About Karma Coffee
Can you introduce your roastery in a couple of words?
We're a small family roastery from Liptovský Mikuláš in Slovakia. We've been roasting coffee since 2017, our preferred roasting style is omniroast, and we change up our offer regularly depending on the seasonal harvest in different regions. We roast on a 5kg Golden roaster in small batches, which helps us ensure maximum freshness for our consumers.
What's the story behind your logo?
We were really captivated by east Asian culture a couple of years ago, especially one of the laws of karma- "Do and give good, and it will come back to you". The sitting Buddha in our logo captures this philosophy as much as possible.
What's the hardest aspect of being a roastery?
Mastering the art of extracting all the flavours and aromas coffee has hidden away, and ensuring that all the hard work of the coffee growers is recognised in our final product.
What's one thing about coffee that people still don't understand?
The fact, that coffee doesn't have to just be a hot vehicle for your daily dose of caffeine, but rather a delicious beverage full of complex and unique flavours.
If you were to start all over again, what's one thing that you would want to do differently?
In the beginning, in addition to acquiring theoretical knowledge, it is certainly beneficial to work in a well-established roastery and to gain experience alongside top roasters.
Who's one person in the industry that everyone should know about?
From well-known coffee celebrities, it would have to be Matt Perger and Scott Rao. But every person who makes the world of speciality coffee that little bit more accessible to the customer deserves recognition.
What has been your biggest struggle?
Difficult to say. Each obstacle that we've overcome has been a lesson for us. Some of them were quite insignificant, but we have a couple that were quite substantial.
What are you most proud of?
In addition to winning the Barista Cup of Ostrava in 2019, and getting 4th place in the Slovak Barista Cup 2019, the fact that we've managed to open a cafe and roastery, which serves as an environment where great people get to meet over a cup of great coffee.
What's the speciality coffee market going to look like in 2025?
The market with speciality coffee will definitely expand, customers will be looking for increasingly better quality products. As for the cultivation, we will likely see a return to the original wild-grown varieties and various experimental coffee processing will predominate.
Tell us something about your "THE cup"- the best cup of coffee you've ever had?
There's many that have stuck in our minds over the years. Whether it was our first speciality espresso from a natural Ethiopia, an anaerobic Honduras, or a wild-grown variety from Yemen, or most recently a batch from a microlot in Peru which we recently received in our roastery.