Voyager Craft Coffee — Restaurant in Santa Clara

This review only pertains to a bag of beans from Chikkamagaluru, India. Tl;dr if you're looking for a quality cup of specialty coffee, please avoid it. I also wouldn't assume every other one of their roasts is as mediocre as this one, so also keep that in mind. I dropped by the store with high hopes of finding quality beans locally but I was beyond disappointed when on the first brew with my go-to Melitta recipe I found overpowering carbony notes, to put it mildly. My first instinct was that I overbrewed it for what it was so in the following days I kept adjusting, switched to gentle pours on a Kalita to get a more even extraction, lowered the temp down to the mid 80s C and even though I despise changing grind size, I went coarser - from my tried and true filter size of 25 comandante clicks up to the french press territory of 29. All of which I don't expect to do on what is supposedly quality coffee. I even gave it a go on the aeropress just to not leave any of my options unexplored. In the end this was a good exercise as to how you can't brew away ashy flavors. Notwithstanding, hidden in that roasty profile I was able to get a faint, distant hint blueberry sweetness out of it though none of the fruitiness or acidity I was hoping from the gorgeous coffee bag. Sad to say I gave up on applying any more heat than what those poor beans must have endured and fingers crossed milk is the only additive that the cold brew requires tomorrow morning. One more note is I that this was by far the bag with the largest percentage of broken/chipped beans I've ever seen, yet we can't conclude anything from this. I want to believe these are actually ethically sourced, high quality beans and that ideally the roast or something else went wrong along the way. The alternative is that these were subpar beans and the roasters did what they could; this is the intended product and they get away selling vibes because that seems to matter most nowadays. I may give them another chance one day buy paying premium price for a meager 250g of their coffee literally left me with a bad taste...

Update as of 3/18/2020: Sam and Lauren continue to run this place like superheroes. Not only do they have great drinks and beans, but they are, quite simply, good neighbors. This was the first coffee shop my wife and I tried after we got married back in 2016 - when our marriage and this shop were still quite new. We keep going back because we love it. The way they're handling the covid crisis right now is nothing short of upstanding. I couldn't be any more proud to be a customer. I would give this place ten stars if I could.

Update as of 5/2/18: the new Tokyo drink is insanely delicious. It is so good. I can't even believe how good it is.

I last updated my review here six months ago. Six months and tons and tons of lattes and iced mochas later, I continue to come back. Sometimes it's crowded and I have to wait, but it's a price I'm willing to pay for the tremendously good service and tremendously good drinks and food. I used to wander the south bay looking for a good cup of coffee. I still wander from time to time, but this is home now.

They've got great customer service. For example, last week I was a klutz and knocked over my wife's drink and decided to make a disaster. Sam comp'd us a drink to make up for it. I come in and the person at the register often recognizes me and is always friendly and outgoing. To people who haven't been in before they do a great job explaining what they offer and what they're about. They are an incredibly busy shop, but they actually care about their customers, and it shows.

Sam and Lauren really do have a great operation here. I'm lucky because it's right down the street. It's the best coffee shop in the south bay that I've found. You will not be...

I'm no longer able to recommend Voyager despite being a loyal customer.

Today a cat was brought into the coffee shop and placed on a surface where food is consumed. Not only is this illegal and a health hazard, people with allergies to animals should not be exploded to this. I happen to have serious allergies to animals so I asked the staff to do something.

Instead of managing the situation, the manager comes back to me and informs me the cat is hypo allergenic. That's it. No concern over health, laws or the allergies of others. I explained that no animal is hypoallergenic and the issue is their skin and saliva, something that cannot be fixed. Still, no help. In fact, the whole staff just stared at this whole conflict played out.

I had to manage FOR management! The woman who originally approached them was clearly not used to confrontation of any kind and disappeared after this, so I had to speak to this irate and defensive couple who tried every trick in the book to argue their case that a cat deserved to be on the counter in a place that serves food, even resorting to raising his voice and calling me entitled. 🤦🏻‍♀️. He only left to sit outside after we threatened to call the police to get their opinion on the actual LAW that animals are not allowed inside of restaurants and cafes.

As an allergy sufferer and person who doesn't want my food or drink contaminated with animal secretions, I felt very unsupported and unwelcome here. I recommend some training on the law, advocacy for customers who reasonably don't want animals where their food is, and leadership/conflict resolution training. Also doing more to prevent fake service animals and the general entitled public from bringing in...