Rochester brews both coffee and beer -— and makes this coffee beer

Great coffee stouts start with great coffee. The best examples I’ve had have all come from a careful consideration of how to meld brews of beans and barley. Kansas City’s new Rochester Brewing & Roasting Co. (2129 Washington St., KCMO) has a built-in advantage on this front. The cavernous West Crossroads space both roasts and brews. Rochester is named for an 1800s vintage brewery in the same hood and operates a five kilo roaster, a five barrel brewery and a huge taproom with ninety seats. For the stout, they blend two coffees — natural Brazil and a chocolatey Guatemalan San Vicente Pacaya — during brewing and secondary fermentation to create an appropriately rich pint that’s nonetheless balanced enough to be sessionable. You can get that beer starting at six-thirty in the morning (reverse happy hour goes until nine) with its coffee cousin as a sidecar.