Barista Bible launch in London
Our first international foray with the Barista Bible and Perfect Espresso publications was at Caffe Culture 2010 in London. It was the year Australia won Best Coffee Nation and it was an honour to be there, waving the flag for the five Australian baristas who contributed.
With no idea of what to expect of such an event, we turned up with a couple of brown tablecloths – and bluetac to attach our charts and photos to the walls. With a bunch of flowers to spruce up the space, in no time we’d set up our first stand at an international coffee trade show. It was very exciting.
Looking around before the show opened, there were dozens of enormous stands with coffee machines we’d never seen before, accessories or beans and plenty with tea, biscuits, cakes and the like. But we were the only one with coffee books and training resources. Needless to say, despite our stand being so small, it was pretty popular, with people often three deep waiting to speak with us. Hailed by Sprudge as the largest coffee event in European history with 12,000 visitors, it seems we got our fair share of them!
The Germans in particular, showed considerable interest in the first year. Seemingly they liked the very organised and methodical nature of the Perfect Espresso training materials. There was talk of translation and a visit to Germany next year.
Caffe Culture 2010
Some of the emerging trends we saw at Caffe Culture 2010 were …
- on-demand grinders
- weighing espresso shots in grams
- alternative brewing methods
- cold drip coffee making devices
- single serve gaining massive market momentum
- the Kees van der Westen Spirit.
With an interest in coffee history, the stand I particularly enjoyed was the Enrico Maltoni Collection. Viewing the dozens of old espresso machines that had been lovingly restored, I took a nostalgic trip through the history I’d only read about. With names like La Pavoni and Gaggia alongside Vitoria Arduinos and La Cimbalis of yesteryear, I was in ‘coffee history heaven’. The larger collection is in a museum in Italy somewhere, so that’s now added on my personal ‘bucket list’ of coffee experiences.
World Coffee Championships
In 2010, Caffe Culture hosted the World Coffee Championships, Scottie Callaghan was the Australian barista champion, and we were there with his young family to wave him on to 3rdplace on the international stage.
With so many more in the barista competition this year, a semi final round was introduced into the competition, making the competition all the more rigorous for judges and competitors. The standard of performances, I’m told by the Australian judges present was also much higher that in any of the 10 years the competition has been held. All in all, each of he Australian competitors performed extremely well under such circumstances.
Australia wins Best Coffee Nation
Good positions in all championship categories earned Australia the title of ‘Best Coffee Nation’. The 2010 Australian champions who contributed to this prestigious title were …
- Scottie Callaghan (3rdplace) – Australian Barista Champion
- Will Priestley (2ndplace) – Australian Latte Art Champion
- Mitch Faulkner (4thplace) – Australian Coffee in Good Spirits Champion
- Johnny Pisanelli (6thplace) – Australian Cup Tasters Champion
- Rob Forsythe (9thplace) – Australian Czve/Ibrik Champion.
World champions in the various categories to receive the impressive Reg Barber trophies for 2010 World Coffee Championships were …
- Michael Phillips (USA) – World Barista Champion
- Jeroen de Corte (Belgium) – World Coffee in Good Spirits Champion
- Hector Gonzalez (Guatemala) – World Cup Tasters Champion
- Haruna Mutayama (Japan) – World Latte Art Champion
- Aysin Aydogdu (UK) – World Cezve/Ibrik Champion
The social events included a gala dinner at The Cryps, Holborn to announce the SCAE awards and an informal gathering at The Waterside in Fullum, to give the world coffee community a little taste of British culture via a beer or two at a British pub. The barista after party was an opportunity for competition baristas to enjoy a night of fun with hundreds of other baristas and coffee folk like us from all corners of the world. We’d never seen the likes of it, as world-class baristas and their supporters ‘let their hair down’ in an international display of camaraderie and fun.
Getting around London afterwards was made a little easier by The London Coffee Map. It was with this map, we heard of the Disloyalty Card for the first time. An initiative of Londoner, Gwilym Davies, the 2009 World Barista Champion with fellow baristas and cafe owners, you were encouraged to visit all the cafes on the map, have your card stamped at each, then be rewarded with a free coffee at whatever cafe was last on your list. We visited a good proportion of them.
See subsequent post on specialty cafes of London.
We attended Caffe Culture for 3 years from 2010 to 2012, in which time we met many coffee people who helped us find our way in the UK coffee industry – including Richard Norman from Mad About Coffee, Ken Cooper from Pennine Tea and Coffee in Yorkshire and David Higgins from HR Higgins in Mayfair who have all sold a lot of our products, Steve Leighton from Has Bean Coffee who invited us to lunch and to visit his roastery in Stafford, David Veal the executive director of the SCAE who was very supportive and encouraging, Gwilym Davies, Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, Tim Sturk and Dale Harris and many others too. All in all, our years at Caffe Culture were hugely successful as our introduction to the UK coffee community in particular.
In our travels at café culture and in London cafes, you will see we stumbled upon a few Aussies too – Justin Metcalf, Dave Makin, Sasha-Jade McGinley, Ian Bersten, Jonny Pisanelli, for example.
World Barista Champions prior to 2010
| 2009 | Atlanta, USA | Gwilym Davies from the UK |
| 2008 | Copenhagen, Denmark | Stephen Morrissey from Ireland |
| 2007 | Tokyo, Japan | James Hoffmann from the UK |
| 2006 | Berne, Switzerland | Klaus Thomsen from Denmark |
| 2005 | Seattle, USA | Troels Overdal Poulsen from Denmark |
| 2004 | Trieste, Italy | Tim Wendelboe from Norway |
| 2003 | Boston, USA | Paul Bassett from Australia |
| 2002 | Olso, Norway | Fritz Storm from Denmark |
| 2001 | Miami, USA | Martin Hildebrandt from Denmark |
| 2000 | Monte Carlo, Monaco | Robert Thoresen from Norway. |
The event grew rapidly since it began in 2000 with 14 competitors, and by 2010, more than 50 national champions competed at Caffe Culture. And we were proud to be a tiny part of it.