Slow Coffee comes to Switzerland

Slow Coffee is a concrete application of the Slow Food philosophy in the coffee sector. Slow Coffee promotes awareness of coffee, the performance of cultivation, and flavor diversity. Through brewing methods specifically tailored to individual coffees such as hand filter, AeroPress, Chemex, or cold drip, the character of individual origins can be showcased. Through Slow Coffee, coffee emerges from everyday "incidental consumption" and is recognized and perceived more consciously as a specialty, like wine for example. Away from convenience and coffee in paper cups. Slow Coffee deliberately focuses on direct trade and single-origin purity. The typically light roasts, in the spirit of the Third Wave movement, allow the flavor characteristics of a growing region to come into their own. Fruit, fine acidity, and sweetness join roasting aromas and bitterness.

The term Slow Coffee is based on the Slow Food movement. "Slow Food is an international non-profit organization that was founded in 1986 as a response to the rapid spread of fast food and the associated loss of food culture and flavor diversity." The Slow Food movement seeks to protect organic products, promotes regional consumption, addresses sustainability and biodiversity, and advocates for food as a cultural and social value. A central theme is also the craftsmanship and recognition of food production.

The preparation of high-quality coffees with sometimes simple but precise brewing tools has so far been a niche occupation of enthusiasts and specialists. However, the transparency of production, the relatively easy accessibility of brewing equipment for home users, and a Zeitgeist in which organic, transparency, and quality play an increasingly important role, are the field on which Slow Coffee is gaining significance. After a coffee avant-garde has successfully realized Slow Coffee café concepts in the English-speaking world and Scandinavian countries for a few years, cafés in German-speaking major cities like Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg, or Frankfurt have been following suit for the past two years. Slow Coffee, the AeroPress, the siphon, the Chemex, or the hand filter have cult potential. Not just for coffee freaks! Hardly a major publishing house in Germany has missed the topic of "the comeback of filter coffee" in the last year (see below).

There are already several cafés in Switzerland that implement individual "alternative brewing methods" (Café Henrici in Zurich, Pfifferling in Basel, ccino in Aarau). And now, with Café frühling in Basel, the first café to consciously focus on Slow Coffee is opening!

We are very pleased! Because frühling is located door-to-door with our coffee academy and from now on forms the new coffee center of Basel together with the coffee makers. Together we will develop new content in the Slow Coffee field.

A perfect brew is a synergy between coffee in particle form (ground), water (quality), temperature, turbulence (swirling), pressure, and contact time (between water and coffee). When the synergy works, the brewer unlocks all the potential of the coffee that the coffee producer in the growing region and the roaster have developed together."
See also: AeroPress on Tour at SBB

Press reports on the topic of Slow Coffee and "filter coffee comeback" in recent years: