To Bay Area coffee aficionados, nobody roasts better beans than Blue Bottle. Unfortunately, until recently, Blue Bottle’s beans and brews were scarce within the city limits. A smattering of top restaurants like Fifth Floor and A16 serve post-meal Blue Bottle coffee drinks. On Saturdays outside the Ferry Building, Blue Bottle parks a coffee cart. Frog Hollow Farm serves a limited drink menu, but no beans, at their Ferry Building stall. Other than that, it requires a trip across the Bay Bridge to Blue Bottle’s Beach Street headquarters in Oakland. That all changed on January 23, 2005, when Blue Bottle founder James Freeman opened a kiosk in the garage of a Hayes Valley benefactor.

Located on a residential alley known as Linden Street, the sleek kiosk only features two mismatched chairs, an end table, and a blonde wood counter to stand at; be prepared to take your drink to go.

There are four cookie jars on the counter, including ginger scones made by the building owner’s wife, moist rectangles studded with spicy strands of ginger. The other three jars are filled with sweets from Miette Patisserie in the Ferry Building: almond shortbread cookies, peanut butter cookies, and chocolate macaroons.

Tiny cookies cost $1 for 2, with flavor that’s worth several times the price; but don’t tell James Freeman. The macaroons are $1.75, and solid.

Bags of beans for sale included Giant Steps, Alma Viva, Roman Espresso, Chiapas, and 100% Yemen Sana’ani.

The streamlined drink menu is in blue print on a door-high sheet of white plastic. There are only seven coffee drinks: espresso, macchiato, caffe latte, caffe mocha, individually prepared drip coffee, café au lait, and New Orleans style iced coffee. Non-coffee beverages are limited to hot chocolate, carbonated and flat bottled water, and Bernie’s Best Apple Juice.

By a narrow margin, New Orleans style iced coffee ($3.50) was my favorite drink, blending coffee, Clover organic milk, sugar, and ground chicory.

[FYI: Chicory became part of the New Orleans culinary lexicon during stretches of history when coffee was either too expensive, or unavailable, and chicory was roasted instead. Chicory has no caffeine.]

The mocha ($4) and hot chocolate ($3) use Sur del Lago, 65% cacao bittersweet chocolate from Bay Area chocolatier E. Guittard.

According to the Guittard website, Sur del Lago is a “single origin varietal” harvested from trees of Criollo and Trinitario in Venezuela’s Sur del Lago region that has “subtle hints of red berry fruit.” I don’t know about that, but it certainly assisted in producing a great mocha and hot chocolate. Of the other drinks I tried, Blue Bottle’s cappuccino was also outstanding.

The Blue Bottle origin story dates back to 1683, when the Turks invaded Vienna. According to the Blue Bottle website, Wiener Franz George Kolshitsky slipped through the Turkish lines to recruit the Polish troops to their cause. The Poles routes the Turks and the invaders fled on September 13, leaving everything behind, including mysterious beans. Having lived in the Arab world, Kolshitsky knew these beans were coffee. Using the money bestowed on him by the mayor of Vienna for his heroic deed, Kolshitsky bought the Turks’ coffee and opened Vienna’s first coffee house, The Blue Bottle. In 2002 in Oakland, tired of frou-frou coffee drinks, James Freeman began roasting traditional coffee, vowing, “I will only sell coffee less than 48 hours out of the roaster to my customers, so they may enjoy coffee at its peak of flavor. I will only use the finest organic, and pesticide-free, shade-grown beans.” In honor of Kolshitsky, he named his business The Blue Bottle Coffee Company.

James Freeman maintains a rigid environmental philosophy that applies to everything from his roaster (Infrared gas, which is 75% more efficient) to his bags (cellophane, since they’re biodegradable). Freeman even donates coffee bean chaff to area organic gardeners, which helps keep slugs and snails at bay.

Even if you’re not an environmentalist, it’s still worth visiting this Hayes Valley alley.