Prepare to Love Your Disappointment

Strange way to start a review, right?

Strange, maybe… but this is an honest review, and honestly… if you come to Home Brewed Bar in Cerritos looking to grab the kind of drink you can just grab and go, the kind you forget about while you’re drinking because it’s just there…

Well, I’m sorry, but that’s just not gonna happen. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re gonna be disappointed.

Because when Home Brewed Bar says they just serve drinks, they’re being modest.

Really modest.

They serve magic.

Their magic comes in liquid form, in rich coffee roasts so artful that you can practically taste each seperate molecule as it comes up your straw, blended with the most amazingly on-point seasonal flavors. If coffee isn’t your thing, their teas are incredibly fresh and delicious, in some tried and true flavor combinations like Lavender Earl Grey, and some more unusual blends, like the fruity Happiness tea, which, honestly, does make me happy.

Right now, as I write this, I’m sipping my iced gingerbread toddy latte. The coffee is a rich base note, distinguishable from the fresh gingerbread flavor (and it is fresh), blended with the perfect amount of cream. Not too sweet, not undersweetened, which could be a problem anywhere but here. It hits every grace note absolutely dead on.

In the interests of science and journalism, my daughter got the gingerbread milk tea so I could compare the two. If the gingerbread toddy latte was a richer, darker (but not too dark) flavor, the gingerbread milk tea was a flawlessly-blended lighter flavor where the notes of the ginger were a little more pronounced, a little more astringent, which hit the sweetness level of the drink just right.

Practically the same ingredients, but tea vs. coffee, and the experiences were very different.

But it’s experiences like this that Home Brewed Bar deals in every single day. Tastes and combinations that you don’t find anywhere else, in master levels of drinkable alchemy that are just… magical.

The PB and Chocolate toddy latte? That was a sensory experience unlike any I’ve had before. As I started to drink it, the very air I was pulling up the straw tasted of coffee… when I finally got to the drink, the rich chocolate was actually the afternote that seemed to coat each separate molecule of coffee.

The drink actually tasted three dimensional, and my brief sip stayed in my memory so strongly during the car ride home that I stole another one when I got home (sadly, it wasn’t my drink. It was my daughter’s. And it was that good.)

But that’s not the end of the magic.

Walk into their open, sun-drenched store, with its blond wood, open tables with fresh flower arrangements and free books to read while you wait or while you chill, and you’re gonna find more than awesome drinks that aren’t on any one else’s menu.

You’re going to find friends.

The folks behind the counter are incrediby kind and always make their customers feel welcome.

You’re always greeted with a cheery call of “Welcome home!” If you’re a regular (and really, why wouldn’t you be?), you get more. How was your week? How are the kids? How was their last concert?

They remember that your kid loves their jalapeno kolaches (that’s another thing that’s magical there – their small but mighty food selection. Seriously. You want to sink your teeth into the pillowy, warm dough of a chorizo kolache before sipping on that beautiful iced matcha pistachio with free taro whip.)

Home Brewed Bar is the place in Cerritos where you get to build relationships along with your drink orders. Maybe that’s a little thing, maybe it isn’t. I don’t think it is.