The London Coffee Festival

A festival all coffee lovers should attend

Last weekend I attended the London Coffee Festival, as you should all already be aware of since you follow my Instagram account. It was incredible. I was in coffee heaven. As you all know I am currently a barista at two different coffee shops. This I believed to qualify me as an experienced barista. I was wrong, again. My interactions with baristas from around the world educated me that there is so much more to learn.

When I first arrived at the festival, I was incredibly hungover. My friend Alexa, who resides in the city of London, accompanied me to the bar the night before and then the festival bright and early the next morning. Despite this mental state of mind, I persevered knowing my loyal readers needed the inside scoop.

After about 6 coffee samples in, we were feeling awake and ready to explore. The coolest thing that we got to interact with was the coffee master barista challenge. There was bracket system set up and the competitors got to go head-to-head in a multitude of coffee challenges.

The first challenge and most impressive was that they had to taste six different coffees from around the world and identify what country produced them. For those of you less familiar with how coffee is grown, the location is extremely important for the flavor. Every coffee bean growing region has a distinct flavor. Asian beans will typically taste earthier and sweeter while African beans will be more acidic and fruity. The amount of coffee a barista would have to drink in their life time to acquire such a taste that they could pinpoint a country by it is massive. Most of the baristas only guessed 2 or 3 out of the six correctly but that is still impressive.

During the competition the baristas made samples for the audience. My friend and I were lucky enough to be on the receiving end of one of these samples. The coffee we were given tasted like nothing I've ever had before. Most people fill their coffee with cream but this coffee had so much flavor by itself none would have been needed. We asked what kind it was and for competition purposes they couldn't tell us. They pointed us in the direction of the coffee stand The Roasting Party.

We made our way over to find out more about the mouth watering mixture we had sampled. The barista working the stand was more than happy to talk with us. He had four main blends he was sampling out. Each one had more flavor than the next. Barista Todd informed us that the coffee they use is grown all over the world from Brazil to Nicaragua. He continued to tell us all about the body and flavor each coffee had.

Our favorite coffee that he gave us was a blend that tasted like bananas. He said that was their top seller and the taste was purely from it being grown in the countries rich soil. He also taught us about the automatic coffee pour over machine. These machines heat the water up and keep the water the same temperature through at the entire pour. This is nice considering the usual way to pour over coffee just from a cup/pitcher leaves the water at the bottom of the cup cooled down by the time it hits the grounds.

Barista Todd was incredible and so knowledgable about all things coffee. The rest of the festival was just as informative and fun. I got to try coffee from all around the world brewed in every possible way. And don't even get me started on the espresso machines. They were breath taking. I've personally never seen such luxury. Check out my London Instagram story to get a look at some of those machines.

I wish that everyone could have attended the festival because it was an amazing experience. I hope to return again next year and learn even more.

Sincerely, Siren