Back in Barcelona with 'Syra Coffee'

Perfect example of 'Less is More'

Back in Barcelona

I seem to get back to this city as if it’s my home! The gorgeous city’s unique personality is expressed in everything from the fairy-tale modernist architecture of Antoni Gaudí to the street parties throughout the neighbourhood celebrating local saints and the love for specialty coffee.

Where it all started

Syra Coffee was launched in Barcelona in 2015 as a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop by architect Yassir Raïs with the simple purpose to “Make good coffee everyone’s daily habit”. To achieve that, he knew they had to keep it simple, thus, since day one, the focus was on one thing only: ‘Good coffee to go’.

Yassir focused on offering specialty coffee in a very small place, with a takeaway model, something that wasn’t very popular in Barcelona. He wanted to offer good coffee at a price that was very reasonable and very competitive.

Yassir spent six years in Paris while studying architecture. Everything that has to do with trends, fashion, or design, always starts in Northern Europe and then goes down. Specialty coffee started to be a trend in London, then it arrived in Berlin and later in Paris when it started to be a trend there and he knew it was going to arrive in Barcelona. There were already a couple of cafés and he thought it was time, and that it was something that was missing here.

If you want to succeed with specialty coffee, you have to democratize or educate people, make them understand why specialty coffee is worth it and better than mass coffee. That has been the credo of Syra Coffee.

Syra Coffee always found drinking coffee to be an experience rather than just a commodity. That first sip of coffee to kick start the day is more influential than we think. Starting our day with a well-crafted cup can momentarily put our minds at ease and give us a sense of bliss, a feeling we were determined to spread to as many people as possible. And to make it happen, they’ve embarked on a journey of learning with passion to develop the systems of cupping, testing, and training with extreme care so they can present the best coffee, every time both in their coffeeshops and at home.

I found Hoysala from my homeland but ended up getting Aurora later :-)

What’s the secret of Syra Coffee’s quality?

Coffee is served only in brown, to go-cups emblazoned with a bolt of lightning. There is a well-curated offering of pastries to go along with a cup of coffee: large cookies that come in flavours like red velvet, or sugar-glazed donuts. Syra has their own zine where they showcase the local artists that are their patrons, as well as the back story on the coffee beans they feature on a given month.

Expect to find a steady stream of students flowing in and out of the shop throughout the day, leaving an animated buzz after a welcome hit of caffeine.

What sets Syra Coffee apart is their persistence that each cup of coffee has to be perfect. As Yassir says: ‘I can have the most beautiful cafeteria in the world, but if the coffee isn’t good, people won’t come back. So, I want to offer everything, but coffee is the product, and it has to be perfect’

There really is no secret. It’s about taking care of all the phases of the process: from the moment there is a harvest, and they have direct contact with the coffee farm.

All the artisanal aspect that you find in the coffee, Syra Coffee applies it to the premises, the branding, the architecture, the products that go alongside such as fresh milk, cakes, the treatment of customers, the training of baristas, everything.

Another important factor of Syra Coffee is their obsession with branding. They have always tried to have accessories around coffee, books that they are excited about, magazines, that kind of stuff. Yassir always tries to see everything through the prism of architectural design.

“Less is more”, the motto of Mies van der Rohe, who is one of Yassir’s favourite architects is something that tried to apply to the concept and business.

Now the coffee: Aurora, from Nicaragua cultivated by a family of doctors

Dr. Enrique Ferrufino, a surgeon by profession, was born and raised on a coffee farm in the mountains of Matagalpa in 1956. Together with his wife Silvia, a paediatrician, the Ferrufino family decided to go into the coffee business in 1992 and bought Finca Aurora in 2004.  

They inspired in their three children a love for coffee from a very early age. Since they acquired Finca Aurora, the whole family has worked together to produce great coffee. This Parainema lot, a dwarf variety from the Sarchimor family, is fruity and chocolatey with stone fruit.    

After selective handpicking, cherry is lightly fermented for 36 hours before being laid to dry on drying beds or patios on the farm. Cherry is raked frequently to ensure even drying. It takes approximately 25 days for cherry to dry.

Finca Aurora is one of the first farms in Nicaragua with a fully integrated coffee operation on-site. They produce, wash and dry the coffee at the farm. The coffee is milled, sorted and bagged at Beneficio Finca Aurora under the watchful eye of the farm’s team. This allows full control over the quality throughout the process.

·       Producer: Dr.Enrique Ferrufino

·       Altitude: 1200-1400 masl

·       Origin: Nicaragua

·       Cupping Score: 86

·       Tasting notes: Raisins, Apricot, Watermelon and Prune

·       Process: Natural

·       Variety: Parainema

Colourful Collection of Specialty Coffees from all over the world