Whilst we are still some way from our goal of an event like the Coffee Pavilion at Slow Food Nation, we can’t help but feel happy that there are strong signs of a coffee community coming together in London.
We accidentally oversold the event last night, but it was still a bit of surprise to see around 45 people take the time, put their hands in their pockets for charity, and turn up and to drink coffee (even if that did mean I had to pull around 160 shots in under hour on my own – a rare work out these days). The event was a real mix of people – consumers, baristas, roasters and general coffee types – some travelling a really long way to come down (Though I think we caffeinated Dale enough for his 100ish mile drive back to Bristol!)
As usual we served the coffees blind, people were offered repulls if they weren’t happy with how their shot was made, and people were invited to leave any cupping notes on our whiteboard anonymously (because few of us like standing in front of a crowd and nervously suggesting “redcurrants”.)
Again some of the blends fell victim to our postal service, despite being posted ahead of others that arrived, and we’d like to thank all the roasters who took part.
Each one of the 4 blends we tasted were very different, and each had a portion of the crowd nominating it their favourite. One thing that did seem to run through most of the blends was a presence of PNG – though I guess that is probably the closest growing origin to New Zealand (despite the hard work of Mountain Top and others I am not going to count Australia in that!). However, other than that one vague commonality, the shots produced were a range of espresso styles which was very interesting.
The event was a lot of fun – thank you to everyone who came out and kept us busy, and an extra thank you to Andrew Tolley for manning the camera and the guys from Bullet Coffee Roasters for the exceptionally delicious brownies!
Here is a short video:
Taste of New Zealand from James Hoffmann on Vimeo.
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Comments ( 6 )
[...] of New Zealand was good edutainment and it was cool to have so many coffee people in one place! No tag for this post. 1ViewsRelated PostsNo Related [...]
jimseven - a barista blog | Taste of New Zealand added these pithy words on Sep 11 08 at 5:27 amSo who came out on top and what do you think of our daily grinds???
Matt added these pithy words on
Sep 11 08 at
4:26 am
“despite the hard work of Mountain Top and others I am not going to count Australia in that!”
Fair cop.
Still, it is not the individual crops that are the problem here in Australia but the failure to deliver consistent quality in each crop. I know that is an issue for any origin, but it seems more pronounced here.
However – back to the event, it sounds like a great time was had at Square Mile.
Grendel added these pithy words on
Sep 12 08 at
5:54 am
Dale added these pithy words on God that looks like fun.
I see Australian Tim made it while he was in town; good stuff!
Chris Kolbu added these pithy words on
Sep 19 08 at
12:04 am
Great night out @ Squaremile
Thanks Team!A great event and well supported too
Hope to see you all at future events
Glenn Watson added these pithy words on
Oct 21 08 at
12:57 pm
