Noma, the world-renowned restaurant, is turning its attention away from fine dining to a surprising new venture: coffee. The Copenhagen institution that helped redefine Nordic cuisine has just launched Noma Kaffe (“kaffe” meaning coffee in Danish).
Yes, the restaurant has taken its coffee program seriously for well over a decade, but few expected that when Noma announced its “3.0” transformation, coffee beans would take center stage.
Now, their first subscription box has already shipped out and landed on doorsteps around the world. Noma the restaurant has, at least in part, become Noma the roaster.
Important sidenote: While headlines about Noma’s closure went global a few years ago, a key update that followed was missed by many — Noma is not closing permanently. The restaurant in Copenhagen remains open, though its operations will shift in the coming year. Rather than staying open year-round, Noma is turning its focus toward a range of new projects, including coffee. So yes, things are changing — but if you’ve got the means, you can still book a table today.
Of course, new roasters launch every week, but this one stood out — for obvious reasons. So I spoke with Carolyne Lane, who heads Noma Kaffe, to learn how a world-famous kitchen is now shaping its identity through the lens of coffee.
I’ve been enjoying their inaugural coffee release over the past few weeks. The box includes two very different coffees: a washed Mexican of the rare local Garnica variety, and a natural Ethiopian from the Guji region, both roasted lightly and with a clear focus on flavor clarity. So far it’s promising. But what will the future bring?
The Usain Bolt of food?
Excellence in one domain sometimes transfers beautifully to adjacent fields. A brilliant pastry chef might excel at pizza making. But cross too many boundaries, and even the most refined skills can lose their relevance. When Usain Bolt, the greatest sprinter in history, retired and stepped onto the football pitch, the world watched with fascination. That quickly turned into horror when they saw his first touch.
Noma’s pivot to coffee roasting evokes a similar curiosity. The restaurant has earned five World’s Best Restaurant titles and three Michelin stars. They’ve also taken coffee seriously for years, collaborating closely with Tim Wendelboe – perhaps Scandinavia’s most influential roaster.
But can the genius that defined modern Nordic cuisine automatically translate to the more specialized craft of coffee roasting? And is the food background a strength or a weakness? I asked Carolyne about that.
“I’ve spent the last 10 years working in almost every gastronomical field – from farms to restaurants to coffee roasteries. And you can learn a lot about coffee by learning about saké. You can learn a lot about coffee by learning how vegetables grow.”
She adds, “I think a lot of times in coffee, we’re actually a little bit guilty of valuing one particular kind of knowledge.”
Noma is, of course, extremely well known for their fermentation skills. The restaurant has a lab dedicated to this, and founder René Redzepi has even co-authored a book on it. My initial thought—or maybe even hope—was to see this expertise applied to coffee. Apparently, I’m not alone. Carolyne counters in a way that suggests she’s been asked this more than a few times:
“There are always sort of trends that dictate what people think you might do. So for example, right now the trend in specialty coffee is co-fermented, very intense processing methods. And so you imagine that, as a restaurant with a fermentation lab, we might want to do highly processed fermented coffees.
“But if you apply the same principles to Noma starting out as a restaurant back in the early 2000s—this was the high point of molecular gastronomy. And what was perceived as avant-garde back then was not what Noma ended up doing.
“So with how we work, a lot of it is about finding our own voice, finding what interests us. There’s a rough framework for this. The way we start any new project is by getting to know it deeply, and going in with the value of trying to create a representation of a place—on a plate or, in this case, in a cup.
“If we go in with that mentality—open, seeing our partners on eye level—we’re able to discover together what the new or interesting thing is.”
From French Press to Nomacano
Noma’s journey with coffee mirrors their evolution as a restaurant—constantly questioning, refining, and occasionally breaking with convention. While many high-end restaurants treat coffee as an afterthought, Noma has long been obsessive about their coffee service, though this passion hasn’t always translated into customer satisfaction.
Interestingly, their coffee program has sometimes proven more controversial than their food. René Redzepi, co-founder of Noma, admitted in 2013 that their light-roasted pour-overs received more pushback than any avantgarde dish—even ones involving live ants or reindeer brain omelette. Diners were fine eating those, but a light roast without sugar or milk? Too far.
Carolyne nods knowingly when I bring this up.
“It’s funny that you reference this,” she says. “I was working for a restaurant in Germany at the time and was having the same struggle—people perceiving our coffee as too tea-like. I remember thinking to myself back then, ‘How nice that even a restaurant like Noma has the same problem.'”
She’s quick to note how much the landscape has shifted.
“I have to say that the yardstick has moved quite a lot, at least in Copenhagen. In a general sense, people are much more understanding. They understand specialty coffee a lot more. It’s kind of assimilated into their life.”
Noma’s coffee program began with French press, then evolved to V60 pour over using Tim Wendelboe’s beans.
Eventually, they developed a unique brewing technique in collaboration with Wendelboe himself—something now known as the “Nomacano.” The Nomacano still allows fruity, light roasts to shine, but produces a denser, more tactile cup. It packs a punch compared to a standard pour over.
Carolyne explains that the move away from pour over wasn’t a compromise.
“Up until that point, we had copy-pasted the model from the specialty coffee shop. But maybe that’s not specific enough for this context. That was our desire—to try and find a new service style.
“We’re speaking a language that feels most authentic to us, and I think we’ll reach people in both camps,” she says when I ask her if the restaurant can please both coffee geeks and the core foodie fanbase Noma has built since its inception in 2003.
The Fermentation Paradox
Heads up: If you’re interested in understanding how fermentation affects coffee flavor, check out our guide on the difference between washed and naturals.
Given the current trend in specialty coffee toward co-fermented, intensely processed coffees—and considering Noma has written the book on fermentation—you might expect them to be pushing boundaries here too. Surprisingly (or perhaps unfortunately?) their approach runs counter to the trend.
“A lot of people have assumed that we’re going to do a lot of strange fermentations,” Carolyne acknowledges. “But at this stage, we’re focusing primarily on washed coffees because they tell us so much. They reveal what’s going on in the field, as opposed to in the processing station.”
This restraint echoes the philosophy of Carolyne’s mentor Tim Wendelboe, who champions clean, washed coffees and remains somewhat skeptical of heavy fermentation.
Carolyne explains:
“The thing that gets me out of bed in the morning is variety characteristics—being able to taste terroir. I’d rather work with fewer people and get a broader spread of varieties, clearly differentiated without the flavors of extended fermentation masking them.”
They’re not entirely closed off to experimenting. When asked about potential crossovers with their fermentation experts, she laughs.
“There’ve been some… maybe not-so-successful coffee soy sauces.”
“But yeah, of course we’re always playing. Coffee is an ingredient we’re really engaged with right now, so we’ve done a lot of tests. One of them will no doubt yield a really interesting result.”
And yet, she’s realistic about the process.
“The thing people don’t get to see is that 99% of our experiments fail. So we’re still waiting to reach that 1%.”
Noma water?
Asser: “I noticed you recommend brewing with water at around 50 PPM total dissolved solids. Denmark has notoriously tricky water for coffee brewing. How did you land on this recommendation?”
Carolyne: “Yeah, it’s funny—so we got back from Japan during Christmas, right? And there was something wrong. I couldn’t brew good coffee at home all of a sudden. I was so upset. I was dialing in my setup for hours on Christmas Eve. Denmark more or less closes down during Christmas time, and I just so desperately wanted to drink a nice cup of coffee, but I couldn’t make it happen.”
“It was just the most frustrating thing. I ended up getting a lot of different waters from the local supermarket, and I fixed the entire problem—three hours of tweaking recipes—by just changing the water. I mean, it’s 98.5% of the drink, right? Like, it makes a huge difference.”
“We do have a BWT reverse osmosis system at the restaurant, but it’s a little bit different than most coffee shops because it’s 500 liters as opposed to a few tens of liters. Because it supplies water to the kitchens as well. Our PPM is consistently between 45 and 55.”
“When we do roasting R&D—when we’re building our profiles—we’re judging what tastes good on that particular water. So if we are roasting and building the profile to be optimized to that water, it makes sense that we then recommend that water as the correct PPM. So it’s a little bit of reverse engineering. You have some fixed parameters, and then you kind of work around them.”
Learn more about ideal mineral content in my beginner guide on the best water for coffee.
The First Subscription Box
Both of Noma Kaffe’s inaugural coffees have been on my coffee station for the past couple of weeks. After drinking them daily, I can confidently say they reflect what you’d expect from a Noma-associated product: clarity, precision, and a focus on highlighting the inherent characteristics of the product.
The flavor notes on the bags are vague and just hint at a direction: “fruity & rich” for instance. I actually like this brevity as it encourages (or liberates) customers to think more for themselves.
Plus, this is a subscription where you can’t pick and choose. As such the flavor notes don’t have a role to play in the decision making.
The Ethiopian natural is relatively clean. I get flavor notes such as papaya, white chocolate, peach and pomegranate; no wine or booze, just a hint of fermentation exemplified by the subtle note that reminds me of the classic Haribo Peach winegum that was everywhere in the 1990’s.
The Mexican offering, carrying the farmer name Severiano Intzín, opens with a spicy dry fragrance of cloves, black pepper and hints of raspberry – in the cup it transforms to a crisp green apple accompanied by subtle caramel, but this can easily be modulated to something closer to a fuji apple, depending on water chemistry (increase the KH or alternatively TDS for a milder malic acid presentation, go the opposite way for a more intense apple kick).
The roasting style is light and transparent—typical of Nordic light roasts.
The bags feature the phrase “tak for kaffe”—which translates literally to “thanks for coffee,” but also works as a Danish version of “oh my gosh.” Noma has always had a sense of humour and quirkiness, which is also mirrored in the packaging.
The Mexican beans come from indigenous farmers that Noma was connected with by their green coffee partner in the country, Jesus Salazar of Cafeólogo.
The Ethiopian natural reflects their case-by-case approach to processing. While they generally prefer washed coffees for their clarity, Carolyne explains that naturals make more sense in Ethiopia.
“It’s quite meaningful to source naturals in Ethiopia because they have the cultural precedent for it. Ethiopia is natural first and washed second. The infrastructure simply lends itself better to natural processing, especially at the scale we’re working.”
In this inaugural release, not all subscribers received the same coffees. Instead of combining beans from multiple farmers into large lots, Noma Kaffe took the opposite route—separating harvests into micro-lots as small as 50 to 200 kilograms.
“It’s the coffee equivalent of using tweezers to pick microgreens in a restaurant,” Carolyne says. “You do many times the work. But by splitting those 1,000 kilos into ten 100-kilo lots, I as a roaster get to experience ten different expressions of that variety from that place.”
“It makes no logical sense to do it,” she laughs. “But it makes life way more interesting.”
The limited subscription sold out quickly, and there’s already a waitlist for future openings.
After my chat with Carolyne – as well as tasting the coffee – Noma’s project is suddenly more clear to me. They aren’t out to disrupt the coffee world — at least not in the obvious ways. Instead, they’re taking a steady approach rooted in curiosity, precision, and collaboration. It’s not about chasing trends or making a lot of noise.
It’s early, but what they’re doing feels intentional — and worth keeping an eye on.
👉 Order Noma Kaffe here
If you’re curious about Danish/Scandinavian coffee and the curious case of the light roast, then check out this article
