Last week, Budapest saw host to the World of Coffee 2017. A three day event coffee professionals, enthusiasts and competitors alike all mark in their calendars. Four UK champions descended upon the city, soaked up the sun, good food and sights, here's how they got on.
Dave Cullen of Clifton Coffee - UK Brewers Cup champion 2017. Open service round.
@foreverthrowinghorns - This is where his Instagram name comes from!It was Dave's first time in any competition and achieved 18th place in the World Brewers cup - with an almost perfect (9.5/10) workflow score. He was competing using a Geisha lot from Finca Hartmann, roasted by Clifton Coffee with an incredibly complex flavour profile of white grape, grapefruit, bergamot and lemongrass. Brewers cup recipe : 17g coffee, 250ml water (Bristol filtered tap water, brought over to Hungary) at 94 degrees celsius brewed using a clever dripper.
Heidi Phillip-Smith of Coffee Lab - World Latte Art Championships 2017.
Two perfect pours, inspired by dragonflies.
Heidi was asked to compete instead of Dhan as he sadly couldn't make it to Budapest this time. Heidi assembled an incredible routine, despite the fact she had only three days in which to do so! - although she didn't make it to the finals, she won the La Marzocco latte art throw-down later in the week and walked away with a Linea Mini instead - but says she will now need a grinder to compliment her new machine.
Paul Ross Origin coffee roasters - UK Coffee in Good Spirits champion 2017
An immense amount of preparation went into this routine, as well as 75kg of excess baggage to bring everything to Budapest!
This was the first time Paul has competed at world level and achieved 8th place in the world. This year the competition saw a twist: it was the first time that a section called the Spirit Bar had been hosted in a real bar, this was to add realness and pressure to the competitors. Paul's world routine was built around nostalgia and memories. He drew upon his grandmothers repertoire of home baking recipes to create a fluffy lemon and lavender cake in a liquid form for his cold cocktail. Then for the warm beverage Paul created a Sunday apple pie with a rim of dusted sugar, butter and cinnamon for a complete textural experience.
Freda of Caravan Coffee Roasters. UK Cup Tasters champion 2017.
An awesome effort from Freda!
Freda overcame all nerves and self doubts on the day to achieve 3rd place overall in the world! There was lots of jumping and screaming (with joy) as cups were unveiled and Freda was consistently the fastest competitor to finish her sets of 8. Delighted by her accomplishment, she takes her skills back to Caravan where she is head of QC to continue progressing.
We are very proud of all of our competitors and coaches who have spent many weeks training and practicing and look forward to next year to see how they get on. It's an astonishing amount of effort to make it to the world stage and cannot be done without a strong team and support from different people, thank you to all of you.
Thank you to Budapest for being such a warm and vibrant host, with delicious food, beautiful weather and all round nice people. Many thanks to Dave Jameson who was our UK representative over in Budapest who looked after the competitors and helped with any questions they had and to Rob Ward for being a source of calm encouragement, flavour descriptors and knowledge.
- A special mention to Martin, the CIGS World Champion from Slovakia. Coached by our own, head judge Edita and UK rep Dave from Campus who will be hosting our UKBC heat in London over the 8/9th of July. See you all there!
Dori + Will