Sure, why don’t we just drink in the shop? Out of a porcelain cup or a glass? It doesn’t get more sustainable than that, and Zeit Online (unfortunately paywalled) called it pretty much the only proper way to go about it. What they ignore, however, is that this doesn’t match the reality of people rushing to nursery, work or university – and that coffee to go isn’t simply a yes or no question.

Anyone who wants to drink decent coffee knows the downsides of takeaway coffee.

It’s not just the cup that’s rubbish. The taste is different, the temperature doesn’t hold as long. You accept all of that as a compromise to have a coffee that’s still better than what comes out of the office filter machine – the one that’s been sitting on the hotplate for hours, getting more bitter by the minute. A consumption problem, no doubt. But for me, as for many others, it’s a way of treating yourself. The little luxury you need in the day and the cup of good coffee that helps you start things on a calmer note.

Let’s set aside for a moment the circumstances that might lead people to take their coffee from their own machine or from a barista. Here’s another way to transport your coffee:

The HuskeeCup

This takes a similar approach to Kaffeeform‘s cups, but starts one step earlier: with the coffee husk itself. The cups are made of roughly 50% husk material, but unfortunately also about 50% plastic, specifically polypropylene.
Huskee argues this gives the cups their stability and, from their perspective, they remain recyclable. But it also enables the cup’s design: the ribs on the outside that protect your fingers from the heat.

The design is what made me buy one. The two available colours look premium in their own right. The cup is genuinely sturdy, BPA-free and perfectly dishwasher-safe. A rubber ring, which the Weducer now also has, helps the cup retain its liquid.

Compared directly to the Weducer, the HuskeeCup feels a bit more refined and sturdier. The Weducer has a coarser texture due to its material, while the plastic makes the Huskee smoother. There’s also no material influence on the taste, unlike what I described with the Weducer.

That said, the two cups are pretty evenly matched in quality, with the obvious sustainability bonus going to the Weducer!

In Germany you can get HuskeeCups from Amazon. If you’d rather order directly from the manufacturer, you’ll find the Huskee online shop here.

This post is part of my coffee page.

As with everything, you can become an extreme nerd to get the last bit of flavour out of the bean. For me, I have reached a good enough standard. I leave everything else to shops like Espressolution or Public Coffee Roasters. In my neighbourhood there is also the very interesting Stockholm Espresso Club, and the other day I happened to visit the really good Nord Coast for the first time, which I discovered through the Hamburg Coffee Guide by The Coffeevine.

They’re all a bit bonkers, to be honest, but that’s brilliant! They also all have their own house bean, either from their own roasting or from selected origins. My current favourite is Moonlight from Public Coffee Roasters, along with Saicaf Oro from Espressolution. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try the coffee on the other side of the fence. Recently it was a coffee from the island: Grind.

Grind is a chain of cafés and restaurants that grew out of a music studio in London’s Shoreditch. Their house bean has been resting in my grinder for some time now and feels a little finer in the cup compared to Moonlight. The note becomes fruitier if you have a little too much in the basket, so you need to be careful. If you are, a well-balanced nutty, almost chocolatey aroma will convince you. Less is clearly more and can make the coffee almost syrupy. Absolutely fabulous!

Grind House Blend is available as beans or ground in various sizes in a bag, and the tin is ideal for trying it out. The bag and tin can be ordered online, but the shipping costs are a pain. I’ll definitely be picking up the next pack myself from one of the shops: grind.co.uk

This post is part of my coffee page and my All Things British page.

Approaches to offering consumers alternatives are becoming more diverse, but often weaken in one place or another. Various deposit systems are not widespread and therefore hardly noticed; they are even more of a regional phenomenon.
In the case of sustainable reusable cups, which are much more widespread, the plastic lid that is often present is questionable. Products from brands of every stripe are often optimised for low-cost production processes, which almost automatically means plasticisers. So even the porcelain cup with a plasticised plastic lid is only well intentioned, not well made.

Forget plastic, drink from coffee

The Kaffeeform ensemble, on the other hand, is quite well made. From the espresso and cappuccino cups to the takeaway cup. It is the logical extension of the Kaffeeform concept.

Kaffeeform has thought about how to make something new out of used coffee grounds. To do this, the grounds are collected from various cafés in Berlin, processed and then shaped. That alone, drinking coffee from coffee, is already brilliant. But their products are also dishwasher-safe, relatively unbreakable, food-safe, free of plasticisers and, above all, resource-friendly.

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I was convinced about drinking coffee from coffee a long time ago when I bought the cappuccino cups. Now, with the Weducer Cup, I find the sustainable approach even more on point. How easy it can be to do without a rubber or plastic lid by using a screw cap and then get a sustainable cup for 15 euros, which is hardly more expensive than all the other wannabe cups. Brilliant!

The only downside is that when the cups are new, they still smell a bit like coffee, and this affects the drink inside. I quite liked it at first, but didn’t miss it when it faded after a few runs through the dishwasher.

Kaffeeform’s cups are not only available online. There are also a few shops, especially in Berlin, that stock them. Go for it!

If you want the right coffee to go with it, you’ll find it at Espressolution (Saicaf Oro), Public Coffee Roasters (Moonlight) and Tork’s Coffee (India Monsooned Malabar).

This post is part of my coffee page.