13 Nov 2015

THANK YOU CUP NORTH!

We were always planning to visit Cup North, but when a stand became available at the 11th Hour, we were super excited to have the chance to exhibit and demonstrate our Pro Sample Roaster!

Bradley, our Head of Professional Sales led the team who were completely in their element as this was a fantastic chance to meet familiar faces from the UK coffee scene – including our ‘neighbours’ in London – customers like Lincoln and York and York Coffee Emporium for whom Cup North is a ‘home’ event – and lots of new faces too!

Bradley demonstrating IKAWA Pro Sample Roaster to Charlotte Malaval at Cup North

Bradley has now jet-setted off to Taiwan where he’s at the Taiwan Tea, Coffee and Wine Expo (on stand L818 – M818 if you can find him!) – but before leaving he’s shared some of his experience.

There were many many highlights of the show, but to pull out a few:

“It was brilliant to see how different people involved in the production and consumption of coffee can get so excited about the IKAWA roasters.”

“In the space of fifteen minutes, I met a coffee producer from Mexico, a professional coffee roaster from Steampunk Coffee, Barista Champion Charlotte Malaval and a coffee enthusiast who couldn’t wait til the Home Roaster is launched in May – each of them could see different benefits from using our roasters, and wanted to see the product in the flesh.

I also loved roasting non-stop for two days! It was excellent to use the roaster this intensively, and the extra benefit is that we now have a lot of beautifully roasted coffee samples in the office for those dark autumn mornings!

The calm before the storm! IKAWA stand at Cup North before the doors opened!

A massive thank you to Small Batch Coffee Company for being our ‘green coffee sponsors’ for the whole of the weekend – we were roasting their Kenya Thuti AA and the Burundi Nyabihanga beans using the profile Tim Williams describes on his blog here. We got through several kilograms.

Another highlight was on Sunday when Dan from Small Batch helped us brew up the Burundi Nyabihanga coffee we’d roasted the previous day and it tasted fantastic!

We think there were five or six of our existing customers using IKAWA Pro Sample Roasters at the event including a trader, large roaster, speciality coffee roasteries and even a combined roastery and coffee-shop, so in some pockets of the coffee community, the ability to share roast profiles between businesses is becoming really relevant, which is massively exciting for us.”

So, what was the best coffee I tasted at Cup North?

“That’s a tough one as we were spoilt! Apart from the IKAWA roasted Small Batch Burundi coffee we brewed up, I loved the Limited Edition Cup North special Gitesi Coffee roasted by Workshop that is raising funds for an innovative ‘Cows for Gitesi Farmers’ project that you can read about here.

I also really enjoyed the Caravan Gaisha coffees from Panama too – they were sampling a washed and a natural coffee side by side – the washed was brewed in Chemex (my favourite way to brew!), with the natural in aeropress – so not only was I able to drink two world class coffees, excellently roasted, and brewed to perfection, it was an education in the differences between washed and natural processing too.”

Our new batch of Pro Sample roasters are now in stock, so if you would like to get your hand on one while stocks last, drop us a line on sales@ikawacoffee.com

author-img By Alex Georgiou