About Drop Coffee Roasters
Drop Coffee Roasters
We at Drop Coffee are dedicated to really tasty and sustainably produced coffee, we visit all producers we buy coffee from. We are roasting the coffee carefully with complete focus on the sweetness and vibrancy of each unique coffee, always striving for a clarity in the coffee, without ashy roast flavours. We are shipping coffee straight from our roastery every day, worldwide!
Drop Coffee was founded in Stockholm, Sweden in 2009 as a coffee bar by Mariatorget, focusing on serving tasty coffee. We started roasting our own coffee in the back of the shop in 2010, on a one-kilo roaster. We started roasting for wholesale customers in 2012, when we moved into a proper roastery with a 25-kilo roaster. Recently we moved our roastery to Rosersberg, north of Stockholm. From June 2018 our roastery is certified organic. Kalita has been supplying us with our favorite brewing supplies since 2013, when Drop Coffee became the Kalita supplier of Sweden.Joanna Alm, managing director of Drop Coffee, is a three times Swedish Coffee Roasting Champion who has placed second in the world, and she is also the author of the book Manifest För Bättre Kaffe.
SWE Roasting Champ - 2014, 2015, 2018
SWE Latte Art Championship - 2013, 2014
SWE Brewers Championship - 2013, 2014
SWE Barista Championship - 2011, 2013, 2015, 2018
World Roasters Championship - 3rd 2014, 2nd 2015, 4th 2016
Can you please introduce your roastery in a few short sentences?
Drop Coffee is a micro-roastery established in 2009, focusing on coffees that are sweet and clear in the taste profile. We are working for transparency, sustainability and really tasty coffee. We are not doing blends since 2010 and stopped roasting different for espresso, the year after that. Drop Coffee is based in Stockholm, where we have our roastery and one café.
What is the story behind your name and logo?
Drop Coffee originally came from that we served heaps of Drip Coffee. In 2009, cafés were mainly serving espresso while Sweden has a very strong filter coffee culture at home. We wanted to focus on the different unique coffee beans, where the guest ordered based on varietal, process and farm. This was unique back then. As a brand name Drop sounded better than Drip. And Drip Coffee is the word for the brewing method, and we wanted to have something we could trademark. Also, the name refers to “a drop of coffee” and to drop the coffee out of the roaster.
What is the hardest part about being a roastery?
The hardest bit is the cash-flow. The QC and building relationship a massive work too, but that is more fun :)
What is the one thing people still don’t get about coffee?
Wanting sustainable coffee where the producer is properly paid, but not ready to pay for it.
Which one thing do you wish you’d done differently since starting a roasting business?
Started in 2009, little research on coffee roasting was available. It was beautiful because I truly learnt to cup and shaking my pallet as the most valuable measurement. Today, the resources to knowledge about coffee and roasting you can have access to today though books, consultations and a big amount of events. I would say that the access to knowledge you can get access to, starring a business today, can put you over a years slack of trial and error.
What’s been your biggest failure?
In terms of roasting, I have done many mistakes. I have baked and tipped coffee before we knew what it was. That is the beauty, I know we will be better in 2 years ahead compared to what we are now.
What are you most proud of?
More than how any coffee is tasting or any price we have won, I am proud of our team. After 10 years, Drop Coffee has a roastery and café team that is living our values and raising the bar every day. We visit all of the producers we are working with and focusing on transparency in every way, including price transparency. To work with sustainability takes time and trust, and is nothing you can do in a click on a computer.
How will the specialty coffee market look like in 2025?
2020, coffee is in fragile times. In terms of climate changes and the Coffee Price Crisis. It is impossible to see, but unless we are starting to pay real prices for the coffee, we will head towards very few coffee-producing countries, ran by few actors, instead of the stunning diversity of coffee we have today. In speciality coffees, we need to be particularly concerned about paying so it is covering the real cost with the lower end speciality. As an end consumer, you can use your customer-power by asking what the farmer been paid and put pressure on the roastery. But you also must be ready to pay well if you want a well-produced coffee.
Tell us a little bit about “The Cup” - the best cup of coffee you’ve ever tasted?
My first origin-trip was to Buquete in Panama in 2008. I had competed in the Swedish Barista Championships for the first time and I loved the coffee so much, it inspired me to go and visit the farm. Practising for a competition, you get to know a coffee truly inside out. Everything it has to offer. And the more I understood that natural Geisha, the more I loved it. Twelve years later, I can still recall the silky strawberry - citrus flavour.
- Joanna Alm - founder and managing director Drop Coffee
