One of the biggest events in the coffee calendar, London Coffee Festival 2016 definitely did not disappoint. This years festival saw almost 31,000 people attending over the four days, not bad for only it’s 6th year! In order to comfortably host this many attendees, the festival was split over two floors with the top floor hosting the UKBC and UKBrC along with many amazing companies selling everything from coffee to machinery to soda, while the ground floor hosted more wonderful stands, the Coffee Masters competition, House of Coffee & Co and of course our stand.
We loved being part of the LCF last year and had a lot of fun coming up with this years approach. We knew we wanted to help people achieve tastier coffee at home, and we wanted a platform for some crazy ideas we had been thinking about, so the home and canteen concepts were born.
At Home recreated a residential kitchen setting with separate sections and options for making espresso and filter coffee. For espresso we brewed our Colombian San Fermin on a Nuova Simonelli Oscar II paired up with a Baratza Forte grinder, while the Sage Oracle took care of grinding, tamping and auto steaming Red Brick to perfection. If you enjoy making filter coffee, we decided to brew Rainha Natural on the Clever Dripper with the help of a Sage Smart Grinder Pro, and the Mahlkonig Vario was supplying Mahembe to the newly launched Ratio 8 brewer.
With The Canteen, the aim was to create fun and interesting experiences using coffee as an ingredient, while also thinking about sustainability. Attendees were guided through five different edible products, each an example of a different taste. Starting with (salty) rye bread baked with Red Brick espresso and paired with butter churned with chaff (from our friends at Pavilion Bakery no less), a (sour) soda made from cascara and pink grapefruits, (bitter) cascara chocolate, (sweet) soft serve made with Sweetshop espresso, and of course a (balanced) cup of lovely Colombian filter coffee, Belén, to complete the experience.
We’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for joining us at the LCF – special shout out’s go to Pavilion Bakery, Sovereign, Square Root, Sage Appliances, Nuova Simonelli, Ratio, Coffeehit and Mahlkonig. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and appreciated people queuing to see us (after queuing to get into the festival!). We also promised to post the recipe for our Sweetshop Soft Serve on the blog, so without further ado:
Sweetshop Soft Serve (this is a modified version of the ChefSteps Soft Serve recipe, and has been scaled down to make one individual serving from a double espresso).
– 112.5g milk, we used Northiam Dairy Unhomogenised Whole Milk
– 50g Sweetshop espresso
– 18.8g cane sugar
– 15.4g heavy cream, we used Northiam Diary Double Cream
– 14.6g skimmed milk powder
– 1.6g pure vanilla extract
– 0.6g sea salt
Add all ingredients (except the espresso) to a blender to combine. Alternatively, add to a pan and heat gently to around 80 degrees to dissolve ingredients to create a smoother consistency. Freeze mix until ready to use.
To make Sweetshop Soft Serve, brew 50g of Sweetshop espresso, add to a blender with your frozen soft serve mix and blend to combine.
