Slow Coffee Club

Home brewers of Belgrade · Saturdays since 2019

Est. 2019 · Dorćol, Belgrade

Good coffee takes its time.

We are a dozen-odd home brewers who meet every Saturday morning to grind, pour, wait, taste and argue gently about all of it. No baristas, no machines worth more than a bicycle — just kettles, curiosity and one long wooden table.

Come on a Saturday Read the brew guides

  • 300-odd Saturdays so far
  • 9:30 until the pot is empty
  • Bring your own mug
A pour-over in progress Line drawing of a gooseneck kettle pouring water into a cone dripper set on a glass carafe, with a small cup of coffee steaming beside it and a sprig of leaves on the table. 93 °C, just off the boil bloom · 45 g
Saturday, 9:41 a.m. — the second pour.

The week ahead

This Saturday’s brew

9:30 – 12:00, upstairs at Knjižara Ugao, Dorćol

Beginners welcome

Two Kenyans and a džezva duel

Stefan roasted a fresh batch of the Kiamuri Ridge lot from Nyeri in his popcorn machine on Thursday night (his neighbours have been informed), and this time we’ll put it side by side with the Thirikwa Valley from Sova Roastery. Same V60, same 1:16, same water — the only thing that differs is who roasted it. Blind, of course.

After the break Dragan defends his title against Teodora in the second annual džezva duel: one Brazilian, two copper pots, a single gas ring and a very serious panel of three judges. Jelena is baking the coffee-cardamom cake, which means the judges will be bribed.

On the table

  • Kiamuri Ridge, Kenya — home roast, rested a week
  • Thirikwa Valley, Kenya — Sova Roastery
  • Fazenda Três Irmãs, Brazil — for the duel
  • Filtered Belgrade tap water, 75 ppm

What to bring

  • A mug you are fond of
  • 300 dinars for the bean jar, if you can
  • Your hand grinder, if you have one
  • An opinion, loosely held

What we do

A slow morning, once a week

The club started because Milica had three grinders, one good kettle and no one to drink the results with. It is still that simple. We brew, we taste, we write down what we noticed, and then we go and get burek.

The best coffee I ever had was the one I finally waited for.

  • We brew by hand

    Pour-over, immersion, moka, džezva. Every Saturday has a theme — one origin, one method, one variable — so we learn a single thing properly instead of ten things badly. The brew guides are what we’ve settled on so far.

  • We taste blind

    Cups are numbered on masking tape, labels are revealed at the end. It is humbling how often the expensive bag loses. Everything we’ve tried goes into the bean library with our honest scores.

  • Some of us roast

    A secondhand popcorn machine, a cast-iron tava and a lot of smoke on balconies. Our roasting notes and log are there for anyone brave enough to try, including what went wrong.

  • We write it down

    Every meetup gets a few paragraphs in the club journal: who came, what we drank, what surprised us. Seven years of Saturdays add up to a surprisingly good record of how a group of people learned to taste.

From the journal

Latest Saturdays

All write-ups →

  • Halloween, but make it Ethiopian

    Three Ethiopians on the table, a pumpkin nobody carved, and Ana finally identifying jasmine without being told it was there.

  • The water morning

    One coffee, four waters. Nemanja brought a TDS meter and a spreadsheet; the spreadsheet won the argument.

  • Plum season and a moka pot confession

    Jelena’s plum and espresso pekmez, and Luka admitting he had been tamping his moka for three years.

  • Cold brew on the river

    The annual summer outing to the Sava with three jars of cold brew, a cooler bag and one escaped watermelon.

  • The Geisha we could barely afford

    Our three-hundredth-meetup splurge: 100 grams split eleven ways, weighed to the tenth of a gram, and worth it.

Around the house

Bean of the month

Dimtu Hills, Guji

A natural Ethiopian that tastes of blueberries and jasmine without tipping into boozy. Our highest-rated everyday coffee this year, and the one most likely to convert a sceptic.

Read the tasting note →

From the kitchen

Domaća kafa with ratluk

The coffee every Serbian grandmother makes, and the way Dragan insists it should be made: cold water, a little patience, foam spooned into each cup first.

Get the recipe →

For your counter

Ratio calculator

Tell it how much coffee you have, or how big your mug is, and slide between “tea-like” and “wake the neighbours”. Comes with a step-by-step timer.

Open the tools →

Saturdays since 2019
300+
Coffees in the library
25
Grinders on loan
4
Chairs around the table
12

A note from Milica

I started this club because I was tired of drinking good coffee alone. In the autumn of 2019 I put a note on the board of a bookshop in Dorćol — “Home brewers, Saturdays, bring a mug” — and four people came. One of them was my uncle, so really three.

We have moved tables twice, survived a year of meeting on balconies and video calls, broken two glass carafes and one friendship over the correct temperature for a džezva (since repaired). What hasn’t changed is the idea: one morning a week where nobody is in a hurry, and the only thing you have to do is pay attention to a cup.

If that sounds like your kind of Saturday, come and sit with us.

— Milica