It’s happening! After months of antsy patience, not unlike a dog with a biscuit on its nose, we are finally just a few short days away from the dawn of the 2015 London Coffee Festival, happening April 30th thru May 3rd at The Old Truman Brewery in Shoreditch, East London. We’re thrilled to be an official media partner with the event, alongside the New York Times, London Evening Standard, Caffeine Magazine and more. Expect London Coffee Festival coverage in the coming weeks on Sprudge, and across our social media channels.
This event is one of the premiere coffee gatherings on the planet, expected to draw some 22,000 consumers, coffee lovers, and professionals to a vibrant event scene in the heart of London’s happening Brick Lane. It’s quite a different scene from your typical coffee trade show, in that it’s not really a trade show at all, but rather something far more public facing and, frankly, exciting. This will be our second consecutive year sending Sprudge co-founders Jordan Michelman & Zachary Carlsen to cover the event, and if you cannot tell from the exclamatory tone of this post so far, everyone is stoked.
Ay, but an exciting show floor is but a sideline to our true attraction: Coffee Masters at the London Coffee Festival. You’ve read us hyping and documenting the event in previous features on Sprudge, but in summary: Coffee Masters is a new multidisciplinary coffee competition, and was developed by Allegra Events, the organizers of the London Coffee Festival, with input from Rob Dunne and Vic Frankowski of the London-based coffee consultancy DunneFrankowski. (Mr. Frankowski is also a contributor to this website.) The event itself carries with it a £5000 cash prize—more than $8000 USD at today’s conversion rate, and perhaps the largest cash prize in all of competitive coffee.
Competing baristas include the past two Australian Barista Champions–Craig Simon and Matt Perger–alongside 2012 UK Brewers Cup champion James Bailey, storied Belgian national competitor & judge Valentine Wanders, repeat Polish national finalist Slawek Saran, Swede by way of Berlin Patrik Karlsson, and many, many more from around the world. Judges include Anne Lunell, the co-founder and co-owner of Koppi in Helsingborg, Sweden; Gwilym Davies, 2009 World Barista Champion and the co-founder of London’s Prufrock Coffee; Andrew Tolley, co-founder of London’s Taylor St. Baristas and Harris + Hoole; Anette Moldvaer, the co-founder and co-owner of Square Mile Coffee in London and author of ‘Coffee Obession’; and Salvatore Malatesta, the Melbourne-based proprietor of St. Ali Family.
A full listing of activities at the London Coffee Festival is available here. It’s enough to, well…it’s enough to make other coffee events jealous, is all we’re gonna say. Lots of amazing stuff going on, but we’ll highlight just one more thing: La Marzocco UK’s True Artisan Cafe line-up looks incredible, featuring the likes of Notes Roasting, Union Hand-Roasted, Curators Coffee, Dear Green Coffee, Origin Coffee Roasters, Climpson & Sons, Nude Espresso, Allpress London, and Ozone Coffee, to name just a few.
Access to this Murderer’s Row of roasters would be reason enough to attend the event, but lucky you, it’s not the only reason you’ve been given. This is London’s biggest coffee event of the year, and we can’t wait to get amongst it.
