When I think of Norway, I see flashing images of lush fjords, stunning aurora borealis glistering in the nightsky and the face of Tim Wendelboe staring at me from one of his books. But there’s so much more to Norway than just that. Indeed, Norway played an instrumental role in setting the scene for many Nordic specialty coffee roasters and cafés, creating a unique coffee culture that is often referred to as the ‘Oslo school of coffee’.

In essence, it stands for a strong focus on sourcing high quality single origins, roasted to bring out the best flavours and brewed to perfection. In fact, the first ever World Barista Champion, Robert Thoresen, came from Oslo and today runs one of the biggest specialty coffee roasters in the country, Kaffa.

Naturally, this has set the scene for others, like Tim Wendelboe or Supreme Roastworks to follow, and our friends from Lippe are no different. Founded in 1998 as an espresso machine distributor by Alexander and Pia von der Lippe, Lippe first started roasting coffees in 2007. They greatly care about the quality of their green coffees and using their backgrounds in biology and chemistry, they’re able to take a much more scientific look at extracting the best flavours from each one.

When they approached us about a collaboration, we were very keen to find out how their coffees compared to our other, previously featured Norwegian roasters Tim Wendelboe, Norð and Langøra. Indeed, during our July cupping session to determine the contents of our August box, their Ethiopia, Mokanisa blew everyone away. It was, without exaggerating, one of the best Ethiopians we’d tasted in a long time.

This coffee hails from the Guji region and is produced by several hundred smallholder farmers who deliver their carefully picked cherries to the Mokanisa wetmill, owned by Israel Degfa. Due to a lack of pesticides, this coffee is by default organic, even though it lacks the official certification. Israel and his team take great care to sort, process and dry the coffees in the most gentle way possible to allow for the roasters to bring out the most exquisite flavours later.

We’re incredibly happy to have this coffee in our August box and thrilled to welcome another great Norwegian roaster to our family of partners.