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C
P atrik Rolf Karlsson has a simple but bold
vision. He wants to make the best coffee in
the world. And that starts with making coffee
taste better.
The CEO and founder of April Coffee Roasters has
worn many hats in his career. He’s been a barista, brew-
er, businessman and, most recently a product designer;
an impressive list of skills and experience for someone
so young — Patrik Rolf is not yet 30 years old. The com-
pany he launched has a lot going on too. April is a coffee
roastery, a media company producing podcasts and
training videos, and a work wear supplier. Yet everything
Patrik Rolf and his team do is powered by a shared pas-
sion for coffee and making theirs the best.
Swedish-born Patrik Rolf first entered the coffee
industry when he became a corporate consultant for coffee
roastery da Matteo in his hometown of Gothenburg. The
roastery’s founder, Matts W. Johannsson, soon invited
Patrik Rolf to join the company full time. He worked for
da Matteo over the next two and a half years. He first be-
came a barista, working behind da Matteo’s bar and honing
his skills by competing in barista competitions around the
world, before turning his attention to coffee roasting. He
soon came to believe that coffee had to be improved — and
he would be the one to do it.
Setting the Highest Standards
His quest to create the world’s best coffee saw
Patrik Rolf set a course from his native Sweden first to
Germany, where he completed a stint with the well-re-
nowned Berlin roaster Five Elephant, then on to Den-
mark. His April Coffee venture was born in Copenhagen
in the summer of 2016.
“I started in Copenhagen because I believe it’s a
I believe that there city that is home to quality; the standards are the high-
est in Europe and only the best survive,” Patrik Rolf
is very little ‘new explained.
April has not only survived but thrived. The roast-
knowledge.’ Often it’s ery has gained a reputation for high-quality coffee and
now has an impressive international client list. But
simply application Patrik Rolf won’t supply his coffee to just anyone.
“We want to work with people who share our pas-
of old knowledge in sion for quality. That is all there is to it. It’s not about
size or having a lot of followers on social media, it’s
new situations that about wanting to always do better,” he stressed. “We
makes us progress. have a very clear aim and vision — nothing is more im-
portant than the quality of our coffee.”
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Patrik Rolf explained: “April was founded around the
Coffee quality is largely determined by its taste, as
trying to make the best coffee in the world. Everything
need to explore how to make coffee taste better. We are
I did initially when starting April was focused on creat-
ing an environment where we could explore quality.”
Facing a Challenge
Making good tasting coffee is hard — a fact that
Patrik Rolf thinks is often overlooked. While he believes
coffee in general doesn’t necessarily taste bad now, the
main challenge to improving it is achieving consistency
and progression in taste.
“The ‘every-mans’ coffee that we see in supermar-
kets and big chains today is not getting better and a lot
of ‘Specialty Coffee Roasters’ around the world are
getting less progressive. I want to see more innovation
and progression of the low level,” he explained.
Discovering the secret to roasting and brewing a
consistently tasty coffee has proved to be tough. When
facing a challenge like this, Patrik Rolf doesn’t try to
reinvent the wheel. Instead he looks to build on the work
done by people before him and, most of all, draw on his
own deep curiosity.
“I believe that there is very little ‘new knowledge.’
Often it’s simply application of old knowledge in new
situations that makes us progress,” Patrik Rolf mused. “So
far, the main driver has been my own curiosity. I taste a
coffee product, and I ask myself how I would have done it.”
After years of experimenting with how coffee could
be made to taste better, Patrik Rolf believes he has the
solution with the April Brewing Kit, a pour over brewer,
designed to put great tasting coffee within easy reach of
home brewers.
His inspiration was a long-held belief that, “the
roasting and the brewing (of coffee) is connected. I
started out as a barista who became a coffee roaster and
the April Brewing Kit project was a way for me to get
back to my roots. It took us almost three years to come
up with the finished version of the Brewer and sure
enough, I encountered a lot of challenges along the road.
But every challenge made the Brewer better.”
Making a Bold Move
Rather than trialing his new design behind closed doors
April Brewing Kit or releasing it quietly with a ‘soft’ launch, Patrik Rolf chose
to reveal the Brewer in the most public way possible — by
using it in competition at the 2019 World Brewers Cup.
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