What’s on at the Edinburgh Coffee Festival

The next annual Edinburgh Coffee Festival is at the Corn Exchange on 14 October.

This third Festival will give coffee lovers loads of opportunities to taste different coffees, learn how to brew from experts, and get to know our coffee roasters and tea merchants – plus eat great cake and street food and buy great coffee making gear.

The Edinburgh Coffee Festival website has more info on the exhibitors and speakers & demonstrators who'll share their amazing knowledge. 

Here's the rundown on what you can expect...

There are still spaces to book on to the SCA ‘Introduction to Coffee’ course that I’ve already written about. The cost of the Festival ticket is included in the £60 fee and it’s an opportunity to spend three hours learning from accredited professional coffee trainers for half the price of the usual course. And also, while we’re talking bargains, you can buy a festival-ticket-Frank-Green-cup-combo that means you’ll get a Smart Cup for 40% off and be both stylish and environmentally heroic ongoing.

The Corn Exchange will be converted into an exhibition space for over 40 stall-holders. While the majority are coffee-related (the hint is in the name of the Festival), there’s a healthy smattering of tea, cake, doughnut and food stalls to help you regulate your caffeine levels and other cool stalls such as coffee equipment suppliers who’ll help you brew with the best.

Coffee and tea stall-holders will offer tasters and talk about their sourcing, flavours and how to brew best. They’re a friendly and passionate bunch who like nothing more than sharing their knowledge and answering questions. They’ll also have bags of coffee and tea to buy and take home. Stall-holders you’ll meet include:

• Coffee roasters - Machina, Obadiah, Caravan, Brodies, Carvetii, Alfie & Co, Caravan (on the Burr & Co stand), Fortitude, Dear Green, U-Roast and Williams & Johnson
• Tea - Pekoe Tea, Shibui and Eteaket
• Coffee equipment - Made by Knock, Coffee Hit and Machina
• Coffee shops - Brew Lab, Cairngorm Coffee, Baba Budan, Tasty Buns Bakery, Burr & Co
• Coffee gurus - Speciality Coffee Association, the exhibitors and speakers outlined below
• Food and other cool stuff - Company Bakery, Vegware, Frank Green, Coffee Clothing Collective, Jackpot Peanut Butter, Creamed, Keep Scotland Beautiful, Mercy Corps (the festival’s chosen charity),  Alchemy Cordial, Kitsch drinks, The Real Hot Chocolate Company, Coco Chocolatier (on the Burr & Co stand), Rost and Jones & Son.

There’ll also be three areas dedicated to talks, demonstrations and cupping that you can opt into on the day. They’ll be low-key, small group sessions - see the full programme on the Festival website. An overview of the programme includes:

• Speciality Coffee Association talking about how to run a coffee shop
• Roasters Machina, Carvetii, Dear Green, Chipp Coffee Co, and leaf tea experts Eteaket sharing their knowledge about sourcing and brewing
• Water quality is critical to how coffee tastes - Carvetii and Machina will talk through this topic, and Machina will also cover filter coffee styles, ratios and sensory (sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing)
• Chipp Coffee Co will help you taste and learn about different stages of roast development
• The Counter team will teach you about how to do latte art
• Environmentally responsible packaging company Vegware will discuss sustainability
• Lisa Cathro from Zest talking about how to support people facing barriers to employment through working at coffee shops
• Falcon Coffees and Schulter (Green coffee companies) and Brazilian coffee co-op Minasul will be amongst those running cupping sessions so you can taste and compare coffee aromas and flavours. (Cupping is the technique that professionals all over the world use to rate coffee and that involves standardised steps, ratios of water to coffee, timings and slurping).

Environmental sustainability is a big theme of the event which, with Vegware’s help, will be a zero waste event. The vast majority of the millions of disposable coffee cups dished out every day in the UK are an environmental disaster because they’re not compostable and they can’t currently be effectively recycled.

Not using a disposable cup at all is the best option - either sitting in and enjoying the ambience or bringing your own transportable cup and snagging a discount on your coffee in many of Edinburgh’s finest coffee shops. I’ll be making this discount clearer on my blog and app soon to help you choose where to drink great coffee!

You can buy your tickets and find out more on the Edinburgh Coffee Festival website and find out more about the people behind our great coffee scene via our Coffee Stories series.

A shot from last year's Coffee Festival