It's no secret that Berlin is a music mecca – it brings people from all over the globe, and I don't mean just bands and big concerts, I’m talking the underground music scene of Germany's capital, Friday-night-to-Monday-morning nonstop Electronic Music of every variety. DJ’s and producers, big and small, taking the centre stage on any given night of the week.

This is Berlin, and this is where our story begins. In fact, when I was still back in Iceland, Nick and I met this girl in the airport who was flying back to Berlin. She was a tour manager for a German band, and seeing as I would be moving to the city in a few weeks, we decided to keep in touch. Learning of my fascination with coffee and my quest for stories, she quickly made the call to her friend, Hakan Aydin, who once owned a cafe called Koffäin and was now organizing electronic shows full-time under the same brand.

A perfect contact, and my quick entry into the local music experience.

After a few weeks of coordinating schedules, and one surprise invite to a show he was organizing (ironically a group called Kiasmos, which Nick and I discovered while driving across Iceland), I finally sat down with Hakan in a small café in Kreuzberg called F5. He explained the situation.

For 5 years, in Kreuzberg just around the corner from where we were seated, he had his own little coffee spot called Koffäin. He had actually closed it down exactly a year ago on the day we met up. He started out with a sh_tty Italian-brand coffee in the hopper, but after six months, he started working with a roastery in Hamburg called Quijote to throw on the second grinder in the café. At this point they were just serving lungos (long espressos), but as he puts it, it was his second big step towards better coffee. He finally ditched the Italian brand for Quijote entirely, then switching to another roaster called Machhörndl from Nuremburg before finally landing on JB Kaffee from Munich. Johannes, the 'J' in JB was a good friend of Hakan and the whole progression just felt natural.

“We decided to work together to make an approachable blend. Something so that people don’t just run away.”

Koffäin was located right on Skalitzer Straße, around the corner from an apprenticeship school, and all the trainees from the music scene started coming as regulars. All of a sudden, the whole hip-hop/house music scenes started coming to chill out there.

“Lot’s of music people – [DJ] Black Loops, for example, used to work with me there on the machine. More people were behind the counter than in front of it. It was a super family thing.”

In 2014, Koffäin hosted their first May 1st party in front of the shop (May 1st is a huge city-wide party in Berlin every year, often shutting down all of Skalitzer Straße). With a huge reception from the street partiers that year, he officially decided to learn how to DJ, and the following year (May 1st), he had his first big gig in front of 5000 people.

“I f_cked up the mixing big time, [laughs] but it didn’t even matter because everyone was psyched. It was a really big party.”

By the end of the year (2015), he organized his first actual concert in a venue, under the brand Koffäin, and in the beginning of 2016, he hit the ground running, organizing twelve different parties – concerts, house DJ’s, and hip hop.

“In this one year (2016), I learned so much about House. It was my process of getting into it, but by 2017, we decided we needed to get more organized, more focused, more curated.”

That finally led to starting Pau_se with a friend. Maybe they’ll start a label, or start touring DJ’s internationally – the possibilities are endless, and it all started from this little café. The guy now partnering on Pau_se was also a café regular. A lot of the first DJ’s for his shows were regulars, and Hakan admits, it was never really about having the best coffee in town.

“People just came. What made us special was… us. All the people, the atmosphere, kids growing up climbing on the tables – and I can’t explain how it all happened, it’s just destiny.”

Now, one of my favourite things about Berlin, and Germany in general, is that it has a huge Turkish population – first, second, even third generation immigrants. Hakan is on this spectrum, and I couldn’t help picking his brain about some Turkish coffee history and traditions.

Apparently, in Turkey, if a guy wants to marry a girl, his family goes to her family, and the girl makes coffee for everyone. This is the tradition of deciding whether she’s a good fit. As per tradition, the girl actually messes with the guy’s coffee and either puts in a ton of sugar, or salt to make it barely drinkable (I’d imagine that copious amounts of cardamom are involved somewhere in there as well). At the end of the family meeting, it was never really about the coffee itself, or how good of a barista she was, but about bringing people together and seeing what came out of it.

The same thing happened with Koffäin. It was coffee that brought him and his friends, future collaborators, clients, and a whole community together.

Coffee... and music.

Big thanks to FreeJazz for some great photos, check out his page! https://www.facebook.com/Freejazz.photography/

KOFFÄIN with Hakan Aydin

Brodie Vissers © 2024