Specialty coffee in Hungary.

Budapest's coffee houses were where the nineteenth century's writers argued; the twentieth century turned them into presszó bars pouring dark, dense espresso. Specialty arrived in 2009, in a sense, when a Hungarian barista named Attila Molnár finished sixth in the world in Atlanta, and properly in 2012, when he opened Tamp & Pull in Budapest and My Little Melbourne brought Australian brew-bar culture to the Jewish Quarter.

The roasting followed a year later: Casino Mocca, founded by three competition baristas in 2013, set the standard the country still measures itself by. Espresso Embassy, Fekete and Madal made Budapest a destination, and in 2017 the whole industry came to town when the city hosted World of Coffee and the world championships. Pécs, Debrecen, Győr and Szekszárd built scenes of their own.

Two things make the Hungarian version its own. One is a farm: a Hungarian grower, László Bányai, produces coffee in Costa Rica and ships it to a roaster in Szekszárd, which turned the cherry skins into a liqueur. The other is design, Casino Mocca's minimalist bags and KTRL's coffee packed like a VHS cassette, in a scene that takes how it looks as seriously as how it tastes.

Casino Mocca is the reference: founded by competition baristas, roasting light and traceable since 2013, with bags redesigned by a Budapest studio and a spot on the supermarket delivery app. KTRL roasts for Kontakt, the strict brew bar its founders run, and packs its coffee like a cassette tape. Old Man roasts and also sells green coffee to the country's home roasters through Kilimanjaro Specialty Coffees. BLCKEST, Specialty Kávé Pörkölő and Impresso fill out the capital, and Madal and Fekete roast for their own cafés.

The regions carry their own weight. CrackerJack and Utopia roast in Pécs for a university city. Black Sheep

Budapest holds most of the roasters and all of the history; the regional cities each have a roastery that ships nationwide.

Espresso is still the base, the presszó habit runs deep, and flat whites and cappuccinos keep the specialty cafés busy, with latte art taken seriously enough to compete over. Filter has its own following: V60, Kalita and AeroPress at the top bars, batch brew for the office crowd, nitro cold brew on tap at Kontakt in summer. On the shelf, Colombia, Brazil and Ethiopia anchor most catalogs: Ethiopia for the filter roasts, Colombia and Brazil for the espresso, Kenya for the acidity, with Costa Rica through the Bányai connection and Rwanda through a Hungarian importer, Greenzeb.

Roasts run light to medium at the independents; the dark Italian style stays in the commercial bars. Washed lots are the baseline, naturals sell for the fruit, and Casino Mocca and KTRL run anaerobic, thermal-shock and co-fermented lots at the top. After washed, the shelves lean on natural (×37) and honey (×1). Gesha, Pink Bourbon and Sidra appear in limited drops. Decaf has moved from afterthought to menu item, with sugarcane and water processes, and 10 decaf coffees are listed right now. 13 of the current listings are roasted for filter or for both methods.

Hungarian roasters price in forints; the figures here are converted to euros so you can compare across the directory. They come from every Hungarian coffee currently listed with a price, not a sample we chose. The going rate today is €45 per kilogram, against €47 across every roaster in the directory.

The ladder reads like this: espresso blends and everyday single origins around €40 per kilogram, washed East Africans and micro-lots from about €53 per kilogram, and the rarest bag currently listed at €86 per kilogram. 198 coffees carry a price today. Most roasters run a subscription, Foxpost parcel lockers handle the deliveries, Kifli will bring Casino Mocca with the groceries, and Kofio carries the Hungarian roasters across Central Europe.