World of Coffee 2018 Gathered Coffee Industry Under One Roof

World of Coffee was held at the RAI Amsterdam Exhibition and Convention Center. The whole world of coffee gathered in Amsterdam - baristas, roasters, manufacturers, exporters, specialists and of course, consumers. Event  was well organized and distributed and there was something exciting for all the coffee enthusiasts.

Roaster Village & Brew Bar

One of the most exciting areas of the event was Roaster Village, where different producers of the world offered diffrent origins, varieties and methods for us coffee enthusiasts to taste. The Roaster Village area had accumulated 54 different coffee producers, where all of them offered their coffees and everything else necessary for coffee. The Brew Bar was an area, where all three days, volunteers brewed non-stop coffees for tasting with different methods (Aeropress, Chemex and Hario).  For example, South Korean and Saudi-Arabian coffee from small producers.

In general area, there were basically everything around coffee: green coffee and roasted coffee producers, coffee machines and grinder manufactures, roasting machines, packing producers, coffee accessories, merchandise, different companies beyond coffee (teas, syrup etc.). For me and Karkki (my barista colleague), there were three things that we found especially interesting.

1. Ikawa Sample Roaster

Ikawa, sample roaster for professional. A roasting machine where you can roast up to 60 g of coffee, choose the proper roasting profile, keep track of the roasting with the app, and ultimately get a good quality coffee. I aslo attended a lecture given by Ikawa's representative: "Blending coffee before or after roasting". During the lecture Swiss experts in the coffee field performed roasting experiments with Arabica and Robusta, roasting separately, roasting together, and bringing out the taste and roasting odds. And all those tests were made with Ikawa.

2.  Bkon Craft Brewer

Bkon Craft Brewer – new and exciting single cup brewing device for cold brew, ice tea, cocktails. Their “RAIN” technology accelerates the release of gases during the brewing process without the need of agitation. RAIN brings along richer and deeper experience of the coffee flavor. Beverage preparation is quick and comfortable and the result is tasty and exciting. 

3. Bike

Surprisingly, a bike was a star of the event :) (unfortunately I cannot recall the name of this service) A lot of excitement was triggered by a bike, that made energy when it was driven.  So by riding a bike one could grind coffee and after that prepared an espresso.

During three days, there were a lot of different lectures, one of the most interesting one which I listened was "The Wild Origins of Arabica and The World's Original Coffee Culture" where speaker Jeff Koehler, who wrote the book 'Where the Wild Coffee Grows' spoke about trip and discovery of in Ethiopia, Kaffa area. How local people in the region pick, process and consume coffee. In the region, Arabica grow wildly in the jungle, thus compared with normal coffee farm it is a huge difference. In a proper coffee farm, coffee plants are evenly rooted and the plant is cared in addition to coffee that grows in the jungle that does not belong to anyone, and coffee berries can be picked up by anyone.