Congratulations Gwilym Davies !

Gwilym Davies from UKwon the WBC in a grand manner. He seemed to be the most surprised of everybody dispite the fact fact that he did one of the most interesting presentations ever seen in WBC history.

And congratulations Anette Moldvaer from Square Mile- she roasted the coffee !

Ben Kaminsky won the Cuptasting Championship in the U.S. and Barrett Jones in Canada ! Complete results will be displayed in our Flickr soon. Well done both of you, we look forward seeing you in Cologne for the World Championships !

Morten nailed the espresso. More cups to come.

Fantastic Morten ! Morten ended at 14 th place in total, that is impressing. According to two of the judges he pulled the best espresso of the day !

Congatulations, this is a fantastic result. We are very proud of you !

So bear that in mind Morten, "best espresso of the day ". You are in very good company.

See flickr for more photos.

Yesterday was also the time for the US and Canadian Cup Tasting Championships with the US finals taking place today. I took some photos of the scoreboard if you want to see the results).

But most af all, if you are in Atlanta, remember to come by and see the final today !

...and now over to the show !

Iceland- Palmer Thor Hlodversson

Leaving the Symposium with my head full of thoughts, I rushed over to the big SCAA show and the WBC. 

This days competion was nearly over when I arrived, but I did get the chance to see Iceland compete- a lot of fun with interesting signature drink and a very entertaining performance in all. 

On the balcony  the finnish crew was watching, so it was 

a nice oppurtunity to hear about their expectations for the next day and about coffee in Finland.

Finland- Mikko Haahti

During these days there will be so manydedicated people to talk to, it is impossible to see all old and new friends in such a short time and even harder to summarize it here.

Fortunately there are some people doing a good job spreading information. The two old champions Stephen and James are some of the MC´s keeping us here in the audience informed of what is happening, very assuring.

Stephen Morrisey (to the left)

 James Hoffman

Make sure to follow the offiial site for WBC and Barista Magazine blog for full and extremely updated coverage. 

Congatulations Barista Mag ! This fine magazine turned 4 years old today.

...and later in the evening a large portion of the 

baristas gathered at Octane (a coffebar in Atlanta) for a latte art throwdown. 

Good day.

Symposium, Atlanta, Georgia

The Symposium is a very ambitious seminarsession that starts before the SCAA show.

We are here to see what we can learn from this years Symposium.

You never know what to expect from this kind of events, the program can be ever so extensive or minimal, the outcome is never sure. In this case it proved to be the best oppurtunity for us as roastercompany, but it probably is just as interesting for many other type of  actors in the Speciality Coffee as well.

The lin-eup really makes you humble. Very informative and well prepared lecturers and moderators. Enthousiastic and legendary persons among the attendees.

The topics.

Very detailed in their specific field but at the same time, very often the dicussion goes up on a macrolevel just minutes after you were on a microlevel.

For example, there was today a seminar about cup quality in Rwanda. The initial question was quite simple- "why does this coffee taste so good?". A large question which was disected down to a number of factors involving everything from a quite spectacular way to m

inimize the time between picking and wetprocessing to a very detailed geografic database containing facts about temperature, altitude etc.

And this is what makes this Symnposium special to me. No matter how detailed and scientific resarch someone is presenting, we always get back to this simple question, why does this coffee

TASTE so good? 

It is the essence of what we are working on at The Coffee Collective. And there are very few other forums were you can get such god answers to this.

So it is definately worth it to attend the Symposium, there is no doubt.

Denmark vs Sweden via Norway

We thought we should kicksstart this great week with a battle.

The WBC just around the corner and the whole coffeecommunity on it´s toes for a culinaric marathon in Atlanta.

I was just in my hometown Göteborg, Sweden and quickly had a chat with headroaster Per at da Matteo.

He gave me some of the coffee he roasts for Swedish champion Mattias Björklund (Daterra Reserve and Beloya). 

And since we roast the coffee for Danish champion Morten Vestenaa  (100 % Idido Aricha), we feel we have to put both in the grinders (separate :) and see what happpens.

We´ll try to imitate both baristas techniques to be as true to their intentions as possible.

Who´s going to pull the shots ? The two champions are not here, and we could easily start argueing if I would be honest (or just good enough) when pulling a danish shot and viceversa.

In this case we  are happy to have a truely scandinavian crew at our roastery, not just swedes or danes.

We'll let our norweigan barista Sara Sundby be the very objective shotmaster to keep everybody happy.

So, today, come by and have 2 remarkable espressos side by side. Before everybody else !

Easter open

We are open ALL easter in Copenhagen 9-13 april between 10-18.

In Roskilde we are closed exept for the 11th when we are open 10-16.

Both places open as usual 14th april again.

Have a good easter and hope to see you !

Morten goes to Atlanta

Danish Barista Champion Morten Vestenaa is getting ready to represent our tiny nation in the 2009 World Barista Championship in Atlanta which happens just next week! His grand rehearsel has actually taken place just as I write this.

This year I will be staying home with my little son and enjoy some family time. It's a bit wierd not attending the WBC for the first time since 2004, but luckily Linus and Karen have agreed to spend endless hours in airports and hotels just to keep the rest of us a little in touch with the specialty coffee community. Thanks guys. We know it's a heavy load to carry. Give our best over-seas!

Morten has a blog where those interested can read about his preparations. He's using a special roast of the Idido coffee that Casper has made. We don't want to reveal to much - we'll leave that up to Morten.

All we can say is GOOD LUCK MORTEN!