This is the fifth year of these predictions posts, and considering each post contains five predictions there is a pleasing quality to this being the last one of these. Feels appropriate…

Looking back over previous years it seems that the predictions have generally fallen into certain categories:

The WBC Prediction:

Alejandro’s win in Bogota felt like the culmination of a certain approach to a competition performance, combined with great execution. There’d be increasing focus on better connecting the producer and the barista and I think Alejandro took that as far as it can go. Alejandro wasn’t the only one taking this route – Pete Licata’s routine was also a great expression of that idea. That means that this year there will need to be a new angle, a new focus. I think the field of competitors will struggle with this – though I think there is a great opportunity for someone to do well by having a very clear vision and idea. (I hope I get to commentate again, as I really enjoyed that in Bogota.)

The C-Market Prediction:

A lot of the factors that caused the wild fluctuations in price seem to have moved away from the coffee market, but a lot of the base causes for the rise are still there. I predict a slow and steady creep up in price over the next 12 months.

The Brewed Coffee Prediction:

Like it or not, I think we’re going to see an increase in the quality of coffee coming out of batch brewers. This doesn’t imply an upcoming innovation in the technology, more a shift in the places using them. They make really nice coffee when used well, and this year I think it is very important that we focus on just getting coffee right regularly rather than trying to blow people’s minds with clever by the cup techniques.

The UK Coffee Market Prediction:

London has seem some explosive growth in the last few years, but this hasn’t spread at the same rate outside of the capital. London businesses have enjoyed some protection from the UK’s economy because London is pretty much a separate economy unto itself. The recession certainly hit, and many feel like there must surely be an end to the storm. I don’t think that end will be in sight in the next year, I think 2012 is going to be extremely tough in London for coffee retail. I hope I am wrong on this one.

The Equipment Prediction:

Always a tough one. I think we’ll see some technical innovation in espresso and coffee brewing from outside of established manufacturers. We’re not yet at a point where we’ll see the reinvention of the espresso machine (which I do think will happen in the next 3 years), but we’ll definitely see some great ideas coming from unusual places. Whether these ideas end up being industrialised or licensed to the larger manufacturers – I don’t know.

If anyone fancies throwing a prediction out there then do please write a blog post and stick a link in the comments, and do feel free to argue with me and tell me I am an idiot in the comments too!

These posts seem to roll around awfully quickly. I suppose I enjoy them because they are a chronicle of what I was thinking about a year ago. Here’s the 2011 predictions post.

OK – time to see how I did:

1 – Scales in Drip Trays

We saw La Marzocco show a Strada with these in at SCAA and at HOST. Aside from that they haven’t really spread much further (yet – I hope!). Not really sure this is a failure of a prediction, nor a success.

2 – C-market will peak, but won’t drop back too far

I think we have seen a peak (for now), and looking at the graph of the last 2 years I’d say that my (fairly safe) prediction was accurate.

3 – The WBC Prediction

I’ll need to break this one down:

This is going to be hard to quantify, but I think holding the WBC in a producing country will have a rejuvenating effect for those involved in the competition. I think it will be a great event and I hope people take full advantage of it being in a coffee producing country.

I think this was pretty accurate.

Also I think the Scandinavians will be back in contention again.

Unfortunately this was not. I’m still going to try and claim the point!

4 – A focus on service

This was certainly on my mind a lot this year, and I very much enjoyed the opportunity to talk on the subject at SCAA’s Symposium and at the splendid Tamper Tantrum Live event. I’m not really sure if there was an uptick on the focus on service in the rest of the industry though. I’ll leave this one to you….

5 – More Brewed Coffee in the UK

I can’t work out if it is a good tactic to keep predicting things that are really difficult to quantify. This would fall into that category. We’re certainly roasting more coffee to be drunk as brewed coffee rather than espresso, I see more places including it in their offering and I see a small increase in interest in doing batch brewed coffee really well. I think it has definitely grown more than slowed down. You may disagree.

So. I guess I am claiming 3 or 4 out of 5 correct. Please disagree angrily with me in the comments. I will try and post up a new set of predictions in the next few days.

Last year I saw the collection of coffee bags from 2010 saved by Mat Honan and then Mike White, and thought it would be fun to have a go at collecting everything we taste at work for a year. I’ve seen a couple of people post their 2011 collection this year – Mike White again, and Brian at DCILY.

I mostly succeeded at remembering to keep the bags, though looking through there were about 20-30 bags that didn’t make it and must have been thrown away – which is a bit annoying.

Click to embiggen - larger image further down ↓

There are 183 bags here (to save anyone from counting), and I think (or at least hope) that many other roasteries would have a similar collection if they tried. To taste other people’s coffees is great for setting benchmarks, great for inspiration (even if that inspiration is often rooted in jealousy, as mine often is) and great for palate development. Also it’s fun. If I think that when you add on all the samples and production roasts we’ve cupped this year, and the coffees drunk in various cafes and other roasteries – we’ve tasted a lot of different coffee. (But not enough…)

What blows my mind is that each one of these tasted different. Very different. There is such diversity in coffee, and this was a great way to appreciate it.

I should add that most of these were gifts. Thank you to everyone who gave us coffee – it is very much appreciated.

Anyway – here is the big photo. Sorry everything isn’t in focus. I tried a few different things to get a good shot where you could see every bag properly, but I’m sad to say I mostly failed. ¹ Also – I’m not going to rank them. Mostly because my taste memory isn’t very good, and I wasn’t taking notes.

Click for large image ²

1. I’m not going to list all the coffees, nor am I going to upload the photo to flickr and tag them all like Mat Honan did – sorry. [↩]
2. If you want to see the whole thing then right click and open in a new tab [↩]

I really enjoy writing this blog. I can’t deny that it has been incredibly beneficial for me, and the process of sharing and discussion here has accelerated my learning and allowed me to become immersed in a community I love, without geographical restrictions.

All that said, I’ve had a creeping feeling of unease recently. I feel like my relationship with the internet has soured, and I’ve ended up a lazy consumer of “content”. The internet has become infectious, and rewarding in the wrong sort of way. I can spend a couple of hours browsing around twitter, blogs, aggregators etc and enjoy it but doesn’t really accomplish very much. I can’t help but feel a bit like a rat in a cage that has learned to push a button for a treat and that’s all I do. I want to achieve a great deal more than I feel I am, and my dissatisfaction means a need for action.

So, I am going to try to take some time out from the online world. I wan’t to focus on creating things, achieving more and focusing a little more on the analogue world. I have a growing list of projects and I look forward to dedicating more time to them – many of which are coffee related, and the results of which will likely appear here in the future.

What does that mean for this blog? More and more recently I’ve felt like I have just been recycling other people’s content and ideas on here (and quoting Oscar Wilde does not make you a wit). I want to have something of interest to share and to say. So it means that there won’t be any posts on here for a few months. Nor will I be using facebook, G+ or twitter for a while. For people stumbling onto this blog then I’d recommend checking out the recently updated articles page that has some of the more interesting posts from the past.

See you all online again in a little while…

I think it is fair to say that the coffee industry shows an interest in the science of coffee. Up until this point most of this science has been more relavant to commodity coffee, and its challenges, than it has to do with quality.

It seems a lot of baristas, roasters and others in speciality coffee are looking to do research too. I’m posting this to ask where they are looking and how they are going about it.

Most don’t have access to published papers, and there isn’t a great deal of stuff online – everyone finds coffeeresearch.org pretty quickly but I think coffee has probably moved faster than that particular website has. ASIC is certainly a valuable resource, but perhaps inaccessible to those without a science background.

In their hunt for knowledge, I’m wondering how many people have grabbed the literature review published by the GCQRI, or have grabbed any of the resources on their site. What are people looking for? Bearing in mind there are no easy answers – are we just talking about wanting to do more research, and learn more about coffee rather than having a specific plan of action or a goal to our learning?

In the future there will be more information to share, mostly from the GCQRI, and I think it would be beneficial to understand how people do their research (honestly), to make sure information ends up in the right place. I’m not trying to catch people out here, I certainly spent a long time putting phrases into google and hopefully hunting through the mixture of garbage and occasional information nuggets it produced. I didn’t know a better way.

What about you?

My bank taught me something interesting recently. It taught me that to get anything done, to get some decent service, I have to be a bit of an asshole about it.

It seems that if I am nice, friendly, chatting and flexible then I don’t get great service. I don’t particularly enjoy being an asshole, but it undeniably got results.

I am sure I am not alone in this experience, it might be your bank or another service provider or retailer.

The next time that you complain about your customers it might be worth checking whether they might just be acting in the exact way you’ve trained them to.

Just a thought….

This one ought to get some conversation going! David combines a great presentation with a fascinating and captivating topic. If you are passionate about coffee I challenge you not to be even a little excited about the possibilities David raises.

This is required viewing:

I don’t often post links to other blog posts on here. I guess maybe twitter, combined with less blog posts out there, equals less for me to post.

However, this is definitely worth a read. Written by Sebastian (of Phil & Sebastian) about his experiences in Colombia recently, I think it offers a new perspective on things there and is impressively informative without being dry.

Reflections on Coffee in Colombia

Comments are closed on this page, as any responses should be left on their blog.