Specialty coffee in Amsterdam.

Coffee has passed through Amsterdam since 1711, when the first Java harvest landed at the port, and for most of the time since the Dutch drank it dark, from a Moccamaster, out of a supermarket bag. The specialty story starts in a Jordaan garage in 2001, where Menno Simons began roasting as Bocca, and in 2003, when he founded the importer Trabocca to bring traceable Ethiopian coffee straight to the city. Roasters and importers grew up together here, and it shows.

Then the foreigners arrived and the locals answered. Australians opened Lot Sixty One on Kinkerstraat in 2013 with flat whites and batch brew; an Argentine and a Swede opened Scandinavian Embassy the same year and served Nordic filter coffee with oysters; two Espressofabriek alumni opened White Label in West in 2014 and, two years later, roasted every coffee the same way for espresso and filter. In 2018 the world barista final came to the RAI and a local roaster, Lex Wenneker of Friedhats, finished second.

Today the city has two scenes. One is neighbourhood roasting with a bakery attached: Back to Black, Rum Baba, White Label, each with cafés in a different quarter. The other is export micro-roasting for the enthusiast: Friedhats in amber pharmacy bottles, DAK on a hot-air roaster in Noord with yeast-fermented and thermal-shock lots, shipped to Seoul and Toronto as readily as to Utrecht.

Bocca is the foundation: roasting in Dronten, sourcing through its sister importer Trabocca, and teaching on Kerkstraat. Espressofabriek still roasts on a drum at Westergas and supplies cafés and bakeries across the city. White Label roasts on a Giesen in the window on Jan Evertsenstraat and pours in Noord as well. Back to Black roasts and bakes in Westpoort for its cafés in the centre and Westerpark; Rum Baba does the same in Oost with a colourful shelf that runs from daily drinkers to carbonic-maceration experiments.

The export tier is where Amsterdam gets famous. Friedhats roasts competition lots, Gesha and Sudan Rume among them, and ships them worldwide in amber bottles. DAK roasts on a hot-air machine in Noord and specialises in yeast-fermented, thermal-shock and anaerobic-honey coffees for cafés from London to Tokyo. Uncommon puts Panama auction lots next to a seasonal menu. Around them, Stooker trains and supplies the trade, Five Ways runs cafés across the city, and Sango, 80 CUP, Dave's, Monks, Brandmeesters, Stean's Beans and Good Beans fill the neighbourhoods between.

Menno Simons built both the roaster and the importer, and many of the city's roasters buy their green coffee from him. Kees Kraakman trained the first generation at Espressofabriek. Elmer Oomkens and Francesco Grassotti left there to found White Label and made omni-roasting normal. Lex Wenneker took Friedhats to second in the world in 2018. Wendelien van Bunnik won the Dutch title and the world AeroPress title in one year. Zjevaun Janga won the national title twice running and took it to Milan. Noortje Vlutters and Inge Bulthuis founded Back to Black. Jeroen Keyzer built Rum Baba around a bakery. And Louis-Philippe Boucher and Veronique Laharde made DAK the export brand.

Amsterdam's coffee sits in the neighbourhoods outside the canal ring, with the big machines in the industrial west and north.

A flat white, a batch filter, a koffie verkeerd if you are old-school, and oat milk on every bar. The Dutch home still runs on a Moccamaster, which is why so many roasters here roast one profile for espresso and filter alike. On the shelf, Colombia, Brazil and Ethiopia lead Amsterdam's listed origins, washed leads the processes with natural behind it, and Ethiopia's washing stations, reached through Trabocca, run through nearly every catalog.

The experimental end is unusually deep for a city this size: anaerobic naturals, yeast-inoculated lots and thermal-shock washed coffees sit in regular retail ranges at DAK, Rum Baba and Friedhats, and Panama Gesha and Sidra appear in small bottles at small-bottle prices. Decaf is sold with the same care, mostly sugarcane-process or carbon-dioxide lots. The live count stands at 18 decaf and 39 filter-friendly listings.

Amsterdam's ladder runs from the daily-drinker bags of the neighbourhood roasters to auction Gesha in a hundred-gram bottle. These numbers come from every Amsterdam coffee currently listed with a price, not a sample we chose. The going rate today is €50 per kilogram, about €12 for a standard bag.

The ladder reads like this: espresso blends and washed Latin Americans around €42 per kilogram, washed Ethiopians and the first fermented lots from about €60 per kilogram, and the most expensive listing right now at €250 per kilogram. 172 coffees carry a price today. Nearly every roaster runs a subscription, and the export tier ships worldwide.