Saturday 21 May 2011

Competition: Win 20 fully loaded loyalty cards for Cafe Coho

Our great friends at the excellent Cafe Coho have given us 20 fully loaded loyalty cards to give away in a grand prize draw.

That is 20 of their expertly made delicious coffees to give away.

To take part you need to go to the Damn Fine Joe Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/damnfinejoe


1. LIKE the facebook page.
2. Before we start the prize draw we need just 100 people to like this page.
3. That means you need to ask your friends to like it to till we have 100. 
4. Just share the page by clicking the bottom right share link.

If you already like Damn Fine Joe then you will be entered into the draw twice but please tell your friends so we can get this great prize draw started. 


  • 1st prize: 10 free coffees
  • 2nd prize: 4 free coffees
  • 3rd prize 2 free coffees
  • 4th - 7th prize: 1 free coffee 
Get liking and we can get giving and you can get drinking.

Friday 20 May 2011

London Coffee Festival

As a self confessed coffee fiend I could not miss out on the first ever London Coffee Festival.Running for 3 days at The Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane, the festival was part of UK coffee week.
So what was it? Well the bumf cited it as "a celebration of London's new food and coffee culture" but it seemed to be more a trade show focused primarily on buyers for stores rather than consumers. Having said that there was plenty of fun to be had. Live music was played constantly in one of the three halls, christened Soho, Hype Park, Shoreditch. Through out all the halls there were plenty of free treats to consume and inbibe. 


I never thought I would write this in the blog but Starbucks literally saved me with their constant supply of sweet things. We drank tea from the great nation of Cornwall which was excellent and had a slightly hoppy taste to it. 


The highlight of the day was the Guinness World Record for the most espressos made in an hour. It was a surreal sight watching every barrista and coffee maker in the place switching to this task for an hour. Every stall was pumping them out, filling trestle tables and festival staff running back and forth with extra water and beans to aid the attempt. They did it with an incredible 12,005 shots made, quadrupling the previous record. It did mean an hour without coffee so we had to switch to beer to keep lubricated.


I didn't get to try coffee from every stall, I wish I could have.  The best coffee of the day for me was from Allpress Expresso a roaster and coffee supplier with a cafe in Shoreditch. Dark, strong and oily with a full flavour. It was so good that I had two.


It was a good fun day out but next year it would be great to see the organisers try to cater for your average consumer a little more and perhaps have a little more to see such as some barrista led showbiz to the proceedings. 


In case you are wondering we did drink an insane amount off coffee. What else could we do?


http://www.londoncoffeefestival.com/
http://uk.allpressespresso.com/