In-person coffee festivals are slowly starting to reemerge and we couldn’t be more excited!
It’s been a minute since we’ve been able to talk about an honest-to-goodness indie coffee festival. What used to be a regular part of our reporting had been all but deleted by the social distancing brought on by the pandemic. But today, we get to bring you news of a real-life, in-person coffee festival, but honestly it’s been so long we’re a little worried we forgot how. Here we go, let’s give it a try. Terking plerce… nope. Tooking pool… not it either. Taking place this November, the Manchester Coffee Festival is back to bring some of the UK’s best specialty coffee under one roof for a weekend of coffee, education, demos, and so much more. That’s the one.
Ah yes, the beloved indie coffee festival, bringing together the best of the coffee culture by those who live it, a true expression of a scene posited by the ones that help make it tick. For the Manchester Coffee Festival, that is Cup North‘s Ricardo Gandara and Hannah Davies. Gandara is the brains behind TAKK, a Manchester cafe with three outposts, and Davies is a Relationship Manager with The Barista League. Together, they are now in their fifth iteration of the Manchester Coffee Festival (with a few years skipped for obvious reasons), returning to the Bowlers Exhibition Centre November 6th and 7th.
Along with UK coffee roasting companies like Manchester’s Blossom Coffee Roasters, Leeds’s North Star Coffee, and London’s Climpson & Sons, exhibitors are set to include green coffee brands Olam and Kamba Coffee as well as a new non-coffee things like Bare Bones Chocolate and Cakesmiths. Thanks to a partnership with Vegware, Davies tells Sprudge that this year’s event will be 100% compostable (due to COVID restrictions, reusable cups are still verboten).
Attendees can expect a jam-packed day full of coffee tastings, workshops, brew tutorials, and all the espresso you can handle. And as with previous years, the Manchester Coffee Festival will be home to the finals of the UK Cup Tasters Championship, which I maintain is one of the most fun competitions to watch live.
Tickets for the Manchester Coffee Festival will be available for purchase via the MCF site. For more information or to find the ever-increasing exhibitor list, visit the Manchester Coffee Festival’s official website.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
