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ARTFUL LIVING

ARTFUL LIVING

We met with Kaan Bergsen, the founder of Petra Roasting Co., which was founded in 2013. We talked to him at length about the coffee he loves to prepare, the innovations he follows, the definition of good coffee and of course Petra. Let's take the coffee lovers to the rest of the interview.

How did your passion for coffee start, how did you develop yourself after meeting this curiosity?

I started to be interested in beverages in general long before coffee. It was because of their taste. In my opinion, the tastes and taste differences of the drinks do not exist in any dish. In the simplest terms, the aromas that we usually take before eating the food tell us more or less how it tastes. But in beverages, this sensation can appear in many different ways. It was the bottomlessness of this well that attracted me.

Some people do well in the kitchen. Are you one of them?

Kitchen, not so much, but I love bars. It makes me very happy to watch, examine and work in it. Bars have a social side that kitchens lack. You can talk directly to the customer; you prepare food, drinks and products after a face-to-face conversation with them. I think this is one of the backbones of the service industry, but it is not emphasized much. For example, we built Petra's service exactly on this. We see that it is definitely out of the ordinary, but it works very well.

What do you do to improve yourself and follow the innovations in this field?

I travel a lot and we share a lot with other friends from the industry. There are also blogs I follow, but we usually produce the most creative ideas ourselves. The industry we are in is so new that companies like us can direct the entire industry. This is very exciting.

What were you doing before Petra? How did you come up with the idea to open Petra?

Before Petra, I was still working in the coffee industry. I worked in the sales and roasting departments. Petra did not come as an idea, in fact, it was a natural development. I already knew that I would continue this job and I knew that I wanted to live in Istanbul as well. Back then, there were so few places in Istanbul that did the coffee business as I wanted to do, that making my own project would have been the right decision.

How did the entrepreneurship education you received in Boston affect the order and systematics in Petra?

I'm sure it affected you a lot. I had no experience in company management outside of school, and we were aware from the first day that this business had to be managed professionally. That's why we started with a very corporate infrastructure and we strive to make it more professional every day.

How would you describe a good coffee?

I think a good coffee should be sweet first. Sweet and complex. If its aromas are out of the ordinary, if its sweetness is accompanied by a nice apple-like acidity, it is a good coffee for me.

The definition of "coffee laboratory" is used for Petra. You say, "We are not a cafe. Our job is to roast coffee." So what is the secret of this business?

The secret is discipline. We have a quality control mechanism where we look for any good or bad results by recording all kinds of variables. Of course, roasting and discipline are not enough on their own; green coffee is also the best beans… Petra's difference is also here.

We are in a period when we meet the third wave coffee culture and try to get to know the coffee shops that open and close every day while trying to digest this coffee culture that suddenly entered our lives. A place and its coffee can become popular and disappear the next day. Do you think Istanbul has enough knowledge and experience about coffee flavors? Or does this situation not go behind a pretense?

A little bit of both. After all, opening a coffee is as easy as opening a bar. It's even easier if we consider their licenses. Because of this, many cafes are opening and the styles of today's trend cafes are clear. To stand out from this herd, cafes first need to differentiate themselves. Secondly, they need to see it as a real profession. In my opinion, Istanbul is ready for our coffee, we see this from the people who come to our shops every day.

I will seriously ask this question. Which coffee do you enjoy preparing the most?

I love making filter coffee. With every brew, I learn something new and improve myself. In addition, a total of 10 minutes I spent brewing; weighing, grinding, brewing, waiting is like meditation. I also like to brew green tea with the same discipline, but don't tell anyone.

What do you think about organic and homemade nutrition, one of the most talked about consumption forms of recent days?

Love and Hate... I don't like that they are marketing oriented. Now you write homemade under anything and you can sell it for 1.5 times. More precisely, you cannot sell, you think you are selling in Turkey. Same with organic nutrition. Organic is more expensive. But wasn't everything natural 20 years ago? I mean, I vaguely remember, but there were producers I went to, and it's been years since I've eaten tomatoes like that. It should not be organic rich food, I think it should be food. Was it too political? :)

Where is your favorite place to drink coffee? (Except Petra :) It can be from Turkey and abroad)

Hmm there are a lot of them. Ben Rahim in Berlin, Tim Wendelboe in Oslo, Boot Cafe in Paris… Museum Botany, Chronotrope and Coffee Department in Turkey.

Will you come up with new projects in the future?

Petra has now become a product-oriented food and beverage company. In other words, we produce each of our products with their own story. This is very exciting, both in terms of production and sales. We want to go further than that. Our long-term goal is to be a unique food and beverage company in the world. For this, we always need to improve ourselves.



SOURCE: http://www.artfulliving.com.tr/kultur-ve-yasam/iyi-bir-kahve-nasil-olmali-i-13341