Taste testtest: Yes, they can roast – & boast

A RE these guys full of beans, or what? At artsy new coffee joint Extraction Lab, on Brooklyn’s Sunset Park/Industry City waterfront, a 12-ounce cup of brew set me back $14.75.

That’s the priciest cuppa joe in town, except for an $18 number they expect to offer in the next few weeks.

A Starbucks “tall” (also 12 ounces) goes for $2.11. Extraction Lab’s “Jeremy Zhang Gesha” was better. But was it $12.64 better? I know my way around coffee — I’ve enjoyed marvelous Kenyan coffee in the Nairobi highlands before it lost its mojo in the passage to America, and I’ve tried all kinds offunky Seattle brews meant to show up Starbucks.

Extraction Lab’s Gesha might be the best I’ve tasted. It’s a powerful drink without a hint of the bitter, burnt complexion common to fancy-pants brands sold all over town.

It needed no milk or sweeteners. I tasted earth, wine and grain. At least I think I did: Coffee impressions are more subjective and fleeting than they are for vino.

Extraction Lab brews coffee in a cute device called a Steampunk, made in the US by the Alpha Dominche company. Temperature-controlled water is showered in precise amounts over the coffee, which is then stirred up by steam pulses and “extracted” by a steamcreated vacuum.

It was fun watching it bubble away in the upright glass cylinder. “I’m messing with the agitation,” friendly barista Cory Bogos said of the spa-like spectacle, which he controlled using an iPad-like device.

Extraction Lab won’t extract your every last dime unless you want it to. Other choices offered Tuesday ranged from $4.75 for a Nicaraguan bean to $5.50 for a Honduran one.

But if you schlep on the D train to a remote industrial block where you’ll never likely return, you should go for the bank-buster. And great pastries will send you out on a sweet note.