755: For the Semisecret Coffee Club in New York, Membership Has Its Perks

0:01Hafiz Mangalji:Every soda's got something to say. Colas brag. Probiotics give TED Talks. Then there's Mr. Pibb. No pitch, no promises, just bold cherry bringing the flavor. Bold kick of cherry. And you'll miss the pin. With Plan B Emergency Contraception, we're in control of our future. It's backup birth control you take after unprotected sex that helps prevent pregnancy before it starts. It works by temporarily delaying ovulation, and it won't impact your future fertility. Plan B is available in all 50 U.S. states at all major retailers near you, with no ID, prescription, or age requirement needed. Together, we've got this.

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0:53First wave, the invention of coffee. Second wave, the popularization of coffee. Third wave, kind of the science of coffee. So first wave, popularization. Don't need to explain that. Second wave, Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts. Third wave, I like to categorize as blue bottle. Yeah. Fourth wave represents really what's happened after the pandemic in terms of pursuing how far you can push the boundaries of specialty coffee. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard. Hafish Mungazi is the founder of Huna Coffee Club, a reservation-only member space tucked into a Greenpoint Brooklyn studio where serious home brewers and industry obsessives come to use equipment they can't afford to own, drink coffees from roasters they've been following for years, and be around other people who care deeply about water chemistry.

1:41This is all completely my shit. For$30 a month, you get access to Weber Workshop's grinders, a rotating global roaster marketplace, and a really nice hi-fi system. It's not a cafe. It's not a class. It's a club. And Hafiz talks about why that distinction matters, as well as some of his favorite coffees being brewed. I hope you enjoy this episode.

2:07Hafiz Mangaji, welcome. This is Taste. Great to see you. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm excited to chat with you. I have to give a little context to this conversation, which I've been looking forward to all week. I love coffee. I think anybody listening to the show knows that I've written about coffee and did some consulting. So I have like a knowledge base about coffee. When I entered Huna, I kind of like cracked open my brain about coffee in the best possible way. And I entered a world of homebrewing that I knew existed, but I never really had the hands-on experience to really understand how technical, how loving, how obsessive home coffee making can be.

2:54So I just wanted to have you in to talk about your clubhouse, your club. Huna is a many things. You sell coffee, you offer reservations to try out all sorts of gear, and we'll get into it. But in your words, what is it? First and foremost, it's a membership club for specialty coffee enthusiasts. And it's a club, doesn't necessarily mean that it's tied to the clubhouse. First and foremost, it's a club. It's a community, a collective of people who are home enthusiasts and very passionate and enthusiastic about specialty coffee. and the world of specialty coffee. And what I really differentiate it to is it's for like citizens of earth.

3:40It's not for only baristas and professionals because there are plenty of training centers around New York and our country where if you work in coffee, you can go and train, learn all sorts of things. This is not required. You don't have to be a barista. Not only is it not required, that's why I specifically say home enthusiasts. You do. Because it's not the professionals or the industry. And to your point, there are lots of different pieces that have been put together and formalized for the industry, but there's very little that's actually for home enthusiasts. It's so true. And I think we sometimes, as home enthusiasts, which I consider myself, we're kind of on the outside looking in because coffee, the industry, as loving and as community-oriented it is, it can be exclusive.

4:23You don't really have the opportunity to try out a$1 ,400 burr grinder. You know how you get to try different types of water, which we'll all get into. The gear you have alone, just like the gear set up on the website is incredible. Before we get to all of that, though, I know you're home-oriented, but when you make it out into the world to drink coffee, where are you going? That's a really great question because I'm very fortunate. I have a day job. This is a side passion project, and I get to travel a lot for my day job. So in that sense, Paris is really the scene for specialty coffee right now in the world.

4:58It's incredible. And there's an article in the Financial Times recently about how Paris is pioneering the fourth wave. And the journalist makes like particular note to how they were there five years ago and the coffee was awful. And all of a sudden, five years later, it's the top scene in the world. So for me, in terms of the macro sense, there are a number of cafes in Paris like Substance, Clove, Tiba that I would put high on my list. And then in New York, the three standouts in particular, one that's a mainstay and I think always will be is Say. But two kind of newer school contemporary ones, not to say that Say isn't.

5:33It's pretty, it's like four or five years old, eight years old. I mean, I think Say is even a decade old. Yeah, yeah, it's been around for a while. And the cafe, they're a mainstay. You know, they're kind of like started all of this. But in terms of some of the more recent players in the game, Cabin, which is run by a good friend of mine named Rohit. He runs the coffee program. And then Suited, of course, is a really great spot in the city. Yeah, those are all great examples. And you bring up Fourth Wave, which I think is so fascinating. We don't talk about Fourth Wave that often. We've said plenty about Third Wave and covered the specialty coffee industry today and how we've gotten here.

6:10But you, when we were chatting in your studio, you had a great kind of stump speech about the fourth wave. Tell me about it. I think everybody has their own definition of what the waves are. But for the most part, just to lay my foundation, first wave, the invention of coffee. Second wave, the popularization of coffee. Third wave, kind of the science of coffee. So first wave, popularization. Don't need to explain that. Second wave, Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts. Third wave, I like to categorize as blue bottle. I think third wave is where you have a little bit of where the opinion starts to come in.

6:42And then from there, fourth wave, for me, and I think for most of the people in the industry that I've discussed this with, represents really what's happened after the pandemic in terms of pursuing how far you can push the boundaries of specialty coffee. In particular, it's most exemplified in light roast and light roasted coffee. That's really what's been the real revelation over the past five, six years. And then, of course, the proliferation of the industry in terms of all of these people, myself included, who have fallen into specialty coffee after the pandemic. It's not unique to specialty coffee, but the pandemic was an accelerator for so many different things, and particularly specialty coffee.

7:28Yeah, it's a great sentiment. I think a lot of folks picked up subscriptions or bought that Chemex or V60 during the pandemic. And of course, I think the pandemic, once we had returned to work and people started coming back, I think there was like this interest in like actually going out for coffee for the coffee, not just to have that meeting. And the fourth wave, too, I think you also bring in the home enthusiast into the fourth wave, right? It's not the third wave is articulating the specialty coffee roasters and cafes like the blue bottles of the world, the Stumptowns. But the fourth is like, okay, like I can get coffee from Paris in my home and make it in a very specific way.

8:07That's fourth wave to me. I think you bring up a really interesting point and kind of hit the nail on the head that the home enthusiasts are driving the fourth wave as well. And one of the, there are many different pieces of inspiration that went into Hyena. but one of the main pieces is that the best coffees are being made in homes by home enthusiasts and not by professionals. So to even hear someone like you say that the home enthusiasts are shaping the fourth wave is, I mean, of course I agree with it, but it's also very exciting to hear how much that resonates. Yeah, it's cool because I love to get the barista side of it too because I think there's probably some tension between the third wave and fourth wave in some ways because we obviously want baristas and owners of coffee companies want people to come into their cafes and buy a bunch of coffee and you're saying, well, yes, that's cool, but you can also do some incredible coffees at home.

8:50What was the last coffee you made in your studio? The last coffee I made in my studio was a washed Ethiopian coffee from Archer's. It's a roaster based out of Dubai in the Middle East. And it's an Ilo coffee, which is really special for its floral properties. I got a lot of lemongrass. It's one of the samples that I brought you, actually. You brought me amazing samples. I appreciate that. Let's zoom out a bit and talk about your own just interaction with coffee. Were you one of these folks who found coffee during the pandemic, or do you have a longer history with it? No, absolutely fell into it during the pandemic.

9:22I didn't start drinking coffee until college. I remember the moment specifically because I had a really early morning class, and the professor who was this really quirky fellow who I really admired, he was like, if you can't make it to class on time or if you're tired, I recommend one espresso. I never thought about coffee. It just was never anything that I had really been exposed to outside of just my parents drinking it in the morning to get going. And I thought to myself, that's cool. I could drink espresso. That sounds like something that, you know, it was really more the perception of how I saw myself and actually like needing espresso or the function of it.

9:58But that was when I first started drinking coffee. And then, like I said, during the pandemic is when I really fell into it. We were at home. We had all this time. I was drinking Nespresso. Really? You were drinking Nespresso in 2020? Absolutely. COVID hits and you, I mean, the guy who I spoke with for three hours about coffee and I'm like, this guy knows some shit. So that's insane. I love that. You have to start somewhere. You do. And I think there's no shame behind it. It's a great starting point for a lot of people. Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, George Clooney, you know, all that, you know, selling the espresso.

10:26But you realize that an espresso is not really the coffee that you want to be drinking. Well, actually, in terms of how I fell into it, I got a cheap espresso machine. It's a hand espresso machine called Flare, which is where you basically, it's kind of like a juicer, and you press down on it, and you create the nine bars of pressure with your hand or it's about 20 pounds of pressure and you do it yourself. Yeah, those are cool. And I got it just because it was$100 and it was the cheapest thing I could find on Amazon. I didn't want to spend too much on this. I didn't even know it was a hobby yet, but I didn't want to spend too much on it.

10:56And I got a cheap blade grinder. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And grind the coffee and make the puck and push down and it goes straight through. And it's like, oh, that's not what I think espresso is. and start to do the research and realize that you need a burr grinder. And then I did a little bit of research and found a hand grinder with a particular type of burr for$150, which was a lot to me. Yeah, for a hand grinder it's a lot, but you're on your journey. You're starting to become the gearhead that I know you are. And then once you make that first cup of coffee, not that there's one particular aha moment, but once you start to make those cups of coffee, I should say, you realize how special of a result you can yield from making coffee at home.

11:45And I think then, yeah, like you said, the rest is history. The rest is history. Are you then starting to buy coffees from overseas, importing coffees, subscriptions? What's your coffee buying like? It's a really interesting conversation. Even just to preface all of it, I think that a lot of us have grown leaps and bounds over the past five years in terms of this fourth wave of specialty coffee. and a lot of the information has evolved and continues to evolve. It's a very contemporary industry. So, for example, when I first fell into specialty coffee, and this is just online sentiment, and this is a whole other subject about online versus in real life and the need for coffee nerds and geeks to have someone to talk to.

12:26But in the only community that I had, which was online, the research always said freshly roasted. You don't want it to be too old. so if you don't know where to get coffee just go to your local coffee shops and get something freshly roasted so at the beginning I was pursuing all the local coffee shops and I live in Brooklyn and all the local coffee shops in Brooklyn of which we have dozens if not hundreds so from there onward learning about from medium roast to light roast from letting it from drinking it freshly roasted to letting it degas so there's a process of falling into specialty coffee as well And it definitely didn't start with the international roasters.

13:06It started more with the local ones and then the bigger, more established contemporary ones in the United States. And then for sure, some of the international ones. Yeah. I mean, once you realize about the degassing step and you realize that you can actually import coffees and it's not a big deal, if it's three weeks, four weeks post-roast date, you're fine in many cases. You kind of unlocks that ability to pursue coffees from around the world. This episode is brought to you by ButcherBox. Hot take. Most people have no idea what's actually in their meat. Zero antibiotics, no added hormones, response to be raised.

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14:27That's right, your choice in every box for an entire year, plus$20 off your first box and free shipping always. That's butcherbox.com slash taste. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. This episode is brought to you by Masterclass. Here's my honest take. Most learn-something-new content on the internet is kind of bad. Algorithmic, shallow, optimized for watch time, Masterclass is the opposite of all that. I've been spending a lot of time with Gordon Ramsay's class on cooking. Not because I need to learn how to cook, but because watching someone who is truly great at something explain why they do what they do is genuinely riveting.

15:08That's what Masterclass gets right. Over 200 classes taught by people who are actually the best in the world at what they do. Plans start at$10 a month, billed annually. There are thousands of lessons, audio mode for the commute. It works on your phone. your laptop, your TV. Right now, listeners get an additional 15 % off annual memberships at masterclass.com slash tastecooking. That's 15 % off masterclass.com slash tastecooking. masterclass.com slash tastecooking. Let's just talk about the Huna model. Right now, you're offering reservations. So for our listeners who live in New York or are visiting, I recommend going.

15:52Like if you're into coffee, this is such a joyous experience to visit you, to play around with some gear, drink some incredible coffees. But just set up what you're offering there, where you're located and everything. So we're in Greenpoint. We're in Old Sponge Factory, which is really cool. It's predominantly photography studios and recording studios and our little space. You know, it's a clubhouse, which is tied to the membership club. The membership club is not exclusive. The idea was to be inclusive. It's$15 to visit for a day pass or$30 for a monthly pass. The idea is that anybody can come and experience what you're saying, specialty coffee or the world of specialty coffee, whether it be the gear, whether it be the community, whether it be just drinking the coffee, whether it be the beans from a bunch of different roasters.

16:39But one of the things about the clubhouse and having this physical space is that, as you mentioned, the equipment can be tremendously cost prohibitive. So that's one of the main things that the clubhouse or the physical space gives you is the opportunity to try a bunch of this equipment, whether it is because it's too cost prohibitive or whether it's because you want to just try it once, whether you want to get a sense of what it's like before you buy it or invest in it. So that's one big piece of it. And we have a number of different espresso machines. We have a wide range of grinders all the way from the$150 hand grinder we were talking about all the way up to a number of what are called grailed or endgame grinders that are$4 ,000,$5 ,000,$6 ,000.

17:21very sophisticated espresso machines where it's like a computer attached to the espresso machine and very simplified ones like the lever one we were talking about, similar to what I started with. And then you have a lot of, not even a lot, a mausoleum of different drippers, many of which are the established kind of few that the coffee world really appreciates. And then also on the contemporary side, or I like to call it the discovery side a little bit more, the ones that are latest and greatest or in vogue or super trendy. You have the Hario models. You have some other, I would say, more rarer drippers.

18:04I think it's a good point because you can enter the studio and decide your journey. You can definitely focus on espresso if that's what you're thinking about. I mean, the$6 ,000 grinder is grailed. That's a lot. So you can play around the sophisticated gear or you can just try a bunch of different drippers. How does it work with the coffees? And then we have coffees available from all over the world. You know, coffee is really cool in that it can only be grown in a certain number of countries or it's a certain climate that is required to grow coffee. But it's still quite a big variety. But in terms of the roasters, it's incredible.

18:37You can find roasters in every nook and cranny of the world. Yeah. So we try to have as great of an assortment as we can of international roasters and all the way down, you know, coffee, especially specialty coffee these days has become quite expensive, not just on the equipment side, but on the coffee side as well. And we try to have a great assortment of, same as the drippers, as I was saying, same sort of sentiment, not just established players, but latest and greatest, who's in vogue, who's new and exciting, who's upcoming. I really believe in sense of discovery. I think that's a really important piece of it.

19:14So if we can introduce people to new roasters that they haven't heard of or that they had barely, you know, had any exposure to, I think that's what makes me really happy and excited. Yeah. So take us through some of the roasters because you enter and there's a menu. I mean, it's on a digital display and it's rotating and you have a little bit of e-com too. You can buy directly from Huna and you're doing the sourcing. But if you enter the space, you get to choose your coffees. Yeah. Tell us about some of these roasters. I picked up a couple of good ones myself. So we have a really nice assortment of different roasters from all over the world.

19:48In terms of the U.S., you have roasters like Aviary, roasters like Hydrangea, roasters like Native. Aviary is in the Bay Area. Hydrangea is in, I can't remember if it's Dallas or Austin, but it's in Texas. You have Aviary, who's in Ohio, run by a good friend of mine, Christopher Ferran, who does an excellent job. Then you have a lot of these French roasters that we were talking about earlier. we were talking about the cafes, but the roaster scene in France is also really, really incredible. One of my favorites is Datura, run by another good friend of mine, Loic, in Paris. Substance, which is widely considered the best roaster and cafe in the world, run by an incredible gentleman named Joachim.

20:32Lately, the specialty coffee world, as well as myself, have been really enamored with Asian roasters, in particular Chinese roasters. So there's one that I'm really into right now called Gu & Co based out of Chengdu, China. And what makes them really interesting is that when you, I'm getting really into the weeds here, but when you're into specialty coffee, you start to notice the same coffees with different roasters because there are only so many places that you can buy the green from, right? And a lot of the Western world is buying their green from the same places. Yeah, you get like Humbala Estate in Ethiopia, or you'll get certain coffees from Columbia, et cetera, et cetera.

21:12Exactly. So when you start to look at these Asian roasters, they're not sourcing their green always from the same places as the Western world. Interesting. There's a real interesting variety that you see in terms of some of these Asian roasters. Big Sur is another one out of Shanghai that's really cool. Exposure Therapy out of Singapore. So we start to try to have a really great assortment of not just what's in vogue, not just what's established, but as I said, something that can give you a sense of discovery. I want to ask you a broad question. You know, what is most misunderstood about coffee by people who actually care about coffee?

21:47So people who like myself are passionate, and we have our routines, and we have our subscriptions. But I think, you know, you're going to a different level. What's kind of something that we're all missing? I think that, and it's not a knock on anyone. I don't want it to sound negative, because everybody has their own sort of ritual with coffee, I would say. And for a lot of people, it's not just about ritual. It's also about necessity. A lot of people depend on coffee or caffeine to, like I was saying about my parents earlier, to start their day or just for energy. It's funny in the second wave of coffee, a lot of historians attribute the Industrial Revolution to coffee.

22:29Oh, sure. You could have all of a sudden machines could work overnight but you needed humans to run those machines overnight and all of a sudden coffee could power that. But going back to your question in terms of what's most misunderstood, as I said, there's a ritual and people have their habits of how they want their coffee. And I think that that has led to a lot of sameness in terms of just giving yourself that dose or that shot of caffeine. And basically what I'm getting at is medium and dark roasts. Yes. That's probably the biggest misunderstood piece about coffee today. Because a lot of, you know, you see it on the, you're in a grocery store or you're in a specialty coffee shop and you see the, you know, grapefruit, passion fruit and tangerine.

23:12That's what it should taste like. And the truth is that when coffee is medium or dark roasted, you can't really taste any of that because it's all been toasted away. It's very difficult to unlock that flavor. And light roast, which as I said, is kind of like the face of the fourth wave, really allows you to get all of those special flavors or notes out of it. And I think that's the most misunderstood thing is that you need to kind of focus on light roast. It's such a great point. I've spoken about before, but the overdevelopment of coffees is the greatest disservice to the farmers who grow this coffee to taste like something, to taste like the terroir where it's from.

23:55And if you're going medium dark, which of course has its moments in our day. It's like a dark roast for certain types of espressos used in drinks with milk works perfectly great. So you're not knocking that. I'm not knocking that. But to really focus on light roast and actually talk about agriculture. And then so the terroir, the green, and then into the roasting, the skills of calling out those flavors. And then you layer on like fermentation, the co-ferments, which I think is part of the fourth wave as well. A hundred percent. That's another big piece of it is all this different processing. I mean, it's just on steroids because there's so much interest and there's so much curiosity.

24:33And there's these producers, they call them rockstar producers now who are kind of really pushing the agenda. And the face of that is in Colombia. You have these rockstar producers like Sebastian Ramirez and Wilton Benitez who are huge names, A-lister names in the coffee industry in terms of the face of the Colombian scene. Another one is, he's less about the processing, but another rock star producer is Pepe Hijan based out of Ecuador. And these are names that people really admire in the industry. And they're really pushing the agenda in terms of what they're doing. Some people listening to this conversation might draw a parallel with where natural wine was in like 2018.

25:13Absolutely. And, you know, the trajectory of natural wine has been interesting. You know, I don't really focus on that field, so I'm not that educated. But there was like a moment where natural wine was like everywhere. And then it's kind of dissipated a little bit. Do you have any concerns about the trajectory of specialty coffee, especially these lightly roasted coffees that it might suffer a similar fate? Perhaps. I think it's all unknown at the moment. In terms of how I see the trajectory, it's very difficult for me to see it kind of subsiding. because when you look at just the interest, let me bring it back to myself.