It’s that time of year again. Funnily how quickly it comes around. Yes, it’s the London Coffee Festival at the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane. Once again it was my pleasure to attend, this time for three days; Friday (the industry day) and Saturday and Sunday (public days). Last year, I wrote two Saturday Supplements, one for each day I attended (Friday and Sunday). This time I’m doing something a little different, writing a series of themed Saturday Supplements, each one covering different areas, but combining my experiences across all three days.

So, today’s Saturday Supplement will feature a general round-up of the festival, what I made of it, the highs and the lows, and what was different this year from last. The remainder of the series will cover the kit (in two parts), the food, UK Barista Championships, and the coffee itself. I drank an awful lot of coffee over my three days, but still didn’t really touch the massive range that was on offer.

(“Kit” probably needs a few words of explanation: by kit, I mean the shiny espresso machines, fancy grinders and cups. Yes, cups. Cups played a big part in my festival experience this year.)

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How time flies! It only seems like yesterday that I was heading for my first London Coffee Festival, wondering what delights it would hold. Now I’m looking forward to next weekend when this year’s event will once again grace the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane!

For those who don’t know, the London Coffee Festival is the flagship event of UK Coffee Week and the UK’s leading coffee festival. Consisting of six festival zones (down from eight last year) and 13 areas of activity, there’s food, music, art and, of course, coffee!

If you want to know what I thought about it last year, you can read my 2013 Preview and see what I made of Friday’s Industry Day or Sunday’s Consumer Day. This year the format is very much the same, with industry days on Thursday and Friday and three-hour consumer sessions on Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday.

My first piece of advice is that if you want to go, get your ticket now! They are selling fast and I confidently predict that by next weekend they will have all gone. With that caveat in mind, I present my preview of the London Coffee Festival 2014!

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I wasn’t going to do a Saturday Supplement, but then the Coffee Stops Awards came out and I changed my mind…

So, here’s a plug for the Awards, which have been set up by Chris Ward to promote all that’s good about London Coffee. This, in itself, is more than enough reason to get behind the Awards and give them some support. The fact that I’m in the running for the Best London Coffee Blog Award is neither here nor there…

There are, in fact, 10 awards and the public were able vote for each one. Even better, the sponsor, Ethiopian Airlines, is providing two direct flights to the “home of coffee” for the winners of London’s Best Coffee Shop! Voting closed on April 2^nd, with the Awards to be presented at the Awards Night on Wednesday 23^rd April.

I also thought, while I’m here, that I’d do a quick rundown of what I got up to during my almost three weeks in the USA, which you’ll find in picture form in the gallery. Seven of the Coffee Spots from the trip (Boston: Pavement Coffeehouse, Render Coffee; Philadelphia: La Colombe, Menagerie, Plenty, Exilr; New York City: Bluebird Coffee Shop) are already up with many more to come!

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Regular readers will know that back in June I was in Attendant when I ran into Maria Bracken, Deputy Editor of Lunch Business. The short story is that Maria got me to nominate various Coffee Spots for the 2013 Lunch Business Awards (if you’re interested, you can read the long story here). Although the Awards remit stretches much further than just the humble coffee shop, two categories fell very much within my remit: Best Tea Experience and Best Coffee Experience.

I got my thinking cap on and ended up nominating a host of places. Fast forward a couple of months and the shortlists were published. In the Best Tea Experience category, I was delighted to find North Tea Power shortlisted, along with Harris & Hoole, and Edinburgh’s Eteaket. However, the best was still to come as the Best Coffee Experience shortlist was Cafe Boscanova, Flat Caps Coffee & Freemans Coffee, all places I’d nominated!

Fast forward another month or so and I found myself at the London Art House in Islington for the awards ceremony, which took place on Thursday, 26th September, as part of the Lunch! Show.

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Coffee shops are wonderful places, aren’t they? At about the same time as I was reading Chris Ward’s Out of Office, a book extolling the virtues of coffee shops as places to work and, perhaps more importantly, network, I found myself in the Attendant. Purely by chance, I ended up sitting at the same table as Maria Bracken, Deputy Editor of Lunch Business and, as you do, we got chatting…

[If you’re interested, you can read Maria’s piece about the Attendant in the on-line version of Lunch Business]

During the conversation, Maria told me all about the Lunch Business Awards. Although the Awards remit stretches much further than just the humble coffee shop, two categories fell very much within my remit: Best Tea Experience and Best Coffee Experience. Maria was keen to get some nominations and so I put my thinking cap on. In the next few weeks, I deluged the poor woman with a host of suggestions.

Fast forward a couple of months and I’m pleased to say that several Coffee Spots have made it to the shortlist stage, which I’m delighted about.

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I was in two minds about whether to write about the Caffé Culture Show since it’s trade only and hence many of you, dear readers, won’t be able to go. On the other hand, I have a sneaking suspicion that many of you are actually café owners, so maybe you can go after all… Anyway, if you are reading this, café owner or not, you will realise that I have decided to write about it after all…

For the uninitiated, which included my good self until about a month ago, the Caffé Culture Show is an annual event for the café trade which was held in the soaring halls of the Kensington Olympia Exhibition Centre. It features suppliers to the café trade, from coffee machine manufacturers through bakers all the way to furniture suppliers.

While none of this is directly aimed at the likes of me, who goes to cafés rather than runs them, it was nonetheless fascinating to see what’s going on in the industry. Compared to the London Coffee Festival, which I’d attended two weeks earlier, it was a much more relaxed affair, with lots and lots of free samples on offer…

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Yesterday I went to the London Coffee Festival in Brick Lane, London, the flagship event of UK Coffee Week. Friday was an industry day, with a public session in the evening, followed by the launch party. If you’ve already got your tickets, you can check out some of the things you might want to see when you go. If you are thinking of going, but don’t have a ticket, then it’s too late: the Festival is now sold out! Make sure you go next year instead!

If you are going, I have three tips for you. The first is that there is no cloakroom, so whatever you bring, you will have to wear/carry around with you while you’re there. Since it’s very crowded, best not bring your rucksack unless you absolutely have to! Secondly, do bring some water, since while there’s plenty of coffee to drink, you’ll soon get dehydrated if you don’t have something else to go with it. Finally, everything is served in takeaway cups, so if you hate waste, bring your own!

So, what did I get up to while I was there…?

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