Life is tough

A summary of my first week in Stockholm: a party with great food and amazing beer, very friendly people, a monster 90kg Probat roaster, different Panaman coffees every day (very nice all of them), nice beers and early mornings. Could be worse, I think…

Bread shops are something that Helsinki doesn’t have, unfortunatelly.

To get to know the company a little bit before getting to pour any cappuccinos I worked at the roastery in Tullinge this week. Although having known that the roastery is quite large the size of it really surprised me – not in a bad way though. Two Probat roasters, 90- and 30kgs, a packing machine that also labels packages and ever coffee equipment you could imagine – slightly larger scale than at Kaffa (though they can’t really be compared).

The week was really interesting – it again proved that there’s always a lot more to learn about coffee. I also got to taste the new La Hacienda Esmeralda Geisha lot from Panama. Amazingly clean, balanced with mind-blowing floral notes. It actually made me feel like crying and being the most expensive coffee in the world with a price tag of some 350 dollars / kg in green beans  it also should (although I think that no coffee should be bought because of high price tag or because it has won a competition if the roaster doens’t really regard the taste worth the price). I managed to get a bag of extraordinary Ethiopian coffee that the Swedish barista champion Emil Eriksson is going to use in the WBC and used to win the Swedish Barista Cup. David Haugaard also kindly gave me a bag of his Ethiopian Gibi Natural. Some Panaman natural is also on the home brewing list.

You don’t find this nice and tasty cappuccinos in Helsinki every day.

On Monday I will start at the Johan&Nyström concept store in Södermalm (just for two days though – I’m off to London on Tuesday evening!). Hopefully I’ll be pouring better rosettas and pulling better shots than Niki when I get back to Helsinki in August (yes, that’s a bet. A beer?)

I’m really looking forward getting to work with that beautiful Victoria Arduino lever machine.

One thing I’m particulary pleased with is the friendly atmosphere within barista community. I’m not saying that we don’t have such in Finland but here it’s perhaps a little more sophisticated. The unwelcoming and competing atmosphere is something I don’t like – it’s lose-lose -situation if coffee establishments (and baristas) don’t like each other and refuse to learn from others.

Drop Coffee, a great place to have a chat with the barista. You learn something every time.

If Finland is a welfare state with strict laws and limits, then Sweden is a gestapo state. At the age of 18 one is allowed to buy beer – and now we’re not talking about any beer, it’s one with maximum of 3,5% alcohol! 20-year-olds are allowed to buy stronger stuff from the state controlled Systembolaget which, ironically, has a very nice selection of beers. Some shops get new batches from Swedish micro-breweries every week and to make it even worse they price the beers absurdly – nearly all of them are less than 2€ a bottle!

Thank God I managed to acquire some comfort for after work exhaustion.

Tagline: I’m not chickening out but drinking some more Panaman coffee.