Crema Coffee Roasters

Roasted in-house since 2011

Coffee is roasted on a Diedrich IR-12, and the seasonal list turns over often enough that the board is worth reading before you order. Tres Banderas sits at the chocolate, caramel and stone-fruit end; Nectar de Urrao from Colombia goes the other way, with cherry blossom, raspberry and wildflower honey; rare lots such as La Esperanza Bourbon Ají from Huila appear when they can be got at all. The head roaster also buys the green coffee, so the buying and the roasting answer to one palate. The same roast reaches people several ways, across the café bar, retail shelves, wholesale accounts, subscriptions and even instant coffee.

Crema opened in January 2008 and brought roasting in-house in 2011. Rachel and Ben Lehman gutted a former Nashville gas station for the first café, a reuse story that still sits comfortably beside the zero-waste position the business takes now.

The downtown room

The Hermitage Avenue café is the downtown one, and it is built for staying: a working-space feel, a large loft patio, and enough history behind it that Nashville treats it as an institution. Classes run in a back room, covering espresso basics, latte art and brewing, which is the seed-to-cup education the company keeps returning to. The published brewing guides cover Chemex, Hario V60, AeroPress, French press, iced Chemex and Kalita Wave, so the teaching does not stop at the door.

The business has since reached East Nashville and Brentwood, the latter opening in 2023 as the fourth and largest café, and the same roast runs through all of them.

What to order

Order the coffee soda if you want the drink most particular to this bar. After that, keep the visit on the beans. A specialty drink usually arrives with a tiny shortbread cookie, which is the sort of detail that tells you how the counter thinks about service.

Use the roasting list as the map. If you like classic sweetness, take Tres Banderas. If you want fruit and florals, follow the Colombian releases, Nectar de Urrao or the rare Bourbon Ají when it is on. Beans, subscriptions, instant coffee and brewing equipment all cross the same counter, so a good cup can turn into a bag on the way out without much effort or much of a conversation.