The last of today’s 2014 Coffee Spot Awards shortlists is the “Best Saturday Supplement” Award, won in 2013 by Caffeine Magazine. The Saturday Supplement is a place where I can write about coffee, coffee-related events, places which I liked but which didn’t really fit into the category of a Coffee Spot and frankly, anything else that takes my fancy! This Award recognises the best of this year’s Saturday Supplements.

Just so we’re clear on this, the Award is not about my writing (that would be far too self-serving). It’s about the actual subjects that I’m writing about, which this year included coffee festivals, magazines, books, and going for dinner, all of which makes the comparison a little tricky, but that’s my problem!

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Our third shortlist today is the second new Award in the 2014 Coffee Spot Awards. It’s the “Coffee Spot with the Best Outdoor Seating” Award, celebrating all those wonderful Coffee Spots with excellent outdoor seating.

To qualify for this award, it’s not just a case of sticking a coulpe of tables or chairs on the pavement outside your coffee shop. Too often, what could be a lovely spot is marred by traffic noise, or cramped conditions, or just being in the wrong place. The best outside seating is often away from the road and passing pedestrians and offers shelter from the wind, rain and/or sun (although rarely all three at once!). Fortunately, there are plenty of Coffee Spots which do exactly that and this is one award I could have filled many times over!

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We continue the second day with the next shortlist for the 2014 Coffee Spot Awards, the “Best Filter Coffee” Award, which was won last year by Flat Caps Coffee. A major revelation since starting the Coffee Spot is that filter coffee isn’t that over-brewed, stewed muck that bad coffee chains serve out of urns. It’s actually an amazing, delicate drink that has opened my eyes to a whole new world of coffee.

This award celebrates those Coffee Spots which continue to help me on my journey of discovery. To give you an idea of how far I have come since starting the Coffee Spot, I initially owned a cafetiere and an espresso machine and either drank my coffee at home with milk (cafetiere) or as espresso. Now I make the bulk of my coffee with my Aeropress and have a grinder dedicated to filter coffee. I always drink my filter coffee black and increasingly think that if I have to put milk in my coffee to make it drinkable, I’m drinking the wrong coffee!

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We kick off the second day with the shortlist for the 2014 Coffee Spot Award for “Best Neighbourhood Coffee Spot”. In 2013 this went to Café Mila and it celebrates those Coffee Spots which are firmly rooted in, and which serve, their local communities. Unsurprisingly, the shortlist contains some of my favourite Coffee Spots of the year

This Award has quite a wide geographical spread, with Coffee Spots from Philadelphia, New York City and from across the UK from Exeter to Cardiff, Birmingham, Tring, Leeds and York.

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The last of today’s 2014 Coffee Spot Awards shortlists is the “Coffee Spot Most Resembling a Coffee Shop” Award. This was won in 2013 by Kahawa Cafe and celebrates those archetypal Coffee Spots that look just how they should look…

Of course, coffee shops come in all shapes and sizes, and there’s more than one archetype, so this award reflects the wide range of coffee shops and all the different styles they represent, with entries from all over the world (well, the UK, USA and France!).

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Our third shortlist in the 2014 Coffee Spot Awards is the first new award this year, the “Coffee Spot with the Best Basement” Award. As regular readers will know, I have a soft spot for Coffee Spots with good basements and it’s about time I got around to recognising this with an award.

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 2014 Coffee Spot Awards is the “Best Takeaway Coffee” Award, which was won last year by  Bean About Town, Kentish Town. It recognises those places which, braving the elements, still produce an excellent cup of coffee. This includes coffee carts, coffee stalls and those Coffee Spots which are so small that they only serve takeaway coffee. It doesn’t (normally) include those Coffee Spots which offer takeaway coffee along with the 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; if I know I’m going to be visiting a takeaway place, I try to 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 2014 Coffee Spot Awards is the “Most Unlikely Place to Find a Coffee Spot” Award, won in 2013 by Attendant. Finding Coffee Spots in cities such as London, Edinburgh and Bristol 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 followers old and new! I hope you had a good day yesterday and didn’t have too much to eat/drink. As 2014 comes to an end, I can’t believe how time has flown by. It really doesn’t seem like a year ago that I was doing the 2013 awards. Despite that, it’s been a packed year, with even more Coffee Spots than ever visited and written about.

With that in mind, it’s time to look back on 2014 with the third Annual Brian’s Coffee Spot Awards. Once again there are 20 Awards, although I’ve changed a few things since last year. The shortlists for each of the 20 Awards were published between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve, with the winners announced on New Year’s Day.

Thank you to everyone who has visited the Coffee Spot this year, followed me on Twitter, liked my Facebook page or +1ed me on Google+. While I do this for the love of great coffee, it means a lot to me that so many of you take the time to read and comment on my writing. Without you reading what I write, it really would be pointless.

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