<Flame proof suit on> I had a pretty good day at the Aroma Coffee festival. OK OK OK it was a bit disorganised, and yes, there were a lot of coffee retailers/roasters/rebaggers etc there blowing their own trumpets, but a few of the trumpets were worth blowing in my opinion (& thats all i have to say about that!) It was great to meet up with a few other coffeegeeks from various coffee lists and interest groups. I'm glad I was there before opening and early on as apparently there were 100 000+ attendees (who counted?) I did enjoy the demonstration on creative coffee by Paul Bassett. Actually I reckon I learnt more just by watching him play with and enjoy his craft than what he was demonstrating. I guess creative coffee just isnt my thing. It was great meeting and chatting with Paul after the demo was over. Such a good guy and I'm sure he would have stayed all afternoon and chatted with us few devoted "coffeegeeks" (oops am I allowed to say that here?)left had we have not been scooted out the door for the next presentation to start. The Toby's estate home roasting display was less interesting for me as a fairly experienced home roaster, but it did provide a solid basic run-down for someone who was new to the idea. Shame they were trying to sell the Alpenrost ;o) The best coffee I had on the day was a machiato from the Tobys stand by the way. The most aggravating thing by far was the {apparently} very important Vogue Entertaining sub-editor or some such lass telling the interested attendees of the presentations not to ask questions, and then sticking her head in every 3 minutes with her own completely irrelevant and quite obviously unfounded questions! Hehe well now ive got that off my chest... In summary, as I said, I had a good time and will definately go along next year for a look.
