May 28th, 2010
Aysin Aydogdu is the winner of the Cezve/Ibrik Competition which took place at the Ishtar Turkish Restaurant, Marylebone, London on Sunday 23rd May. Aysin scored very highly and will now represent the United Kingdom in the world finals which take place in June also in London. The audience were treated to some amazing belly dancing before the competition.

Posted in Cezve / Ibrik, News, SCAE UK | No Comments »
May 26th, 2010
The United Kingdom Chapter of the SCAE attended Britain’s first Coffee Festival which took place in the City of Bath which is a World Heritage City and also a beautiful city with its Roman Baths and Spa, quaint streets, wide crescents and many coffee shops both the multi nationals but more importantly very good quality independents.
The event was held in two giant carpeted marquees during the weekend of 15th-16th May 2010. The reason that a stand was taken at the festival was to publicise the work of the Specialty Coffee Association of Europe, spreading the word and work of the SCAE was Pauline Sherwood, John Sherwood and myself and we were assisted by Andrew Carter and Sam Dunford who both worked the San Remo Espresso Machine that was loaned to us by San Remo UK (the UKBC machine sponsor)

On a most beautiful Saturday with the sun out in a cloudless sky the festival was opened by the Lord Mayor of Bath accompanied by the Lady Mayoress at 10.00am followed by the crowd of visitors. The visitors carried on throughout the day even in the afternoon when I thought it would go quieter because of the football Cup Final but this being a big rugby city it did not make any difference. The visitors were treated to excellent coffee from UK SCAE members including Origin Coffee and Extract Coffee to name two but of course the best coffee was from our stand. The visitors were all so treated to pastries, coffee making equipment, local sausages and pies. Outside the main marquee you could learn to Salsa either before or after you had listened to a number of musicians while you read the newspaper courtesy of Taylors of Harrogate in their marquee which they called the Easy Tent.
The organisers also arranged workshops including cupping and blending by coffee buyer Mike Riley, Turkish coffee preparation by our own Ibrik competition organiser Aysin Aydogdu, a Latte Art master class by Daisy Rollo who is from Coffea Arabica and a barista demonstration was given by Jose Melim who won the south west regional heat of the UKBC. Finally artist Derek Stansfield showed the visitors to paint using coffee as a medium; these were repeated on the Sunday which started out wet from the rain (I glad I was prepared with my wellingtons in my car if it had carried on raining). At first this put of some visitors but as soon it stopped raining they came swarming in. On the Sunday the dancing class was the Samba.
According to the organisers 7530 visitors had visited the festival though I am not too sure of this figure as I had been counted twice on the Sunday. The organisers had publicised the event through all types of medium, newspapers, magazines, web sites and radio, they did do an excellent job but then again they are a PR company.
On our stand the visitors were intrigued by the display of green coffee beans which were from a number of different countries which of course showed different characteristics and did appreciate all the work that goes into quality coffee. The way that we had positioned our espresso machine so that the visitor could see our barista at work especially when performing Latte Art this was a big draw with crowds of people watching.
The coffees we used were donated by Has Bean, James Gourmet Coffee and Pennine Tea and Coffee – thank you. We were visited by Mr. Mike Segal the SCAE web editor and Mr. Colin Smith Chairman of the SCAE Communications Committee
The organisers were very happy with the reaction to the event and the visitor numbers and are preparing for 2011 and one has to wonder which other cities and towns will follow the City of Bath with their own coffee festivals – please form an orderly queue.
I am glad that we had a stand at the festival it gave a chance for us to explain to the consumer that not all coffee is the same and that you can obtain great specialty coffee.
Posted in Events, News, SCAE UK | No Comments »
May 12th, 2010
Neil Le Bihan, one of the finalists in the UKBC, is cycling from Land’s End to John O’ Groats for the Coffee Kids charity. He was inspired to do so after seeing details of Coffee Kids at the UKBC events where we collected for the charity.
“I will be cycling from Lands End to John O’Groats at the end of May to raise money for Coffee Kids. I came across Coffee Kids via the recent UK Barista competitions and have been in regular correspondence with them of late in the hope of my helping publicize the good work they carry out. Coffee Kids does make a difference to many lives. Coffee is such an enormously traded product that I wondered how it would be possible to help those people at the start of the coffee chain by fundraising alone to start with. I have reservations as I am sure we all do with money raised for many charities being eaten up in their inherent bureaucracies, but Coffee Kids does appear to be very different. They are having a direct impact on trying to help coffee farming families create alternatives to being solely reliant on coffee, so that entire communities survival doesn’t depend on one volatile crop a year.”
You can read more over at the Coffee Kids website here: http://www.coffeekids.org/blog/comments/uk-supporter-traverses-uk-for-coffee-kids/
Please drop by Neil’s Just Giving page too http://www.justgiving.com/Neil-Le-Bihan
Posted in News | No Comments »
March 26th, 2010
We have just confirmed and published dates for the Cezve / Ibik competition, this year it will be held in London at 10-12 Crawford Street, Marylebone, London, W1U 6AE on Sunday 23 May 2010. More details can be found on here on our site. Make sure you get those entries in nice and early, full rules and entry forms can be downloaded here.

Posted in Cezve / Ibrik, News | No Comments »
March 1st, 2010
It was a nerve wrecking morning as we watched the last 6 battle it to see who was going to steal the title from Flat Cap man.

They all put in their best, the results were announced 10 minutes ago and – John Gordon is the UK Barista Champion.
6th place Simone 540.5
5th place James 552.5
4th place Trevor 611
3rd Neil 651.5
2nd Dale 675.5
1st John 687
John got 191 for his espresso and won best signature drink, best cap and best espresso, an amazing win. Hew now goes through to the WBC to represnt the UK
Posted in News | 1 Comment »
February 28th, 2010
The winners are, Neil Le Bihan, Trevor Hyam, Simone Guerini-Rocco, James Phillips, Dale Harris, John Gordon
They will be going through to the finals tomorrow
Posted in News | 1 Comment »
February 28th, 2010
These times may well run 10-15 minutes late today – Sunday 28th Feb:
9:30 Jonathan Sharp
9:45 Simone Guerini-Rocco
10:15 Dale Harris
10:30 David Jones
11:00 James Phillips
11:15 Gary Whiteley
11:45 Nancy Scott
12:00 John Gordon
12:30 Neil Le Bihan
12:45 Trevor Hyam
13:15 Scott Griffiths
13:30 Estelle Bright
14:00 Lynsey Harley
14:15 Will Corby
14:45 Joe Melim
15:00 Megan Barker
15:30 Gordon Howell
15:45 Carl Fleischer
16:15 Liina Nutman
16:30 Steve Dyson
Posted in News | No Comments »