Every two years the fortunate, or the unfortunate, depedning on your point of view, go to HOST in Milan, a gargantuan trade show for the hospitality industry. As it is in Italy there is an endemic focus on coffee, and if you work for a business which manufactures for the coffee industry HOST 2011 will have been on your radar since HOST 2009.
We are bringing some exciting concept equipment to HOST. Our brew bar will feature one such item a concept manual brew station, whose working name is currently the Marco Pillar. It’s a concept that offers a lot of flexibility, multiple simultaneous users, whilst taking up significantly less counter space than, for example, an uber boiler. We hope to have some fun with it at HOST and get some feedback, good and bad. It very much falls under the auspices of the Uber Project, a vehicle for learning and exploration.
We plan to brew a lot of very tasty coffee with it, and some of our other equipment, ably assisted by two of our favourite coffee people, John Gordon from Square Mile Coffee, and Anne Lunell from Koppi. Both of these individuals are skilled, knowledgeable coffee professionals, we are delighted to have them and the tasty treats they will be bringing from their respective roasteries on board. There will also be coffee on offer from our friends from Hasbean, Intelligentsia, Tim Wendelboe (not to mention awesomes teas from Waterloo Teas).
We are delighted to have been working with Tim Varney from Tim Wendelboe to stage the 2011 World Aeropress Championship on the booth on Sunday 23rd. The competitor list features 3 world barista champions, and a selection of ludicrously talented individuals from some of the best coffee companies around the world. In previous years, there was one coffee for all competitors, but I quite like this year’s twist, the coffee is your choice, of Kenyan origin.
There will be a number of other official debuts at HOST, our Undercounter range finally officially shakes off its development shackles, as does the Mini Shuttle Brewer and some others we are keeping quiet about until the show.
Apart from the general invitation to pop on by, say hello and drink some coffee, here is a schedule of some activities we will be staging.
21st – 3pm Beat The Brewer (sign up on the day to beat our Mini Shuttle with your manual brew method of choice)
22nd – 4pm Wet Grinding – come taste and dissect coffee brewed via wet and dry grinding.
23rd – 2pm World Aeropress Championships
24th – 3pm Beat the Brewer (see above) 4pm Wet Grinding (see above)
Remember, when your spirits start to wane, our good friend the Guinness keg, shall be pouring forth each and every afternoon, renewing bruised egos, reviving tired legs and wetting parched gullets.
Hope to see you then.
