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Germany isn’t well known for its coffee culture. Still Berlin is becoming the coffee capital of Europe with its huge variety of third wave cafés. The coffee scene is expanding almost every week.

I had the pleasure of chatting with The Barn Berlin’s roaster Jessica Greene. She has worked for 4.5 years at The Barn, which is regarded as one of the most advanced roasteries in the world.

Coffee beans are seeds that grow inside of a coffee cherry. We usually only use beans from the cherry but actually a lot of the taste of the coffee comes from the fruit. During recent year or so, the coffee world has realized that we are able to use the fruit as well.  I think we’re on a verge of a real game changer.

Pairing wine and food has been done for centuries. Fine dining restaurants have specific persons, usually called sommeliers, doing that job so why wouldn’t cafés do the same thing?

How to brew good coffee? This is the most common question that I get asked when I tell people what I do for living. So I decided to make a blog series where I go through different aspects of brewing good coffee. Let’s start with the fundamentals. These three things are always important when brewing good coffee, whether we are talking about filter coffee, espresso or traditional pot coffee.

Last time we focused on the fundamentals of coffee brewing. This time we will concentrate on different coffee brewing methods! I’m, as a Finn, a big fan of filter coffee. Many think that coffee is just a way to survive through your day, kind of fuel for the body but I think it’s really complex and interesting thing to experiment with. So many wonderful and clear tastes!

Let’s get really geeky for a moment and talk about coffee brewing recipes. I’ll will be talking about filter coffee brewing recipes this time, but same things concern espresso to some extent.

Latte art is quite often the most attractive thing for a new barista, and latte art is an excellent gateway to the exciting world of coffee. Latte art easy to start with, but to master latte art patterns, you need a lot practice and determination. Here are my tips that helped me to improve my latte art a few years ago!

Helsinki’s speciality coffee scene has developed a lot during recent years and it has caught up Stockholm’s and Copenhagen’s vibrant coffee cultures. This Helsinki Café guide will help you to find good extractions in the capital of Finland. Note that this guide is focusing mainly on coffee :)

Matt Perger is probably the biggest barista star in the world right now. He has won so many competitions that I won't even bother listing them here. Now he's pushing the quality aspect of coffee with his company Barista Hustle with e.g. designing the best possible cupping cups, tampers and milk pitchers. I had the pleasure to work with Matt Perger in a secret project few weeks ago, so of course I took the opportunity to sat down with him for a cup of coffee. Here's our discussion about coffee and life.

Barista's struggle with plant based milks is real. How to master all of them when the fact is that all plant based milks behave differently with coffee, especially when used in espresso based drinks? The only way is to try: test them and taste them. And that is exactly what I did! Here are my notes, I hope you will find them useful.

Vilnius Coffee Festival was  a long weekend packed with way too many cups of coffee, loads of cuppings, many good conversations about good coffee, new innovative machines and of course the excitement of Lithuanian Barista, Cup Tasting and Latte Art Championships! It was my first time in Vilnius Coffee Festival and my expectations were high but even still I was pleasantly surprised! 

Which are the must-go cafés in Amsterdam? Amsterdam is hosting World of Coffee 2018 but it isn’t necessary known for its cafés and roasteries in the same way as Berlin or London are - which is a shame I think. Amsterdam has many interesting places to offer in terms of coffee and otherwise it is in my opinion the most beautiful city in the world. Here are my tips for cafés to visit while in Amsterdam!

What happens in SCA Barista Skills Professional course? Couple months ago I completed the SCA Barista Skills Module with its'  last level: Professional. I spent three days in Amsterdam geeking the hell out of coffee, water and milk. My trainers were Onna and Florian from Stooker Coffee Roasting Co. This is what we did during the two training days and exam day.

It comes as a surprise for many that Finnish people consume the most coffee in the world per capita with our 10 kg consumption per person yearly. Though, Finland isn’t known for its coffee culture even though it is deeply rooted into our culture. Let’s see what Finnish coffee culture is like.

Making great espresso is difficult. It requires at least delicious coffee beans, excellent brewing recipe, good and clean espresso machine and grinder. Also you need to know the best practices on how to actually pull an espresso. Here are my tips about the practices and my routine how I make espresso.

Latte art is constant improvement and you can never be perfect or ready with it. It is only a matter how much you want to challenge yourself and use your imagination. In my previous latte art blog we went through the basics of how to make latte art. Let’s now go into deeper!

You might have heard a barista saying “this coffee is over-extracted”. Term over-extracted is just an easy way to say that it has too much bitter notes and the brewing went wrong some way. Let’s dig deeper into the world of extraction!

Tasting coffee is hard but one thing people always taste is the strength of the coffee. We can all agree that espresso is stronger so it has more flavour than filter coffee. But let’s again dig deeper into the world of strength of coffee!

World of Coffee is the biggest coffee fare in Europe and again this year thousands and thousands of coffee geeks gathered in Berlin to see what’s new in coffee. Also new coffee champions were crowned in World of Coffee -event!