Specialty coffee in Ireland.

Ireland drank tea. What coffee there was came dark from Bewley's, roasting in Dublin since 1840, and was mostly there to carry milk. Then, in 2008, an Irish barista named Stephen Morrissey won the World Barista Championship, an Australian started roasting on his in-laws' farm in County Cork, and a former fund administrator set up a competition rig in his third-floor flat in Dublin. Within two years he had opened a coffee bar in the lobby of a nightclub, and the country had a specialty scene.

That bar became 3fe, and 3fe became the reference: its own roastery, a string of Dublin cafés, and a founder who reached the world final four times and wrote the book on running a coffee shop. Cork built the other pole, with direct container shipments into the port, an engineer's roastery in Innishannon, and the roaster that put specialty coffee on the ALDI shelf.

The Irish version is small, close-knit and unusually well distributed: roasteries in Mullingar, Oughterard, Sligo, Wexford and Dingle ship to the whole island, two of them are certified B Corps, and one gives three per cent of everything it sells to a women's refuge, its farms and its staff. The flat white is the drink; the oat milk is a given.

3fe is where most Irish coffee stories start: a roastery in Dublin's industrial estate, eight cafés across the city, and the coffee in the cups at Leinster rugby. Cloud Picker roasts with design on its mind and gives a share of its earnings to charity. Imbibe in Dublin 8 gives one per cent of sales each to Women's Aid, to its farms and to its staff. Full Circle roasts in an old stables, Groundstate roasts with art on the bag and brewing guides on the site, and Silverskin and Coffeeangel have been at it since the early days.

Cork is the other capital. Badger & Dodo

Dublin has the most roasters and the flagships, Cork has the port and the pioneers, and the rest of the island is closer than it looks: most Irish roasters ship anywhere in the country for the price of a stamp.

Flat whites, lattes and cappuccinos carry the cafés, so the roasters build medium espresso blends that hold up in milk, and oat milk is assumed. Filter arrived through the batch brewer in Dublin offices and the slow bars, and home brewing took off after 2020: V60, AeroPress, a Wilfa grinder, a Sage machine and a monthly subscription. On the shelf, Colombia, Brazil and Ethiopia anchor most catalogs: Colombia for the flagship lots and the sugarcane decafs, Brazil under the blends, Ethiopia and Kenya for the light filter roasts.

Washed lots carry the East Africans and Colombians, naturals bring the fruit, and the boutique roasters (Calendar, Groundstate, Full Circle) run anaerobic and co-fermented lots at the top end. After washed, the shelves lean on natural (×69) and honey (×10). Pink Bourbon, Gesha and Sidra turn up as small retail micro-lots. Decaf has lost its stigma: sugarcane-process Colombians sit in most core ranges, and 40 decaf coffees are listed right now. 91 of the current listings are roasted for filter or for both methods.

Irish roasters price in euros and buy through Britain, the continent or their own containers, and a small island market shows on the label. These figures come from every Irish coffee currently listed with a price, not a sample we chose. The going rate today is €51 per kilogram, against €47 across every roaster in the directory.

The ladder reads like this: house espresso blends at the everyday end around €39 per kilogram, single-origin filter lots from about €64 per kilogram, and the rarest bag currently listed at €400 per kilogram. 442 coffees carry a price today. Nearly every roaster sells a rolling or prepaid subscription, free domestic shipping needs a couple of bags in the basket, and Velo and Bell Lane are on the supermarket shelf if you need a bag tonight.