The United Kingdom is home to some of the very best cafes and coffee roasters in the world. Many of these are located in London, of course, but not just there; today cities like Bath, Belfast, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, and Liverpool are home to booming cafe scenes. With all this growth and advancement, the UK has quite naturally got a deep pool of barista talent, making its annual national barista competition event—the United Kingdom Barista Championship—a major draw for barista competition fans around the world. Add to that a proud national history at the World Barista Championship level, including two World wins (James Hoffmann in 2007, Gwilym Davies in 2009), and you’re left with what’s undoubtably one of the premiere national barista competition events anywhere on the planet.
This year’s UK Barista Championship happens March 4th and 5th in Glasgow, and we’ve got Sprudge co-founders Zachary Carlsen and Jordan Michelman on the ground in Scotland to document this event from stem to stern. Reporting to you live from beside the river Clyde, our coverage of the UKBC happens in great detail over at SprudgeLive.com, our dedicated portal for all things coffee competition and the Worldwide Leader in Coffee Sports. Fans can follow our candid, madcap, live play-by-play coverage of the event over the next few days on Twitter at @SprudgeLive, featuring immersive live competition notes and memorable moments from every UKBC routine.
Our coverage of the 2015 UKBC is being brought to you thanks to direct support from La Spaziale UK, whose Spaziale S40 espresso machine anchors the UKBC stage. All of SprudgeLive’s 2015 global barista competition coverage is underwritten in partnership with Square and Urnex Brands. We are enormously proud to present our upcoming coverage of the UKBC in partnership with the Speciality Coffee Association of Europe UK Chapter, the organization that annually produces this extraordinary event. For more about the invaluable sponsors who support SCAE UK’s efforts to produce top quality coffee competitions, please see here.
You can read more about the upcoming barista championships at the competition überportal. Live coverage will start on Wednesday, March 4th at ~9:20 a.m. GMT, with a full schedule of semi-finals competitors available here. You can find the event’s Livestream via SCAE UK, and for up-to-the-minute coverage all weekend, follow @Sprudgelive.
Check out our coverage of the UKBC Top 20 over at SprudgeLive.
