Our third shortlist in the 2016 Coffee Spot Awards is the “Coffee Spot with the Best Basement” Award. As regular readers will know, I have a soft spot for Coffee Spots with good basements. In 2015 this went to Daisy Green.

To some, a basement is a dark, sometimes dingy, cramped space. However, when they are at their best, basements are cosy, welcoming spaces that provide the perfect spot to curl up with your coffee. This award celebrates those Coffee Spots with outstanding basements, the sort of places you want to go and spend all day in!

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Our second shortlist in the 2016 Coffee Spot Awards is the “Best Takeaway Coffee” Award, which was won last year by Notes, Canary Wharf. It recognises those places which, braving the elements, still produce an excellent cup of coffee. This includes coffee carts, coffee stalls, those Coffee Spots which are so small that they only serve takeaway coffee and those Coffee Spots where I regularly get my takeaway coffee (even if they offer a regular sit-in option).

In fairness, I don’t feature a lot of takeaway places on the Coffee Spot, partly because, for me, a lot of what makes a good Coffee Spot is the atmosphere. This can be hard to achieve at a stall when you’re serving your coffee in a paper cup (another bugbear of mine; so these days I always take my own cup with me!). However, there are plenty of great takeaway places out there, serving excellent coffee, so don’t be afraid to give them a try.

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The first shortlist for the 2016 Coffee Spot Awards is the “Most Unlikely Place to Find a Coffee Spot” Award, won in 2015 by Amid Giants & Idols. Finding Coffee Spots in cities such as New York, Edinburgh or Manchester is to be expected. However, good Coffee Spots are everywhere, some of them are in very unexpected places, both geographically and in terms of setting.

This Award is very much defined by the nominees on the shortlist. Some of these are geographical, a reward for bringing great coffee to unexpected places. Others are a recognition of a great or unusual setting for a Coffee Spot.

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Merry Christmas to all my readers old and new! I hope you’re having a great Christmas. As the year comes to an end, so it’s time for the Coffee Spot Awards, now into their FIFTH year! It seems only yesterday that my friend Andrew Rilstone suggested the first Coffee Spot Awards. If only I’d have known what I was unleashing back then…

2016’s been an amazing year, with more Coffee Spots visited and written about than ever. The annual Coffee Spot Awards provides a chance for me to reflect on all the great places I’ve visited and to give them all some more well-deserved time in the limelight. As usual, there are 20 Awards, the shortlists for each being publishing between now and New Year’s Eve, the winners being announced on New Year’s Day.

Thanks to everyone who’s visited the Coffee Spot, followed me on Twitter, liked my Facebook page, +1ed me on Google+ (a dwindling number!) and liked my pictures on Instagram. While I do this for the love of coffee, it means a lot to me that so many of you take the time to read and comment on my writing. Without you, it really would be pointless.

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Happy New Year to all my followers old and new! As we get 2016 underway, here are the winners of the fourth annual Brian’s Coffee Spot Awards. As before, there are 20 Awards, celebrating all the wonderful Coffee Spots I wrote about during 2015. The shortlists for all 20 Awards were announced between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve and now we have the winners!

Before we go on, I know I’ve said this before, but a big thank you to everyone who’s visited the Coffee Spot, followed me on Twitter, liked my Facebook page, +1ed me on Google+ (not many of you in that category!) and liked my pictures on Instagram. While I do this for the love of coffee, it means a lot to me that so many of you take the time to read and comment on my writing. Without you, it really would be pointless.

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So, here it is, the final Coffee Spot Awards Shortlist for 2015, the only one that you, my readers, decide. It’s the “Most Popular Coffee Spot” Award, which is based on the total number of views received by each Coffee Spot in 2015. This year I’ve decided to exclude Coffee Spots published in previous years, a tricky call since 12 of the 20 most popular Coffee Spots (by views) were published in previous years!

Last year this was won by Artigiano Espresso, Exeter with 1,324 views. This year, no-one got that close, but the winner got past 1,000 views, while three more Coffee Spots had over 900 views. Of the 12 most viewed Coffee Spots, two are from London and two from Nottingham, with one each from Bath, Brighton, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Manchester. The remaining three are Saturday Supplements.

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Welcome to the penultimate Coffee Spot Awards Shortlist for 2015, the Brian’s Coffee Spot Special Award, which was won last year by Machina Espresso.

This is a special award for those Coffee Spots which don’t quite fit into the other categories, but which nonetheless I absolutely love… It’s also a chance for me to recognise and reward those wonderful Coffee Spots that I come across during the year and which mean something special to me.

Some of the Coffee Spots here haven’t made it to any of the other shortlists, so this Award gives me a chance to recognise some special places. Others have made it onto many other shortlists, so this is another chance for me to let you know just how much I like them! Either way, enjoy.

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Welcome to the next Coffee Spot Awards Shortlist for 2015, the “Most Passionate About Coffee” Award, which was won in 2014 by Colonna & Small’s. For me, this is one of the most important awards, and also one of the hardest to judge, which is why I’ve left it to the last day.

It’s not just about the coffee, it’s also about people who love and care about coffee. Everyone who I’ve covered in the Coffee Spot is passionate about coffee and one of the great things is how much love there is out there, both for the coffee and for those who make it. However, those shortlisted for this award stand out from the crowd.

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We enter the final day of the 2015 Coffee Spot Awards shortlists with, appropriately enough, the “Best Breakfast” Award, which in 2014 went to Saint Kitchen. Along with cake, breakfast has a special place in my heart. The only snag is that I rarely get up and out of the house early enough to get to places before they stop serving breakfast, so they don’t feature on the Coffee Spot as often as I would like!

That said, I still managed to get up early enough to generate a healthy shortlist this year, helped by those wonderful places that serve all-day breakfasts! In fact, given how often I have things from the breakfast menu for lunch, I wonder if I should rename this award “Best Brunch”…

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I present the final shortlist of the day, which is for another of my favourite Coffee Spot Awards, that of “Coffee Spot with the Happiest Staff”. Last year it was won by Beany Green, Paddington and once again this year’s shortlist is particular strong. I was blessed as I visited numerous places with some very happy staff this year.

In my opinion, staff are probably the most over-looked part of any Coffee Spot. Good staff can make a place and bad staff, no matter how great the coffee and wonderful the location, can kill a place. Everywhere that features in the Coffee Spot has great staff, but these were exceptional, with some infectiously happy staff.

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