Public Coffee Roasters

Public Coffee Roasters began on the water: co-founders Arameh and Argin Keshishian started roasting on a houseboat moored at Entenwerder on the Elbe, working out of a converted customs house. The operation outgrew that original 800-square-metre site -- its roasting capacity had reached about four tons a month -- and by 2020 the company was moving five tons of coffee monthly, prompting a shift of primary production to a new roastery in Rahlstedt equipped with three Probat drum roasters, at 12, 25 and 75 kilograms.

Rather than close the houseboat, Public Coffee Roasters converted it into the Kaffeeakademie Hamburg, an education space running barista courses and brewing seminars on the site where the company started. Every batch still moves through the same process the founders set up early: farms are selected and vetted directly, sample-roasted and cupped at around 90 degrees C, then roasted to a custom profile built around time and temperature.

Today the beans -- sold as espresso blends including Black Pearl, Starlight and Moonlight, plus filter coffee and compostable capsules -- reach two Hamburg cafes and a wider wholesale and corporate client base, but the roastery's own account of its growth still runs through that first houseboat on the Elbe.