The Story
The story of Solberg & Hansen begins in a grocery store in Oslo in 1879. A fateful meeting between two coffee-thirsty gentlemen, Carl Solberg and Fritjof Hansen, laid the foundation for one of Norway’s most knowledge-intensive companies to see the light of day.
Carl Solberg was born in 1852 and grew up in merchant Michelsen’s store in Gjøvik, learning commerce from an early age. At barely 20 years old, he traveled to Christiania to work for merchant Bernt J. Olsen, where he met another man who shared his interest in good coffee and profitable trading.
Carl Solberg and Fritjof Hansen founded Solberg & Hansen in 1879, in the midst of an explosive growth period for Norwegian coffee imports. The company established itself at Dronningens gate 18, directly across from the main post office in Kvadraturen, specializing quickly in coffee and tea imports.
In 1965, together with Nicolaisens Elektriske Kaffebrænderi AS, Solberg & Hansen moved to a new building at Ryen in Oslo, initially occupying the third floor as roastery and head office. They’re still there today, now filling the entire building.
Today, they are the oldest and largest Norwegian specialty coffee roastery, having been a pioneering company in the coffee industry, both in Norway and internationally.
Notable milestones include becoming a founding member of the Specialty Coffee Association Europe (SCAE) and achieving the first lifetime membership in June 1998. They also launched the World Barista Championship together with SCAE, with Norwegian Robert W. Thoresen winning the first championship in Monte Carlo using Solberg & Hansen’s “Half & Half” espresso blend.
Sourcing & Relationships
Solberg & Hansen buys high-quality coffee directly from farmers all over the world.
The way they buy coffee, direct trade, is one of the best ways to buy sustainable coffee. Through travelling, they have built relationships with coffee farmers and suppliers all over the world.
They promote long-term relationships with the producers knowing that investment in time, good payments, and ongoing development will serve the best coffee, enabling them to share knowledge and create long-term relationships with dedicated and skilled coffee farmers, farms and cooperatives.
It is important to them that their coffee farmers have access to the necessary equipment, to the development of knowledge and expertise, and to labour. They pay well for the farmer’s efforts so that the process can be repeated year after year.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Solberg & Hansen was purchasing significant volumes of coffee from Cup of Excellence auctions and supplied coffee to most coffee shops in Oslo, helping establish high-quality coffee culture in the city.
For 145 years, Solberg & Hansen has aimed to be the door opener for the world’s best coffee cup, with direct trade as their most important tool. It’s not just about buying and selling, but about building strong relationships with farmers and producers around the world.
They regularly invite producers to their roastery at Ryen, where farmers discover their own sacks of green coffee in the warehouse and learn from each other’s methods of storing and transporting green coffee, seeing how roasters develop roast profiles for each batch.
Roasting Philosophy
At their roastery at Ryen in Oslo, they develop customised roast profiles for all their coffee types. A roast profile specifies how long the raw coffee should be roasted at what temperature, and how and when the heat should be applied during roasting to develop the right flavour and aroma. The precision lies in utilising the potential of each individual coffee bean.
For each coffee, they try to create a unique profile based on the coffee’s natural attributes and technical information (bean size, altitude, etc.), with the rate of rise curve and development level having tremendous impact on how they create a profile and the final result.
In January 2025, Solberg & Hansen became the first coffee roaster in Norway to roast coffee exclusively with fossil-free biopropane, reducing CO2 emissions by at least 70% and marking a major step towards their goal of being climate-neutral by 2030.
One advantage of biopropane is its almost identical molecules to fossil propane, meaning it can be used on existing equipment at Ryen without modifications to either the system or roasting machines.
To simplify customer selection, they have divided their coffee into categories: light green bags focus on traceability, dark green bags focus on taste, espresso comes in black bags, and they offer Black Coffee and Black Espresso concepts created in collaboration with Norwegian metal culture.
Their commitment to quality is demonstrated by their competition success using coffees from their existing range rather than specially prepared competition batches, proving the consistently high level of their daily roasting work.
What to Try
Their Thunguri coffee from Kenya secured bronze in the Global Coffee Awards 2025 Filter – Washed category, delivering a juicy and intense cup with sweet notes of blackcurrant and raspberry.
The jury described this Kirinyaga coffee as light, balanced and complex, with elegant floral notes of elderflower and an interplay of berries, stone fruit and dried apricot, highlighting the roasting process as successful and precise with high precision and good flavour purity.
The Black Coffee series, inspired by True Norwegian Black Metal culture, was originally launched in the Norwegian town Hell and has reached volume 26. The current offering features coffee beans from Shakiso Bukisa washing station in Guji, Ethiopia.
These Black Coffee and Black Espresso concepts were created in collaboration with Norwegian metal culture, representing their unique cultural approach to specialty coffee.
Solberg & Hansen typically has around 40 different coffees on the menu year-round, with most being direct trade. Their assortment is divided into four main categories: filter coffee split into “spor” (traceability) and “sans” (sense/flavor), classics like Java-mocca blends, and espresso.
Recent seasonal highlights include their first anaerobic coffee from El Salvador pacamara and high-scoring Geisha from farm El Obraje, demonstrating their commitment to innovation and exceptional quality micro-lots.