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HELSINKI: FREESE COFFEE COMPANY

Words by Joanna Han Photographs by Mikko Ryhänen

FREESE COFFEE COMPANY IS A NOTEWORTHY NEW COFFEE SHOP IN THE FINNISH CAPITOL.

We interviewed owner and 2013 Finnish Barista Champ Kalle Freese about his new shop, which is charmingly located on a street named after his 17th-century forefather, poet Jacob Freese.

When did you first discover good coffee? I decided to start drinking coffee one day when I was 15. Unsurprisingly it didn’t taste very good, so I added milk and sugar. A few months later my family and I moved to Auckland, New Zealand, for a year. That’s where I first realized that coffee could actually taste good. Back then I was really into food and wanted to become a chef. Having started my career from the top, “stationeering” at the age of 14 at the only two Michelin-starred restaurants in Finland, my culinary ambitions soon moved toward coffee. I started going around cafés in Auckland, and eventually I started noticing differences in the flavor—for example, that some coffees tasted more bitter than others.

What is it about the coffee culture in Auckland that inspired you? I fell in love with the concept of Antipodean-style cafés—places where you could go for great coffee, simple and tasty food and a great atmosphere. These spaces were social in a way I’d never encountered: You could go out on a weekend morning to meet friends over a brunch, and more often than not you’d end up talking with strangers all seated around the same large communal table. All this was something very new and exciting that I had not experienced back home in Finland.

How did your coffee career first take off? I took a half-day barista course and ended up learning a lot. Before that, I thought it was the espresso machine that made coffee taste great. The revelation was that it’s possible to make terrible coffee with the best machine if the guy behind the machine doesn’t know what he’s doing. It’s the barista that makes coffee taste great, not the machine. The following night I dreamed about coffee for the first time. I was 16 back then and quite soon I figured that coffee was what I really wanted to pursue.

How has the reception to Freese been so far? The street we’re on now is one of the shortest streets in town. Based on empirical research, about 95 percent of Helsinkians don’t know where it’s located, mostly because there hasn’t been anything on the street before we opened. Considering these circumstances, we’re thrilled with how great the reception has been. We’ve consciously tried to become a bit of a destination coffee shop, and it’s worked out pretty well.

You’re now just 22 years old. How did you come to start a business at such a young age? Starting up my own business was a pretty natural thing to do. I like to do things my own way and generally dislike working for anyone else. I started out working as a freelance barista while studying marketing at the University of Helsinki and it started growing from there. Now I’m focusing on building up the business full-time. It’s what I would’ve done after graduating, and at the moment I don’t feel like the university really gives me that much. My studies have definitely been useful with this project but at the moment I don’t see the point in spending time and energy doing irrelevant exercises and going to boring lectures.

What was it like to win the Finnish Barista Championship? Winning the competition was something I had been dreaming of since I got into coffee five or six years ago. I won on my third attempt, and naturally it felt amazing. It was a dream come true—a feeling I’ll never forget. However, the best part of winning was that it came with the possibility to learn more. Continually learning more was what kept me going. In the best case, winning starts a snowball effect: You learn more, become better at competing and maybe win again and learn even more still.

What kind of equipment do you work with at Freese? I guess espresso machines are like cameras or cars. There are great ones that help you take great photos, drive smoothly or brew tasty coffee. It’s down to personal preference whether you’re a Canon or a Nikon type, and in the coffee world I’m a Nuova Simonelli guy. Perhaps they’re not known to be the coolest and sleekest machines around, but they help me brew delicious coffee in a consistent manner. Moreover, they’re really nice, ergonomically well designed and keep up even in high pace. We use their Aurelia T3 for all our brewing, not just for espresso but also for our filter coffees, making what’s called the “coffee shot.”

Could you explain what the coffee shot is for those who aren’t familiar? Basically we use the espresso machine as a filter coffee brewer, and it’s very well suited for this task. We put 18 grams of finely ground, lightly roasted filter coffee in the Portafilter and run about 320 milligrams of water through the coffee. This takes about 45 seconds and yields a drink with the same strength as normal filter coffee. This way we can extract more flavors out of the coffee without any unpleasant bitterness, resulting in a very sweet, complex and balanced drink.

What kind of food do you serve? Originally we were planning to serve almost exclusively coffee. However, I really enjoy having something delicious to go with coffee, and there are no shops in Helsinki doing brunch the way I’d like to, so right now we’re serving a simple brunch prepared using the best ingredients we can find. Despite our very limited kitchen facilities, we’re serving toasted sourdough bread topped with stunningly nutty and rich butter, Finnish goat-milk cheddar and organic avocado or 63ºC eggs cooked in sous vide. On the side we have unbelievably good yogurt with homemade granola, juice and naturally, coffee. We also have fantastic almond croissants—better than what I’ve found in Paris—that we slice in half, toast and serve with rhubarb jam.

What was the inspiration for the design and look of your space? My initial idea was to create a space where I would want to spend all my weekends drinking great coffee in a beautiful, simple surrounding while chatting and sharing coffees with strangers sitting around the same table. It’s also very important that the interior of a shop has a connection to the original design of the space and the surroundings. What I really like about this space are the original tile floors, high ceilings and large windows. I wanted to use materials that really create synergy with the space itself. For example, we decided to use oak for all the furniture since it works quite beautifully with the floor without stealing all the attention. Most of the furniture in the shop was custom designed by our carpenter, Tebian, based in Helsinki.

What’s the coffee culture in Helsinki like now? It’s amazing how much it’s evolved over the five years that I’ve been involved in coffee. When I started there was only one shop serving well-brewed espresso using Robusta-heavy blends roasted in Italy. Now there are almost a dozen good shops around the city, serving freshly roasted coffees from the few local roasters. Good Life Coffee has been doing a tremendous job retailing coffees from exciting roasters around the world. This year we should see a few more roasters popping up.

How does the scene there compare with those in other Nordic cities? At the moment I’d argue that our coffee scene is more exciting than the ones in Stockholm, Oslo or Copenhagen. All these cities are home to some of my favorite roasters and coffee shops in the world. However, I feel that the scenes are little stuck with the status quo. This makes Helsinki’s young and vibrant coffee culture feel much more interesting, and I’m happy to be part of this new generation.

What are your customers like? We’ve been very positively surprised by how diverse our customer base has become. We were lucky from the beginning to have quite a few publications writing about us and that’s clearly brought in people who never would’ve visited us otherwise. Our guests come with an open mind, often with a friend, and are very willing to listen our recommendations. We love our customers.

Is it true that you’re only open on weekends? That’s right—for now we’re only open on Saturdays and Sundays. We’re in a residential area, and our street is pretty quiet during the week. Instead of keeping the shop open, we decided to use the weekdays to improve our coffee, work on our brunch service and generally nail down the concept. These limited opening hours are a luxury very few shops have—running a coffee shop is fun two or three days a week, and any more than that and it can be slightly tedious and takes the fun out of serving our guests. I wanted to work at the shop every day it’s open and figured that these opening hours are a good way of achieving that!

So how do you use the space during the weekdays? During the week we also host coffee tasting and education events and private events at the shop. Right from the beginning, our idea has been to expand our business once we figured out what it was that our customers really wanted. After six months we’re starting to know them, and hopefully we’ll be opening another shop by the end of the year.

Which neighborhood are you in and what’s it like? We’d been looking for the right location for quite some time. Finally, we found this space on Freesenkatu, or “Freese Street,” named after my forefather Jacob Freese. He was a poet born 300 years before me in the city of Vyborg, which is now part of Russia. We’d always joked that it would be funny having a shop on Freesenkatu but I’d never considered it—not until I found this space that was exactly what we were looking for: beautiful original tile floors from the 1920s, a high ceiling and a huge window to let in the natural light.

Where in Töölö do you like to go for lunch or for drinks after work? Töölö isn’t really the best area for food and drinks, but luckily there are a few good spots. Just a block away there’s Twisted Street Kitchen, a tiny restaurant serving the best mussaman curry in town. It’s an especially great spot for lunch on weekdays. Right around the corner is Fafa’s, with the best falafel in town. It’s our usual choice for staff lunch on Saturdays.

What’s next for Freese Coffee Co.? This spring we’re launching Freese Coffee Academy, a rather unique concept: We pick around 10 people and train them to be competent baristas in three weeks. If we need to employ more baristas, we can find a few from the course. Otherwise we’ll help them find a job elsewhere. The whole course is free for the participants—we’re pretty excited about this!

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