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BUILDING BREW-HEMIA continued from page 55 PRAGUE'S THIRD WAVE: Roaster Doubleshot (left) operates the café Muj Salek Kavy with varying coffees and brew methods, while Café Lounge (right) rotates coffees from roasters around the world. beginning: to introduce a high-quality coffee to the home user without them needing to buy expensive super-automatic espresso machines," says Tucek. Another quality-focused spot in Prague is Café Lounge, which has adopted a multiple-roaster concept that pays homage to great roasters worldwide. "Our main coffee is from [London-based] Union," says Café Lounge owner Kamil Skrbek. "The second and third coffee of the week—usually a second espresso and one filtered coffee—we usually offer from a guest roastery, either from the Czech Republic or another country in Europe." And from time to time, Skrbek says, "somebody brings some coffee from the U.S."—Intelligentsia, Stumptown and Verve have passed through Café Lounge's grinders. A different sort of café is the year-old Prazirna, the first of Prague's specialty coffee shops to feature an in-house roastery. "I have never seen a café [in the Czech Republic] with a three-kilo roaster," says Vanda Zumrova, the shop's owner, "only smaller sample-sized roasters." The former barista champ Smrcka works the bar at Prazirna, which serves high-scoring coffees from green coffee importers Mare Terra in Spain and the United Kingdom's Mercanta. "We are too small to have coffee directly from farmers," says Zumrova, who adds that business is growing in part because the scene is developing. "There are many new cafés and people are interested in the preparation," she says. "They [no longer] want to have dark, bitter coffee, which they don't know where it has come from." 56 COFFEE ALMANAC • June 2013 A PLACE WITH PROMISE Once a consumer gets to know Prague's specialty scene, the growth and buzz within it seem impressive, but most quality roasters in town are quick to note how their community still drifts below the radar. "An awareness has been created amongst a small group of coffee appreciators, but the mass market—still mainly a commodity market—is a challenge," says Fleer of La Boheme Café. Still, there are plenty of signs the evolution is set to continue. Doubleshot, in addition to expanding its warehouse with more storage space, plans to open a training center to meet the demand for barista instruction. Café Lounge is opening a new espresso bar, while Mama Coffee, Coffee Source and La Boheme (which recently moved to a larger roasting facility after outgrowing its previous location) are investing in additional or larger roasters this year. La Boheme and Mama Coffee also are eyeing opportunities outside of the Czech Republic, though they're reticent to discuss details as those plans are still coming together. Prague in many ways seems to be following in the footsteps of some notable neighbors across Europe. "I think in a few years it will be like London or Berlin," says Tucek of Doubleshot. "Two years ago in Berlin there were just a few cafés—now there are 15 or 20. Hopefully Prague will be the same." With longstanding institutions like Café Savoy having made the transition toward specialty coffee, it seems the city is on its way.