The Nordic World of Coffee Show took place in Gothenburg City. Being Sweden’s second biggest city, it has often been described as the ‘Little London’. This was the perfect destination for the event because it was a central location with world-class restaurants, hangouts and a lively café culture.
The week started with the RE:CO Symposium, led by James Hoffman, CEO of Square Mile Coffee Roasters. This even brought together industry links and expertise from the SCAE and the SCAA. Hoffman, who is also a World Barista Champion and Author, has been a main player in trying to create a global view of the coffee industry. Topics that were included in the Symposium were World Coffee Research and the Role of Science and The European Coffee Market. The topics gave delegates the chance to look at coffee scoring and cupping as a global language. In the coffee industry, this helps to give a more open feel to the language.
Camille Delebecque from Afineur was also at the Symposium. His work has been notable on Biotechnology and the manipulation of coffee flavour by using disruptive fermentations before roasting. Rob Ward, La Cimbali’s Coffee Specialist, tried coffee which he described as ‘an incredible lift of strawberry sweetness and reduction of bitters in the cup’. He surely has a few ideas about this for La Cimbali’s coffee farm.
Other highlights during the three days were Charles Spence from Oxford University who was speaking about the multi-sensory experience and coffee, and Morton Münchow from CoffeeMind who had carried out some recent research on specialty coffee and the perception of customer’s taste. The research revealed interesting results, as a good number of people picked a lower grade coffee as a taste reference over a higher grade. This backed up some tests that I had done in the past between fresh and stale coffee, with people choosing what they are used to, and not what tastes better! But this doesn’t mean that we should stop selling and sourcing higher-grade coffee, it just means that we have a greater responsibility for education in everything that we do.
As well as all of this going on, there were the finals of Latte art, Coffee in Good Spirits, Cup Tasters, Brewers Cup and Roasting competitions. Overall, the event was a success and even had a number of international visitors.
La Cimbali are now looking forward to their next shows in Milan and Manchester later on in the year. More details will follow soon…”
No comments:
Post a Comment