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Having heard from my czech friends and read in the Standard magazine that Bratislava offers a vast and diverse specialty coffee scene and having tried coffee from a couple of slovakian roasters on the vienna coffee festival, I’ve decided it would be a lovely little Easter getaway destination with extended family. Drinking and buying coffee was pretty much the main goal of the trip, so I drained my coffee supplies to the last bean and was ready to go. My excited talk of all the coffee places I want to visit there turned out to be contagious, so a friend of mine who has just gotten deeper into specialty and set out on a journey to widen his sensory experiences asked to bring a couple of bags for him as well. I’ve carefully pinned the message with requirements with regard to country of origin, price per kg, taste profile and roast level in our telegram chat, but then a thought crossed my mind: why not double the amount of coffees we can try and share all the bags?! My brilliant idea has been met with amusement it deserves so my visits to coffee shops turned into live chats with pictures of coffee bags, voting sessions and heated discussions, which made it even more exciting.

As usual, I had a bunch of specialty coffee shops already gathered in a google list to make navigation easier. Here is the list of all the places I’ve visited:

Blue Mondays has a very cool interior inside deeper into the cafe going out into the backyard but covered partially with a roof. Very inviting to rest in with some delicious coffee. They also offer huge sandwiches, pastrami pickle one was very tasty, although it would have benefited from some warming up. I got a bag of Rwanda Microlot to share 50/50 with my friend there.

In black. I got a washed JBM/bourbon, which would be my first coffee from Congo, so very excited. And my husband couldn’t help it and got the house filter blend called juicy pussy. Yes, just for the name. They also had a very cool sign outside which was a plastic case filled with white paper cups, I liked that.

Goriffee was ~200m from the appartment where we stayed in Nivy neighborhood, so I went there a couple of times. Bought a bag of Kenya Boma AA espresso beans there and some coffee for friends to share. Here cooling off after a long hot day at Devin Castle and enjoying my beloved espresso tonic.

Triple Five Coffee Roasters was very busy when I visited, so I took a coffee to go and bought a very delicious bag of Kenya AA Top Kirinyaga that really smelled of tomato leaves and had a lot of vegetable notes. Also tried a very tasty choux pastry with salted caramel. There was Bratislava coffee guide lying around, so I snapped a picture with the list of coffee places, I’ll leave it here for my or your next visit.

On our last day some friends who live in Vienna, Austria came to visit. We checked out Sweet Beans Coffee Roastery together. I’ve already tried their decaf from kofio and a couple of other coffees at the vienna coffee festival and was very impressed. Their pink bourbon decaf is definitely the best one I’ve tried from decaf filter coffees so far, so I bought a couple of bags to share with friends. Their barista brewed us a columbian honey process filter fermented with wine yeast and lulo fruit (if you had to look it up that’s fine, I didn’t know this fruit either) and it was a blast for me! The acidity of this coffee is of the type that makes you crave another sip and you have a tropical fruit finish while at the same time experience almost tea like base notes of the wine yeast. It reminded me of Tie Guan Yin tee, haven’t tried something so different in a long time and certainly bought a bag to take home.

I really enjoyed this little getaway and Bratislave surprised me with abundance of hip cafes, restaurants and bars. It was very much fun to just explore the city while staying nicely caffeinated. A couple random recommendations if you happen to go to Bratislava: