How to Escape Coffee: A Degustation Workshop Exploring Alternatives Through Heritage and Ecology

☕️ How to Escape Coffee
A degustation workshop exploring taste, ecology, and the future of wakefulness

Coffee is more than a beverage. It is a global system with deep cultural roots, complex trade networks, and a heavy ecological footprint.

In this ongoing series of workshops, we explore what it means to “escape” coffee — not to reject it, but to understand its history, impact, and hold on our daily lives. Together, we look for new rituals and local alternatives that reflect our own landscapes and ecosystems.

From our first session, we’ve learned that escaping coffee is about more than caffeine. It’s about body, aroma, and effect — and how we can rebuild them using European ingredients such as roasted chicory, barley, acorns, dandelion roots, soy, or fermented grains. Each session deepens the research through tasting and conversation.

Together, we will:

• Explore the global coffee trade and its colonial history, tracing how it shaped labor, land, and culture.

• Examine the ecological costs of coffee production and transport in a time of climate urgency.

• Discover European traditions of roasted and fermented brews that once filled the role of coffee.

• Taste and compare, using classic brewing methods such as V60, moka pot, Aeropress, and French press.

• Reclaim the morning ritual, shifting from consumption to reflection, from speed to attention.

This is a tasting workshop for the curious and the awake. Whether you want to reduce your dependency, learn new brewing techniques, or simply reimagine your daily ritual, this session invites you to explore and experiment.

We are only getting started. Each workshop builds on the previous one, with ongoing tastings, open experiments, and shared notes as part of the Fermenthings Escaping Coffee Lab.

🗓 Upcoming Sessions

• Sunday, February 8, 2026 – 14:00

• Sunday, April 12, 2026 – 14:00

• Sunday, June 14, 2026 – 14:00

📍 Fermenthings, Brussels
💶 €30 per person