Back to Black is an Amsterdam coffee roastery, a bakery and two of the city’s cosiest coffee bars. Noortje and Inge opened the first bar in July 2014, a small coffee bar hidden on a quiet side street in the heart of the city, and began roasting their own coffee in early 2015, out of a love of craft. The second bar followed in 2018 in the Van Hallbuurt in Amsterdam-West, with outdoor seating and toasties for lunch. Both bars serve house-baked cake and the company’s own roasts. Neither takes reservations, laptop seats are limited on weekdays and laptops are not allowed at weekends.

The roastery and the bakery share a site in Westpoort. Back to Black looks for coffees with pronounced character, chooses its green importers with care, This Side Up and Cultivar among them, and wants every link from cherry to cup to be traceable. All the cakes and tarts are baked in-house, every day; the weekly specials often use fruit rejected by shops for small imperfections, and a large share of the bakes are vegan. The milk is organic, from MOMA’s farms around Amsterdam, and roasted coffee goes out to the bars and wholesale customers in reusable buckets. The company also has a cat, Binkie, the Coffeecat.

The coffee is roasted by Back to Black and sold online with a choice of espresso or filter roast, in two sizes and seven grinds, with a recommended rest time for each. The current retail range is listed below with the roaster’s own tasting notes.

Coffee on the shelf