"FIZZZ Für die Szenen-Gastronomie", 09/11 Writer: Benjamin Brouér, translated by T. Schoof


For three weeks, the Hamburg-based restaurant “Trific” became a pop-up-café. There were trainings, networking and experimentation. “Roasters & Baristi” – A groundbreaking project for the German Coffee- and Barista Community.

Michael daintily weighs 14 grams of coffee beans, grinds them, puts them in a plastic barrel and pours hot water over them. He monitors the brewing time with a stop watch, then puts the envelope on top of the barrel and presses the freshly brewed coffee in a cup. First sip, he looks at hist girlfriend Jennifer, they start to discuss. More coffee? Extend the brewing time? Variate the coarse? The AeroPress, an inelegant peace of plastic, is currently Michaels favorite toy – and his own coffee bar with focus on this and other brewing mehtods is his dream. In order to get closer to it, he came from Berlin to Hamburg to the “Trific”.

Next to all that, in the restaurant’s kitchen, Nicole Pilz of Berlin’s School of Coffee sketches the optimal pouring motion for a heart made of latte-art. This free training is attended equally by enthusiastic hobby baristi and professionals. Marcel Baehr for example, who offers handmade ice cream and delicious coffee specialties in his own “Emi’s Eiscafé” in Kiel. For some extra individuality, he wants to be trained in latte art and went to hamburg.


Encourage the Exchange!
“In the first ten days, more than 100 Baristi from more than 30 cities and abroad were here, and people from more than 40 coffee roasteries”, Andreas “Pingo” Felsen says, slightly tired, after the first half of the event he and his girlfriend Stefanie Hesse initiated. Since they took over the restaurant “Trific” with a pop-up bar, it is: networking at “Roasters & Baristi” during the day and roasting coffee for the business customers of their coffee business “Quijote Kaffee” (
www.quijote-kaffee.de) at night. The compensation for the lack of sleep: The industry’s marvelous feedback. Not only baristi and roasteries supported the excellent trainings, which were completely free, even some businesses have supported the project with personal and goods: Mahlkönig, Dalla Corte, Berlin School of Coffee, Ifbi and Kahla were sponsors. “‘Roasters & Baristi’ is, similar to the Pop-Up-Concept ‘Rollin-Restaurant’ in Berlin a new form of urban, themed gastronomy, which Khala, as innovator in the porcelain business, supports”, the chinaware manufacturer proclaims. Khala also stays in touch with the coffee scene during the development of new porcelain series.

Tastings, trainings in front of an espresso machine, speeches, cooking all about coffee, experimenting with equipment, and most of all: the exchange with like-minded people – With this, in Germany unique take, the Quijote-Roasters want to make a difference and empower the industry. “The baristi are networked relatively well via Facebook and the German Barista Guild. With the roasteries on the other hand, distrustfulness is widespread, they’re loners mostly. Exchange between the roasteries and the baristi could be better, too”, Andreas Felsen sums up. Currently, there are about 6000 small roasters in Germany with a market share of 3%. “I hope that many want to learn something and look for exchange.” Felsen and the also R&B organizers of the “Roestbar” Münster, together with ten other connected roasters, whose coffees were processed in Hamburg, set a good example. All participating roasteries connects the disposition to cooperate, an unconditional sense for quality and a modern form of communication, transparency of all aspects of the production that is. Andreas Felsen for example puts the coffee’s exact composition on his coffee packages, even discloses the roasting parameters and informs about his pricing, which he can keep low due to direct trade and waiver of intermediate trade – coffee roasting as OpenSource-Project.


Common Cause
Off the beaten path the inhabitant of hamburg, who has been working as importer for 13 years and as roaster for 8 years, also goes as far as cooperation with other associates is concerned: His project’s name: X-Roasting. Its purpose is to create an extraordinary coffee together with another roastery or barista. Inspiration for this project are vine dressers, the Terroiristes du Midi from the South of France, or brewers like the Gypsy Brewers from Denmark. Mutually, a roasting target is defined, for example “chocolate, heavy body, sirup”, then coffees with which such a blend can be created are looked for. Then the result is offered and marketed by both roasters. “Chocolate Rain”, for example, which the Quijote-Team developed together with the “Speicherstadt Kaffeerösterei”. Currently, Andreas Felsen and Stefanie Hesse work on a new X-Roast together with Nora Šmahelová and Björn Köpke, two very experienced baristi from Berlin. They are going for a single origin coffee with nice body and flavour of light fruit which is right for espresso and drip coffee at the same time.

Coffee fans can enjoy this coffee in Nora’s and Björn’s new Café in Berlin-Kreuzberg presumably by the end of the year. “It’s going to be a very simple Coffee Bar”, says Nora Šmahelová, jurywoman with the Barista Championship WBC, who also conducted a free professional barista training at R&B. “We’ll offer only one espresso at a time, but this one exclusively from various, shifting German roasteries. Additionally, we’ll offer many drip coffees, brewed with various methods.” Saying that, she fits the current, at least popular with baristi trend of going back to original coffee taste, which also was all over “Roasters & Baristi”. The brewing bar with its tools French Press, Syphon, Aeropress and Porcelain Filter were used high frequently to gain experience with these various brewing methods. To what extent the customers are into the puristic drip coffee remains to be seen. Nora Šmahelová agrees: “At first, you’ll have to introduce people carefully to the coffee and convince them. For example through suggesting they take their coffee without milk and sugar.” The anticipated taste often differed from the actual one, what came through the way of roasting: “The traditional roasteries tend to roast too dark which allows the roast flavours to cover the natural flavours of the coffee. The new generation roasts slightly lighter to emphasize the natural fruit and sourness of the coffee.” With a breeze of jasmine, bergamot and currant, these coffees aromatically almost near tea.

Even though many through Latte-Macchiato etc. socialized coffee consumers are nowhere near such a tasting experience – zeitgeist and optics pledge for a revival of drip coffee.


Drip Coffee – The time is right
“When you prepare a coffee with a vacuum coffee maker, a syphon, it looks spectacular and increases curiosity”, thinks Nora Šmahelová. Prepared all fresh in front of the customer, these coffees have a certain impact. Additionally, there’s the interesting historical aspect which pushes communication with the guest, since some brewing methods are centuries old. The vacuum method for example is believed to have been developed around 1830 in Berlin. “Ingredients and taste are important, not quantity”, claims the top-barista. For that reason, there are predominantly served smaller drinks in small, alternative coffee shops (no 0,5l-Milkmix-Cans like in the big franchises). Back to natural flavour – this trend is also embodied by the current German Champion Wolfram Sorg (Backyard Coffee) with his victorious Signature Drink. “So far, these drinks always went in the direction of mascarpone or something like that, which tampered whith the taste of coffee”, Sorg says, who periodically informs about his work on his blog 
wolfredo.de. “Basically, I wanted to sustain the coffee’s nativeness.” Therefore, he roasts his Ethiopian coffee Sidamo Nekisse in a way that amplifies the already present intense breezes of fruit and berries (strawberry, raspberry and blueberry). With distillery equipment especially designed for him, he blows water vapor over raspberries. The product: neutral, distilled water with a breeze of raspberry. With this water, he dilutes his Sidamo-Espresso to reduce the distinct sourness and boost the gentle fruit flavors. Then he puts it on ice and fills it up with soda. “Simple” coffee and water – served in a wine glass as cold beverage. Coffee 2011!