Hamburg: A visit to the Coffee Museum ( Das Kaffee Museum Burg)

// Sponsored post – In collaboration with Hamburg Tourism //

On my first day in Hamburg, I was invited to visit the coffee museum, Kaffeemuseum Burg, in Speicherstadt. Hamburg has a long history of coffee trading, but a short history of coffee museums, and the coffee museum in Speicherstadt just recently opened.

I don’t really like coffee except for the seasonal lattes at Starbucks, but I don’t think it counts? Without the caramel syrup, the milk and the cream on top, I usually find the taste too bitter and on top of that my caffeine tolerance is close to zero, so if I drink more than a cup, I’ll be climbing the walls all night.

However, coffee is such a big part of Hamburg’s Hanseatic past, so even if you’re not a coffee drinker, I figured that the coffee museum would be an interesting place to visit.

The museum is located one stair down from the café, which also resides on the premises. Most of the items in the museum have been donated by the private collector and coffee enthusiast Jens Burg and his family, and include beautiful old coffee canisters, coffee pots and numerous tools and utensils for coffee roasting and preparation.

After the guided tour through the museum, it was time for the coffee tasting. You’re supposed to slurp up the coffee with a loud sound in order to bring out all the flavors. Not very elegant, but very efficient indeed.

If you have been to a wine tasting, you’ll probably agree with me that identifying those leathery, blackberry notes can be quite far-fetched (what does leather taste like anyway?), but to my surprise, distinguishing between the different kinds of coffee wasn’t hard at all. The acidic ones were really acidic and the bitter ones were really bitter.

My favorite was a Brazilian one with a round, chocolaty flavor. I really liked the taste of it, even without milk, sugar and caramel syrup, and I’m not that certain anymore, that I don’t like coffee. Maybe it’s just because I hadn’t met the right bean until now.

Do you like coffee?

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Kaffeemuseum Burg, St. Annenufer 2, Hamburg