Finland's Coffee Obsession

I came to Finland as a tea drinker. A proper English tea drinker. Builder’s brew, milk, no sugar, at least four cups a day. My kettle was one of the first things I packed. I was not going to let some Nordic country change my relationship with hot beverages.

That lasted about three weeks.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Finland consumes more coffee per capita than any other country on Earth. We’re talking roughly 12 kilograms per person per year — nearly four cups a day on average for every adult in the country. To put that in perspective, the UK drinks about 3.5 kilos per person per year. The Finns are drinking more than three times as much.

When I first read that statistic, I thought it must be skewed by some particularly enthusiastic outliers. Then I started my job in Helsinki and realised: no, they all drink this much. Every single one of them.

Kahvitauko: The Sacred Coffee Break

In a Finnish workplace, the coffee break — kahvitauko — is not optional. It’s not something you fit in if you have time. It is a fundamental part of the working day, almost a constitutional right. Finnish labour agreements actually include provisions for coffee breaks. This isn’t a joke. Workers are typically entitled to two coffee breaks per day, and people take them seriously.

My first week at the office, I was heads-down in a project plan when my colleague Mikko appeared at my desk. “Kahvi?” he said. I looked at the clock. It was 9:45. We’d been at work for forty-five minutes. “Already?” I asked. He looked at me like I’d suggested we cancel Christmas.

Everyone goes to the break room. Everyone. You don’t skip kahvitauko. I tried once, and three different people came to check if I was alright.

The break itself is interesting. People sit together, drink their coffee, maybe have a pulla (a cardamom bread that is dangerously good), and chat. Or don’t chat — this is Finland, after all, and sometimes people just sit together in comfortable silence, drinking. The point isn’t the conversation. The point is the pause. The deliberate stopping of work to just be for fifteen minutes.

Light Roast, Filter, No Messing About

If you’re expecting Italian-style espresso culture, you’re in for a surprise. Finnish coffee is almost exclusively light-roast filter coffee. Drip coffee. The stuff you make in a machine and pour from a pot. No foam art, no syrups, no complicated ordering rituals.

This confused me at first. I’d been to those London coffee shops where ordering a flat white involves a fifteen-step negotiation. In Finland, you get a cup of coffee. It’s light, it’s clean, and there’s a lot of it.

The light roast thing is key. While much of Europe prefers darker roasts, Finns go light. Really light. The beans are barely past first crack, which means the coffee has a brightness and acidity that took me a while to appreciate. My first cup tasted almost sour to my English palate, which was used to stronger, darker brews. But after a few weeks, anything darker started tasting burnt.

The most popular brand is Juhla Mokka by Paulig, and you will find it in every Finnish home, every office, every summer cottage. It comes in a red and gold package and it is as Finnish as saunas and silence. It’s not fancy. It’s not trying to be. It’s just good, honest coffee.

Coffee Is the Social Fabric

What I’ve come to understand, three years in, is that coffee in Finland isn’t really about the coffee. It’s the social infrastructure. In a culture that doesn’t do small talk, that doesn’t have the pub culture I grew up with in England, coffee is how people connect.

Someone invites you for kahvi? That’s significant. That’s an invitation into their space, their time. The first time a Finnish colleague invited me to their home for coffee, I didn’t realise what a big deal it was. I do now.

Family visits revolve around coffee. When you arrive at someone’s house, the kettle — or more accurately, the coffee maker — goes on before your coat is off. Business meetings start with coffee. Funerals have coffee. Weddings have coffee. Every possible human gathering, solemn or joyful, involves coffee. I’ve been told that some Finns even have a quick cup before going to bed, which is a level of caffeine tolerance I can only aspire to.

Even the way Finns drink at home tells you something. Many people have an evening coffee around 6 or 7 PM, often with something sweet. It’s a ritual. A moment of calm in the day. Light a candle, pour a cup, sit down. In a country where winter darkness can feel endless, these small rituals carry real weight.

My Conversion

I didn’t switch overnight. For the first month, I was still drinking tea at home and coffee at work (because the office didn’t have a kettle, which should have been my first clue). But gradually, the coffee crept in. A cup in the morning before work. A cup with lunch. A cup in the afternoon. An evening cup because, well, when in Finland.

By month three, I realised I hadn’t bought tea in weeks. By month six, someone offered me a cup of tea at a friend’s place and it tasted thin and vaguely disappointing. The transformation was complete.

I now own a Moccamaster, which is the coffee maker of choice in Finnish homes. It’s a beautiful, Dutch-made machine that does one thing exceptionally well: it makes filter coffee. No pods, no steam wands, no touchscreen. Just coffee and hot water and gravity. I love it more than I’ve loved most of my possessions.

What Coffee Taught Me About Finland

The coffee thing seems trivial, but it taught me something important about Finnish culture. Finns don’t overcomplicate things. They find something that works and they commit to it completely. Light roast filter coffee, made well, served often, shared with people you care about. No pretence, no performance.

There’s a lesson there that goes well beyond beverages. The Finnish approach to most things — food, socialising, work, life — has this same quality. Find what matters. Do it properly. Skip the rest.

I still miss a good cuppa now and then. When I go back to Manchester to visit, the first thing I do is make a proper brew and drink it standing in my mum’s kitchen. But then I come home to Helsinki, and I put the Moccamaster on, and I sit by the window with a cup of light roast, and it feels right.

Finland turned me into a coffee drinker. I forgive it entirely.