What Makes Danish Coffee so Special? A Tour of Copenhagen's Best Coffee Shops

Today we are in Copenhagen, the Danish capital, full of excellent coffee. In this video we will take you on a tour of some of the best coffee shops you can find, starting with probably one of the most famous and popular coffee shops and roasteries of the country, La Cabra. La Cabra is mostly about like the variety and like transparency in coffee, so we always want to have a lot of different coffees on offer, a lot of like rotating coffees and kind of showcase like to our customers that there's a lot of different things out there and kind of push a little bit the boundaries, so we have something like 150 to 200 coffees per year in the offer list and then have kind of a seasonal menu that rotates all the time, like maybe two, three times a week we change a lot of the coffees on the menu. Something we really want to do is also transparency just in flavor, so I think even when we talk about the flavors of the certain coffees we have today, what the farmer is doing in the coffee farm, where the coffee is from and what variety it is, and we want to roast them all in a very transparent way. I think we focus a lot on like the stories of where the coffee is coming from, who the farmers are, we do a mix of sometimes working with farmers for a long time, year after year after year, but we're also not shy to buy maybe only one or two years from someone that there's kind of certain special lots that we're interested in. La Cabra is also a place that reflects the Danish taste for design. Our design philosophy, like we have a kind of a particular idea of how we want the customer experience to look like, the packaging we use, the uniforms that we wear. So you will for sure find tasty espressos and if you love a good pour over, this is the perfect place for you with its open brew bar, where your coffee is meticulously brewed in front of your eyes. Smells floral. That's a natural. Super sweet. Next is a very cool and more down-to-earth place called Hip Hop. Just trying to do the best we can with coffee in the most easy environment possible. So trying to be as inclusive as possible, but still serve something that's impressing people, I think. Whereas maybe the norm in Scandinavia is a little bit like fancy, you know. Let's do it really well. Let's just be ourselves, you know. I don't like wearing aprons, you know, so I don't want to wear an apron. We'll just serve good coffee. Try to be a little bit more down-to-earth, you know. We just source and roast coffees that we think are tasting really nice. We don't have like a massive offering. We have like five-ish coffees, four or six coffees at a time. We just cup and if we think it's nice and we want to serve it, then we buy it. We don't have like a massive, you know, like difference between like a wholesale list and a retail list or anything like that. We just kind of have the coffees that we think are going to be really good and are applicable to our style as well. And then we just get those in and serve them. And right now we have a lot of Latin American coffees actually at the moment, but waiting on some Ethiopian and waiting on some Kenyan as well. We don't roast here. We roast at a shared space in Refn. So we rent time on a roaster and then get in there for a day, have a really busy day, then clean up and leave. I really like working the Hip Hop. Like I like having a Hip Hop playlist on. It's nice, but Hip Hop is kind of inclusive, right? And everyone can kind of like enjoy, well enjoy the music, but also just the vibe and the scene that it creates, right? I think like we have dudes coming in in suit and tie and we have a playlist on and they'll be like, is this Madlib? And we're like, yeah, it is. But how do you know? You know, it's like, it's kind of like this thing where like, I think at one point or another, everyone kind of has dipped their toes in that kind of sense, but the vibe that creates and, you know, the environment we can come into is still, it kind of creates that idea of just keeping it pretty low key and down to earth. And yeah, and I think that's nice. It's nice to have that vibe for people. Next is another very famous shop and roastery, April. April is probably one of the most beloved and well-known Scandinavian roasteries among coffee enthusiasts, where many skilled baristas have worked and people come to visit from around the world. April focuses on direct trade with their partner farmers and serve very rare, exciting coffees. Today we have got a lot of different coffee, the regular filter and the espresso from the Colombian, the washed pink coffee. Very good, juicy, red fruits, you know. You can choose both filter and the espresso and everything, Gesha variety. Gesha basically picked as a strain directly from Ethiopia, so it's not a Panamanian Gesha or Guatemalan Gesha, it's an Ethiopian Gesha. They have a very, very small amount of it, I think like 20 kilos. We have all of it and they run it as a washed stem fermentation, which is basically just how they process coffee in Kenya. So you pick it, you rest it in an open tank, so no closed tanks, and make sure it's temperature controlled, so it doesn't go above 21 degrees Celsius. You defold it and then you push it into basically just standard kind of canals, just wait and then try it. That's very interesting. Tasting such rare coffees can be a bit pricey, but it certainly is a unique experience. If you're looking for a chill place with good coffee and many options at more affordable prices, you can check out Roast. This shop specifically, it's been here for six years. The roastery has been for more than eight years at our other location. Started off as like a one-man show, our boss, he was the one like roasting, he was the one brewing at the bar, so it was just him in the basement and a small roaster. And I think even now, it's still kind of us in a small basement with a small roaster, but like now there's a few coffee shops as well and it's a small operation, so just three shops. We roast on a small six kilo roaster, I think it was a small operation, but it's just the vibes. That's what we're here for, I think. We can make everything for the same price, it's the same price for all of our beans, even though obviously coffee varies in price from Ethiopia to the geishas, but we have everything the same price. All of our pour-overs are same price, even the geishas, if you want to try them, we can make anything as an espresso or as a pour-over. The whole point is for the customer, so you can try stuff out. Also like sizes in terms of the milky drinks, the same price, like large, medium, small ones, so accessibility. If you visit, we have cool playlists, there's usually some Linkin Park playing, if you'd like. It gets a bit noisier in a roastery, but it's a cool place to hang out. Another famous roastery in the city is Prolog. Roastery and cafe. Prolog is a popular place to hang out at the heart of the trendy meatpacking district. Prolog opened its doors in 2016. The place was originally intended to be a temporary location, but thanks to its success, the bar became permanent and one of the most popular places to drink coffee in Copenhagen. One of the owners is even a Danish barista champion. They roast their own beans in the light Scandinavian style and their selection changes often with the seasons, meaning there's always something new and exciting to taste. It's especially great to sit outside on a sunny day and enjoy their tasty brews or refreshing iced coffee. Last but not least is the renowned Coffee Collective. One of the first to offer specialty coffee in Copenhagen, the Coffee Collective started in 2007 with one small roastery. 17 years later, the Coffee Collective includes eight coffee shops in Copenhagen and one in Aarhus. They have several champions of national and international coffee competitions on their team. The Coffee Collective is one of the pioneers of the Scandinavian style of coffee bar, with its distinctive light roasts. They have traded coffee directly from farmers since 2008 and regularly visit the farms they work with. The Coffee Collective is more than just coffee shops, it also has a coffee school where you can learn about coffee, flavors and brewing with various courses and workshops. It's perfect for those who want to dive deeper into the world of coffee. Copenhagen is famous for its great coffee, but what is the coffee culture actually like? Very well known for having like one of the best I think coffee cultures in like Western Europe or in Europe in general. I mean I would say it's a lot of black coffee, a lot of filter coffee and I think also like the kind of Nordic light roast is popular in all of Scandinavia and in Denmark. People are also interested and willing to ask and pay a little bit of money for any type of food experience in Denmark. People go to restaurants and more in the supermarket. Where I'm from in Germany people pay much less for when you charge you know six, seven euros for a cappuccino. You get some some questioning looks and the same in the supermarket or in a restaurant. I think people are happy to pay a premium price for a premium product, have a good experience. So there's a culture for fine dining here as well and I think it translates to coffee as well. Everything is a little bit elevated, the quality, the sensory experience as well. There's a special attention paid to that. There's a little bit of everything for everyone. I think everyone's plowing their own field in a way like they're all kind of doing their thing and respectively it's all good but everyone is like into their own style you know and and it's cool man because there's enough people here that are appreciating like people trying to do something cool and so they get around and taste it and it's awesome. Ten years ago it was way different. La Cabra coming to Copenhagen and then Coffee Collective getting bigger and bigger and now like more and more specialty roasters popping up. We all kind of go to each other's shops like I'm heading to a cafe now. We all know that we're in like you know the same team trying to grow the specialty scene here so I think it's a pretty friendly man. These were some of the best and most popular places in the city amongst coffee lovers. Of course there are plenty more that we didn't have time to visit and if you have any suggestions or any favorites let us know in the comments. We hope you enjoyed this video. If you did give us a thumbs up, click subscribe and ring the bell if you want to join us for more coffee adventures.