A Coffee Festival for the People

So last weekend in Seattle was the first NW Coffee Festival and by all accounts it was a resounding success. I had the pleasure of going to many of the planning meetings leading up to the event and got to witness the dedication and passion that the organizers put into the event. The amount of work to get a event like this of the ground is practically super human & watching the mostly volunteer group dedicate their time to making this event the success it was is both inspiring and humbling. It strikes me as funny that it took this group of pioneers to put on one of the few consumer oriented coffee event in the country and only one in Seattle given how much coffee industry insiders have often lamented the lack of knowledge among consumers and lack of eduction being done by the industry. The coffee industry events have often seemed to me like big navel events where we tell each other how great coffee is and how great we are for realizing this and then complaining that the great unwashed masses should know this too.
Well now there is at least one event for those that want to delve into that mysterious beverage known as coffee and it took a group of non coffee professionals to get the Seattle area coffee industry together to put on a united front and share our love of coffee with the world.





It was a pleasure for me to participate in this event with Caffe Ladro and I was very proud of my company for jumping in and being involved. Next year will be bigger and better.





I was somewhat surprised by the amount of coffee people could drink on Saturday our booth that consisted of a two group La Marzocco Linea a pour over Melitta bar and aeropress had a line from 5 people to at times 20 people deep from 10am to 5pm. We had three Mazzer espresso grinders with our Ladro espresso blend in one and a blend with 5 parts Guatemala to 1 part Brazil natural in another and a lovely Rwanda coffee that tasted lovely no matter how it was prepared. You were able to get these three coffee brewed as espresso, pour over or through the aeropress. For the pour over and aeropress we used a Mahlkonig Guatemala lab grinder. People had many of questions and were very curious.


Well that's all for now.