La Cimbali Attends the New York Coffee Festival

Just recently, Rob Ward, La Cimbali’s coffee specialist, had his first trip to New York to experience the coffee scene at the New York Coffee Festival.

Just this year, Rob went to Seattle, Portland and San Francisco to attend events there as well and he saw that there was some difference with the way that people dealt with coffee as most were rushed and wanted quick coffee as opposed to waiting for hand poured speciality beverages to be served. There’s a big difference to bulk brew coffee and those that are brewed right and stored for the correct periods of time; however, both are still equally delicious. The former just lacks the theatre and interaction that you get in the brew bar and espresso based brewing techniques that are more evident at a more craft/artisan style café.

Still, the event was a great gathering of west coast and other local craft roasters who showed the visitors how speciality coffee should be.

The New York Coffee Festival was housed in the 69^th Regiment Armoury building. This was built in the early 1900’s and is still used to house the headquarters of the New York Army National Guard’s 1^st Battalion, 69^th Infantry Regiment. This was a perfect place for the festival since it provided a great open space.

This is the first New York Coffee Festival and compared to the London Coffee Festival, this is still in its infancy. It had a great showing of New York’s artisan coffee scene including Toby’s Estate, Gregory’s Coffee and the familiar face from the UK – Workshop Coffee. Dough doughnuts were also at the festival and Rob took the opportunity to visit one of their sites in Manhattan. He was treated to a beautiful intelligentsia coffee with the more ‘bread like’ texture of dough. It is up there as one of my three favourite donut companies which includes Blue Star in Portland, and Voodoo Portland.

There was certainly a buzz around the venue at the New York Coffee Festival, with anticipation from the exhibitors about promoting this festival and engaging with trade. But also importantly, with the general public who consume and are ready for the coffee education on offer at events like the New York and London Coffee Festivals, giving all those involved a good engagement with the customer and really showing some of the best in artisan coffee.  Cimbali US were there too and it was great time to catch up with Louis and others from the team out there and drink some Ethiopian Sidamo brewed on the Faema E61, which also made a fine stance on the Espresso Martini Stand!

On the last day, Rob caught up with Vic & Rob at Katz Deli (from when Harry met Sally ‘I want what she had’ fame). They had been running the US Coffee masters at the festival along with the newly crowned champion Ben Morrows from St Ali in Australia. They were really pleased with the inaugural event and along with Ludovic and Michella from Allegra are looking forward to next years, as is Rob.

Now the focus will be all on HOST which is just a week away and then straight back to the UK and into Cup North!

HOST 2015 runs from Friday 23 October – Tuesday 27 October at Fieramilano fairground in Rho.
For more details regarding HOST 2015 please visit: www.host.fieramilano.it/en