coffee lovers

Coffee time! How to drink coffee in The Netherlands.

Coffee variations

In almost every country of the world you can order a cup of coffee. Coffee really is a world traveler! During the past centuries coffee has travelled from one country to another. It has become part of a nice morning breakfast, or evening after dinner beverage, in a lot of countries. However, the ways of making coffee differ a lot, and therefore you will find a lot of variations in how coffee tastes. In this blog I am going to explain you a little bit about how the Dutch like their coffee best and what you can expect while ordering a coffee in this country.

coffee variations

The taste of coffee varies in every country

Coffee in the Netherlands

An average cup of coffee in The Netherlands is a strong coffee compared to the English blend, but it tastes less strong than the Italian caffe! If you prefer the latter, you can best order an espresso. This type of coffee is the strongest variant and tastes a bit similar. The Dutch people like drinking coffee a lot, and the most common type is a coffee without milk as shown in the picture here below. Not sure if this is your cup of tea – coffee – too? Luckily there’s more!

dutch coffee

This is more or less what you get when you order a normal coffee in a Dutch cafe.

The introduction of the barista

A pretty recent development in the Dutch coffee tradition is the involvement of the barista. In the past decade a barista worked only in luxury hotel bars and only in few cafes. Nowadays more and more cafes send their team to barista courses to make sure they can offer their guests a good quality coffee, and that they can prepare different types of coffee as well!

morning coffee

New trends are on their way in The Netherlands as well

Different types of coffee

The variety in types of coffees has expanded and has become broader than only the espresso, coffee, cappuccino and coffee with milk (the so called koffie verkeerd). Nowadays in alsmost every cafe you can order your latte macchiato too, or even a flat white although my experience is that in a lot of cafes they don’t know what this last type is. Yet there are special coffee bars where you can order every type such as Coffee Company and Buongiorno Espresso.

barista latte art

Barista’s often like to add some ‘latte art’ in your cappuccino

Espresso vs coffee

Once you are visiting The Netherlands, it doesn’t differ that much in which cafe you order your coffee. The quality is more or less the same. However, important to realize, this is not the country of espresso, but of coffee! Since I happen to know an espresso lover, I have realized what this means: the espresso doesn’t taste that good everywhere. My advice therefore is that if you want to order a coffee, order a normal coffee, or a cappuccino. All the other varieties on the card may taste good too, but this really depends on how well the staff can work with the coffee machine.

Where to order the best coffee

The good news is: regardless which place you visit in The Netherlands, as soon as you find a nice looking cafe where you can see they have a coffee machine to prepare fresh coffee, you can decide to drink your coffee there. In general the quality of the coffee served is good. A normal coffee usually costs between 2 euro and 2.50 euro, a cappuccino costs 2,50 up to 3,50. An important message is shown in the infographic: coffeeshops are not the places to order coffee! You have to visit a place called ‘café’ instead. Keep that in mind in case you weren’t aware yet. My last advice: combine your cup of coffee with one of the typical pastries such as apple pie. The combination of something sweet with a cup of coffee is a real treat.

coffee lovers

The Dutch people are true coffee lovers!

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