The Wormhole Coffee

The Wormhole Coffee is a café in Wicker Park, and the place where Halfwit Coffee Roasters began. Halfwit was founded in 2012 as the brainchild of the Wormhole team, a way to give baristas and customers “a panoramic understanding of coffee, from the first leaf to the final sip”, and it now roasts in Pilsen, where visits are by appointment. Halfwit combines beverage science with service and hospitality, visits its partners at origin, pays fair prices, trains its wholesale partners on a holistic programme and keeps growth from being its defining goal, “because no one should take themselves, or their coffee, too seriously”.

The Wormhole pours Halfwit and a featured guest roaster beside it. Halfwit’s range is short: the Triforce espresso blend, half Ethiopia and half Guatemala, fully washed, with clementine, caramel and fudgesicle in the roaster’s notes, the Moonbat blend, a Popayán Reserve from Colombia, a Peru and a decaf Guatemala. The guest programme has brought San Francisco’s Four Barrel, Portland’s Heart and Sterling, and JBC Coffee Roasters from Madison to the brew bar.

Signature drinks have included The Great Northern, a winter drink that starts with a double shot, and Everything Nice, an autumn drink built on a chai-like syrup of herbs, roots and spices from both hemispheres. Halfwit sells its beans whole bean online.

Photograph: The Wormhole Coffee