Café Blá is a café in the Au, a short walk from the Isar and the Deutsches Museum, and it roasts its own coffee. Its founder, Stephanie Bjarnason, sold the café to Jacob, who was already roasting its coffee while working for Vits. He took it on with his boss there as business partner, and they moved all the light roasts they had been roasting for Vits over to the Blá brand.
The coffee is roasted in small batches on a Giesen WA15 drum roaster, aiming for fruity flavours with a balanced acidity. There are two roasts. The house espressos, House of Nuts and House of Fruits, are roasted for espresso and moka pots, and every single origin has an omni roast, the old filter profile, which proved playful and fruity on the café’s espresso machine as well. Café Blá buys through a few importers it trusts rather than direct trade, which at its size could only mean a couple of sacks a year: Raw Material for its coffees from Rwanda, Burundi, Timor-Leste and Mexico, Planting Costa Rica for its Costa Rican lots, among them El Bueyerito every year, and Omwani for Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. Its motto is “drink coffee, ask questions”.
All the food is made fresh in the café’s kitchen every day, with a changing selection of cakes, sandwiches, pies and brunch dishes, and the drinks list adds teas, soft drinks, craft beer and wine. There are no table reservations. Café Blá also supplies offices and cafés, from custom blends to coffees for multi-roaster shops.
Photograph: Café Blá