Speicherstadt Coffee

Speicherstadt Coffee Roastery

Planning for the opening of Speicherstadt Coffee began back in 2003 when the free port boundary was moved to the southern port area and the retail agreement was lifted.

After numerous negotiations with the historic preservation authorities and the Environmental Protection Agency, the roastery was finally able to move into its building. In the heart of Hamburg's historic Speicherstadt - in one of the old brick buildings - lies the Speicherstadt Kaffeerösterei.

Founded in 2006 by Thimo Drews and Andreas Wessel-Ellermann, it is located in an old warehouse building dating back to 1888. Both managing directors come from families that are already second-generation coffee traders.

Today, the Probat roasting plant is located in the Speicherstadt Café at Kehrwieder 5, and every visitor can look over the roaster's shoulder as he roasts. The specialty roastery pays particular attention to single-origin coffees, such as Demeter Honduras. Each variety is roasted individually and blends are only created afterwards. In this way, each coffee is refined according to its individual roasting profile. Through gentle drum roasting, the coffees develop their unique character and taste.

The roastery deals directly with the farmer and also visits them regularly. Equally important to them is sustainability and responsibility for people and nature. With projects such as Orang Utan Espresso, a portion of the proceeds is donated to protect the orangutans in the growing country and preserve their biotope. 

Care, experience and passion

To get a perfect coffee in the cup requires a lot of human influence. All steps require a lot of care, experience and passion.

Starting with the geographic location of the growing area, factors such as soil conditions, climate, mixed/monoculture, fertilizer, fertilization cycles, irrigation, pruning, harvesting method, processing method as well as cleaning, sorting by bean size, storage and shipping time of the coffee have an impact on the quality including the price. Through decades of activity in green coffee importing, Speicherstadt Kaffeerösterei has access to extensive experience and extremely good contacts in the countries of origin, so that they can always discover and import new, high-quality coffees.

The roasting process follows directly on from the intermediate steps that influence green coffee. In order to obtain the maximum aromas in the cup, certain parameters such as the roasting temperature, the roasting time, or an end of roasting that is as precise as possible must be adapted to the moisture content of the coffee, its bean size, uniformity, bean hardness, and much more. Our comparatively slow and gentle roasting process largely reduces roasting irritants such as oils, waxes and fats.

All roasting equipment is located in their guest room so that everyone can watch them at work in the roastery while enjoying a delicious, freshly roasted coffee.