Nordic Style Cafe

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One of the attractions of making coffee is that there is no place to go during the holiday: exhibitions, competitions, farms, bakeries, etc., located all over the world, can go specially; even if you put aside official business, take time off on vacation, and drink coffee in different cities, they will still gossip about other people's brewing equipment, and even ask for paper packaging, and comment on everything. For the annual itinerary, I will try my best to visit the upstream producing countries and observe the downstream industries. Hope to experience the pulse of the market. This year, I fulfilled the agreement I made two years ago and set foot in northern Europe for the first time.

The friend's first reaction was: "is the Scandinavian coffee good?" He obviously doesn't read this column very often.

Coffee shop "Nordic style" is the most fashionable.

The Nordic position is outside the coffee belt (coffee belt). The weather is cold enough to freeze Arabica coffee trees to death. The purpose of my visit is to feel the coffee culture that leads Europe and even the world. Around 2010, many cafes in London used "learning from Australia" as their selling point, but now the closest thing to the trend is Nordic style. What about the European continent, led by Italy? Many operators will laugh and describe it as "traditional and old-fashioned". The difference is the expression and pursuit of the original flavor of coffee.

Fine coffee should be made in a technological way, as well as appreciate the meticulous flavor of coffee beans in different planting environments and through different roasting techniques. The so-called "Australian coffee culture" is often based on milk coffee. In order to highlight the coffee flavor in large cups of fresh milk, Australian baking style is generally deep. This will lead to a reduction in the personality of coffee beans. Without milk, it is easy to make people feel anxious. Benjamin, an old friend who works in the famous local store Campos, once admitted to me that in order to accommodate the public, he wanted to stir-fry the auction batches of Feicui Village garden brothel beans (jasmine and orange are sweet, so the degree of baking should disappear! (he also feels guilty about this.

So do Nordic people know much about coffee?

Before the trip, the author thought that Norway and Sweden were synonymous with "design" and "taste". The purpose of a special visit is to steal a teacher to learn. But everything turned out to be a beautiful misunderstanding! It's not that their coffee waves have a false reputation, but that the trend "happens" to land on the right soil, just like a fish in water. I will talk about this in another article.

Norwegian people keep their hands on coffee for three meals.

Norwegian people love coffee, in part because the government regulates the sale of alcohol. Before and after three meals, and even at night, when families talk about the past, the citizens of the country always "keep their hands on coffee", and four cups a day are regarded as leisure. So Norway's per capita coffee consumption is among the highest in the world. Before the discovery of the stone oil field became rich, Norwegian coffee was mostly obtained from Brazil's "salted fish for coffee" agreement established during the war.

But now that their living standards are rising, they will not hesitate to buy the best coffee beans from all over the world: COE coffee is too cheap for HK $80 per cup of three fried spring rolls in Norway.

In the next few articles, the author will share what I have seen and heard during a coffee trip in Norway and Sweden.

Patrick Tam (owner of the boutique coffee shop Knockbox, approved barista of the American and European boutique coffee associations, CQI recognized cup tester, Cup of Excellence's first Hong Kong resident judge, www.facebook.com/Knockboxcoffee)