Barista Magazine

DEC 2014 - JAN 2015

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The staff of Café Neun make a show of it at the shop in Markthalle Neun in Kreuzberg. MY FIRST TRIP TO BERLIN was in 2010. At the time, I naively assumed any city of this size—cosmopolitan, gritty and growing, tumultuous and fun—had to have a sparkling coffee universe. I was disappointed (and, in hindsight, uninformed at the time). That first morning, staying in a hotel near Berlin Mitte, we wandered the streets searching for an acceptable café, and were reaching our limit before finding a nice, bare-bones single room setup in splotchy white. Two round tables and chairs. A shelf with a pile of papers. A bar with some cakes and tortes. And next to it, an espresso machine whose make and model I forget. I made a few more trips there in the past couple years, but it wasn't until fall 2013 that I stumbled on No Fire No Glory, a cozy shop on a leafy street in Prenzlauer Berg serving roasts from Bonanza Coffee Roasters of Berlin and Coffee Collective of Denmark. Out the door and around the corner, I saw Godshot—The Future Urban Coffee Klub, and farther down, we stopped for an espresso at the Barn, buzzing with activity. Suddenly, in what seemed like no time there was great coffee around every corner. I returned and met up with Cory Andreen, the 2012 Cup Tasters Champ and founder of Café CK to learn more about the evolving scene. Kaffee back in Kaffee und Kuchen "Thirty years ago, Germany was one of the biggest importers of Colombian Arabica—and then the grocery stores started using coffee to undercut others in the market, and so the others did the same to compete," explains Cory. "That's sort of how Germany went from serving high-quality coffee to one of the biggest import- ers of Vietnamese Robusta." Sascha Spittel of Tres Cabezas Berlin cited the Warenkorb (a German version of the consumer price index) as one of the rea- sons for coffee's decline. People are very sensitive to changes in prices for the basics like bread, butter, and coffee. Once companies couldn't source high quality at a marketable price, the coffee land- scape changed, he says. And in many places, it's evident. Germany is big on coffee and cake—it's an afternoon tradition between 2 and 4 p.m. Most shops feature a reverently lit refrigerated counter with an array of intri- cately constructed cakes, which are regularly accompanied by a push-button cappuccino or a Milchkaffee. "Germans forgot about quality coffee, but they are curious to learn. Specialty coffee needs more attention," says Ralf Rüller, founder of the Barn, one of the top roaster-retailers in the growing crop of shops in Berlin. "Starbucks was important in the sense that people are willing to spend more, and now we have an opportunity to buy more quality coffee and pay farmers well." Given Berlin's burgeoning creative and tech scenes and tourist traffic, the market was ripe, but there were few roasters who could supply the shops that began to open up. The folks at No Fire No Glory were using coffees from Coffee Collective. Cory was bringing in Solberg & Hansen for his shop focused on fine filter coffees. The Barn was selling Square Mile. It all converged in 2010 at the Allegra European Coffee 55 www.baristamagazine.com

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