420 and offers a cannabidiol-containing coffee collection along with its single-origin coffees and specialty roasts.

“The most popular drink is the CBD nitro cold brew.”

Blue Sparrow Coffee currently brews the Restore blend, which contains 120mg of CBD, from Sträva’s Peace and Wellness collection, which includes several varying amounts of CBD. The coffee shop also carries the whole-bean coffee beans in its retail section along with other blends from small roaster businesses.

“The most popular drink is the CBD nitro cold brew,” said Piakowski, estimating the shop serves 20 a day. The CBD nitro brew is $6 for a small and $7.50 for a large cold brew. “Having it on cold brew allows us to offer it whenever and doesn’t affect the flavor over time,” Piaskowski said. He added that people come from all over to buy the bags of CBD coffee beans and have the cold brew, which the shop has served since after it opened. “It’s something we’re really proud to offer.”

“People come in all the time and are like, ‘Oh, is it going to get me high?’” Piakowski said. “And there’s a process of education as well, but there’s a pretty committed group of people who come in and get it.”

Piaskowski mentioned that the CBD nitro tastes very similar to Sträva’s normal nitro cold brew. “We designed the recipe so it would be identical,” he said, “So, whether you’re getting a CBD cold brew or a normal cold brew the taste shouldn’t be too far off.”

One of Blue Sparrow Coffee’s specialties is a Japanese iced coffee. “We brew it hot over ice, so it’s a drip coffee over ice essentially,” he added. “It’s a nice, crisp refreshing beverage.” The coffee is brewed so the flavor is not watered down with any melting of the ice, so that “a little more coffee flavor oriented than the cold brew.”

Every few weeks, Blue Sparrow Coffee features a different small business coffee roaster company from around the world. Often, the featured selection was discovered while traveling. Piaskowski said he had found a recent featured blend, the Berlin-based Five Elephant, while traveling in Germany.

The latest featured company is Painted Blue Coffee Roasters of Australia, where one of the shop’s owners is from. Blue Sparrow Coffee also features a flat white, an expresso drink similar to a latte that is popular in Australia.

“We want to offer things you’re not normally going to get,” said Piaskowski. “There’s so many smaller roasters doing really amazing things, and since we’re a tiny shop, we want to coexist . . . A small coffee shop featuring small roasters doing amazing things.”

Blue Sparrow Coffee plans a second location to open next spring near Commons Park.

Blue Sparrow Coffee, 3070 Blake St. #180, Denver

bluesparrowcoffee.com