ÍSLAND KAFFI [I]

With an entire population around that of a typical mid-sized city [334,300], Iceland’s appreciation and standard for quality is constantly on the rise. You see it in the music, in food, fashion, design… THE GLACIERS.

Whether it has to do with the island’s awe-inspiring landscapes, the natural Icelandic hard-working attitude, or the healthy push from a community so interconnected and inherently accountable to one another, there’s no place to go but up, and coffee is no exception. This gave me and my homie, Nick Brehmer, a good enough reason to explore the country’s emerging coffee scene on a good ol’ 9-day camping adventure. With the vision to catch the stories of locals involved in the island’s coffee community, as well as capture our craft in the wild with some nomadic brewing, we set out from Barcelona to the mid-Atlantic.

Along for the ride, we had huge support from Lagoon Car Rentals who kept us rolling with the Mountain Tent Camper for the entire trip and Original Grain watches to keep us on track with the 11 diminishing hours of daylight.

Arriving at the airport just before midnight on September 23, and driving out of the rental lot just after 1:00, we found a nice/partly-flooded parking lot just outside of Keflavík to NOT set up our tent in the pouring rain and spend our first Icelandic night in the front seats of the truck. Fresh and ready to go at around 7:00 (‘fresh’ being a relative term), we hit the road, hoping to make our first coffee stop at Pallett in Hafnafjörður... aka, Haf way towards Reykjavik.

pallett kaffi

Our first encounter with good ‘Icelandic’ cuisine, actually happened to be a delicious English Breakfast complete with blood pudding and runny eggs, and it put our stomachs in the right place. The espresso was a Kosta Ríka roasted by our future friends at Kaffibrugghusíd, and free refills of the Guatemalan batch brew just kept on coming until we felt like normal humans again. Being a Sunday, the owners Pálmar Þór Hlöðversson and David Anthony Noble were not around, but after quick chats with the friendly barista Rizza about the Icelandic coffee scene and promises to share what we found, we were on our way.

Amilka Lee [Te & kaffi]

Back in Barcelona, my good friend and fellow barista/coffee writer, Mariëlla Giljam, set us off on our first lead. Mariëlla met Cuban-born barista, Amilka Lee, during his last visit to BCN while she was working behind bar at Nomad Coffee. He had since assumed a position at Te og Kaffi’s latest coffee instalment right downtown Reykjavík, and Nick and I told him we’d be paying him a visit.

Finding parking for the monster truck and walking into Micro Roast | Te & Kaffi, we met the ball of smiles himself. He was busy pulling shots and pouring beautiful latte art behind the beautiful 2-group Black Eagle when we entered, but he graciously took the time to share his story and welcome us to his city.

Having lived in Pamplona, Spain for a number of years working in coffee and giving trainings, he decided to switch things up and move to Reykjavík to further his passions in the industry. He shared a bit of his insight.

“There are a lot of people getting into specialty coffee, but they’re making a few major mistakes in terms of hospitality.”

He explained how passion for coffee is wonderful, but needs to be complemented by good service practices. For example, the placement of the spoon and handle of the cup in a position where it’s most comfortable for the coffee-drinker to look at the lovely latte art right-side up, reach, stir, and drink; they might not even think about it, but it makes a difference.

After an obligatory yet brief exchange of Spanish, we got out of Amilka’s way and finished our coffee over a bit of trip planning (yes we were basically starting now). He mentioned that Te og Kaffi’s head barista trainer, Tumi Ferrer was downstairs teaching a course at the moment, but that we should really speak to him for an inside scoop on what's happening in the local coffee scene.

tumi ferrer [TE & KAFFI]

“Coffee refills, here in Iceland, are basically a birthright,”

Tumi explains as the three of us sit down later on that evening for a [small] beer at Mikkeller Reykjavík; If anyone knows about Icelandic coffee history and culture, it’s Tumi. Fortunately, the refills were something we had already experienced, and loved.

He was actually my first connection into the Icelandic coffee community. After reading his article at NordicCoffeeCulture.com , I got in touch and expressed my future intentions on visiting his land. Turned out we had a good friend in common, and he wrote me an amazing list of places I needed to visit as well as a handful of folks some cool things in the local industry. This really set Nick and I off on the right foot [feet].

Starting at one of the pioneers, Kaffitár, in 2006, Tumi gained a wide range of fundamental skills with coffee for several of years. Then in 2011, he took a 2-year sidestep from coffee to become head waiter at the critically-acclaimed, Michelin-star restaurant, Dill. Taking on the role of co-owner at what was then Kaffismiðja Íslands, he was involved in the transformation and rebranding into what is now Reykjavík Roasters. Eventually finding his place as Head of Training at Te og Kaffi in 2015, he’s clearly been killing it since day one.

On the topic of fine dining, we explored what might actually be the fourth wave of coffee... food. The concept being that good food should be served with good coffee, and all the new flavours and experiences that can be had when you pair specific food items creatively with specific origins or preparations of coffee. There’s clearly a lot of food for thought on this theme, but we took a step backwards and asked about the very traditional form of Icelandic brews.

“Ground caraway seed, ground coffee, filtered through a coffee sock [cloth filter]. People have been doing it like this for over 100 years.”

It’s essentially called Kúmenkaffi [Caraway Coffee], not to be confused with Cumin (don’t put cumin in it, but in many Germanic/Nordic languages, the nomenclature tends to be slightly blurred). Nevertheless, we were able to obtain some special Icelandic caraway through a great connection which I’ll explain in the next post, and made a version of our own while on the road which I'll just skip forward and share with you now. Tumi was a huge help for us, thanks man!

Reykjavík

Of course we took some time to wander around the 'smokey bay' (Reykjavík), dine on the official Icelandic hotdogs, nibble on fermented shark meat, and do a few other sight-seeing essentials before heading back to the inner-city campsite to set up for our first night in the tent.