For an event that’s based on the same formula each year – of hosting the Australian Coffee Championships within a Trade Show, you’d think all of our reports on MICE would be pretty much the same. But each MICE pleasantly surprises, testimony to the ever-changing nature of the coffee industry. With 120 exhibitors and 11,043 visitors, there were plenty of different products to see and plenty of new people to meet.
On the trade show floor
We saw super-automatics making better coffees, latte art smackdowns with bigger prizes and cold brew packaged in larger quantities. And there seemed to be a broader range of helpful little devices and ideas for baristas, including new takeaway cup sizes from Detpak, new lightweight barista mats from Barista Mats, new recipe cards based on weight and new precision equipment for tamping, weighing and dosing.
We particularly enjoyed the improvement in ‘nitro’ coffee and the ‘flights’ of brewed coffee at Five Senses. And when you’d had enough coffee for the day, you could enjoy a cold-pressed juice or a kombucha at any number of stands or a coffee ice-cream at the Veneziano stand.
MICE 2018 was an opportunity to catch up with a few international coffee friends including Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood (3 times UK barista champion), Pete Licata (2013 World Barista Champion), Joseph Rivera (coffee chemistry expert from California) and Paul Stack (the SCA president).
Having attended Barista Connect in the 3 days prior, I’d met a number of amazing women working in the coffee industry – too many to list and in fear of leaving any out, I won’t mention them personally here. But please see my story in Café Culture magazine on Barista Connect, an event that was organised for women by women in the Scandinavian coffee industry.
The new Detpak cup sizes make perfect sense to me – and that’s from someone who refuses to drink from a takeaway cup of any kind! And you’d have to ask, why it took so long to come up with the idea of having takeaway cups to match the sizes and proportions of reusable ones. There are 4 sizes – so simply, solving a problem baristas have faced since ‘takeaway time’ began.
I always enjoy a walk down Origin Alley. A virtual trip to origin; you get to learn a lot about the different countries and the coffees they produce.
I was especially delighted to see Myanmar (formerly Burma) represented at MICE for the first time. A little research has revealed that Myanmar produced only commercial coffee and was an unsafe place to visit during several years of isolation due to an oppressive political regime. Since democracy in 2011, the coffee industry there has received support from USAID and the CQI (Coffee Quality Institute), better production processes and improvements in quality have resulted in many coffees ranking 90 points or higher. Myanmar coffees made their specialty debut in 2016 at the SCAA Event in Atlanta and we can look forward to experiencing more of these amazing coffees – and also taking a trip to origin there in the future.
The social events
Tagging along with Jo and Lars McKay-Engdahl, the Australian Moccamaster distributors, I was to enjoy a number of events with them – including a latte art smackdown at Café Imports where a Moccamaster was the prize. The winning barista was Jan Van der Voort who posed for a photo with Jo from Moccamaster and Julie Kerr from Café Imports.
In such situations, I often find myself in conversations where I’m explaining the origins of filter coffee – to young baristas who believe that it’s a post-espresso invention! So here we go again …
Drip coffee using paper filters has its origin in Germany over 100 years ago when Melitta Bentz, a German housewife, experimented with using ‘blotting paper’ to separate her brewed coffee from the coffee grounds. (Blotting paper, for those too young to know this too, is thick absorbent paper you pressed over your work after writing in old-fashioned pen and ink). Ultimately in 1908, she invented the paper filter as we know it today, and some still bear her name in the now famous ‘Melitta’ brand. There have been many different devices that use paper filters, the Moccamaster being one; manufactured in The Netherlands since 1964. It has changed over the decades and is now very popular with its stylish retro design and up-to-the minute brewing features. See my subsequent blog for more detail on alternate brewing devices.
Following the Café Imports event, we Ubered across to dinner at ??? where hundreds were lining up for a beer and fish tacos presented in nifty little boxes – and for a peep at their newly acquired premises. We left around 10pm but apparently the music went on into the night.
Breakfast at Coffee Supreme
Peanut butter anyone? A touch of chilli perhaps? At their Abbotsford location, Coffee Supreme hosted a networking breakfast of toast and peanut butter, featuring the flavoured varieties in the Fix & Fog range – with delicious coffee from Coffee Supreme, of course.
Despite the early hour, ‘every man (and woman) and his (her) dog’ turned up, before bracing themselves for a busy day 3 at MICE.
The Big Bash
As happened last year for the first time, an informal latte art smackdown saw a number of coffee celebrities once more gracing the stage prior to the announcement of the winners – in a tongue-in-cheek salute to cringe-worthy coloured lattes and lattes served in avocado skins and chocolate-lined cones. Lowering their standards for a bit, Australians in the competition included Craig Simon, Hugh Kelly, Matt Perger, Craig Dickson and Shinsaku Fukayama who vied with Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood from the UK and Pete Licata from the USA in a crowd-pleasing event. Craig Simon won with his blindfolded attempt at the competition!
2018 Women in Coffee Awards
The second only time the Women in Coffee Awards were presented, These awards are in honour of Eleonora Genovese from the pioneering Genovese family from Melbourne who started roasting coffee in 1970. In collaboration with the Genovese family, ASCA (the Australian Specialty Coffee Association) collates the nominations and selects the most deserving in the 2 different categories. The 2018 recipients for the Eleonora Genovese Women in Coffee Awards were …
- Coffee Woman of the Year – Sharon Jan from 7 Mile Coffee
- Rising Star Award – Jade Jennings from Veneziano Coffee.
Australian Coffee Championships
Supporting our Queensland champions, Queenslanders were out in force at MICE this year and plenty of them were keen to pose for photos.
Three Queenslanders were in the final round of the competitions including Tilly Sproule from Tim Adams Specialty Coffee who performed for the 4th time in the Australian Barista Championships. Extraction Artisan Coffee had two of their baristas in the final rounds – Sarah Jin in the Brewers Cup and Danny Andrade in the Roasting. I missed Tilly’s performance as she was first up in the morning but was there in the stands with Heather Scott and Danny Andrade from Extraction Artisan Coffee to see Sarah perform. Oliver James from Cairns also competed in the Cup Tasters competition.
While none of the Queenslanders took out trophies for being the best in the country, all four did Queensland proud with exceptional performances.
The Australian winners for 2018 were …
- Australian Barista Champion – Craig Simon (Veneziano Coffee)
- Australian Latte Art Champion – Shinsaku Fukayama (St Ali)
- Australian Cup Tasters Champion – Yama Kim (Kingswood Coffee)
- Australian Brewers Cup Champion – Heath Dalziel (Third Time Lucky, Adelaide)
- Australian Roasting Champion – Ben Toovey (Genovese Coffee).
Below are the participants in the 2018 roasting competition with the AMC sponsors and judges, Anne Cooper and Lucy Ward. Winners are to be announced at a later date.
