World of Coffee Copenhagen ‘24

Wonderful, World of Coffee Copenhagen 2024 Journey

Our Head of Coffee, Sean Ellis, spills the beans on his trip to the World of Coffee at Copenhagen.

It has been an inspiring, satisfying and exhausting journey over the last few weeks in the world of Kaffelogic. Near the end of June; Richard (Head of Product Development), Deren (R&D Technician) and I headed over to Copenhagen to visit the World of Coffee Copenhagen (WOC). We were excited and nervous for this event for two things; firstly it was one of the biggest shows that we had operated a booth at with over 350 companies exhibiting, and secondly we are one of the co-sponsors for the World Coffee Roasting Championships (WCRC) alongside Nucleus Coffee Tools. We were beyond excited to have our hardware on the stage being utilised by the world's best coffee roasters.

After 24 hours of flying and 12 hours of layovers we made it bright and early to Copenhagen a few days before the Expo. This was a lifesaver with regards to the jetlag that comes with travelling back in time by 10 hours. We made the most of our recovery time in the city by visiting some local roasters and had some amazing coffees. We stopped in at April Coffee Roaster, Prolog, Coffee Collective and more! We got to try some beautiful coffees such as some great geshas from April and a really interesting and a delicious Takesi peaberry gesha from Coffee Collective. It was an absolute treat to be able to try out so many high end coffees with ease.

Preparation for the Roasting Championships

After a few days of getting ourselves over the jet lag and dragging ourselves out of the Lego stores, we met up with our European distributor Ingo, from Roast Rebels who we were sharing our booth with alongside Nucleus Coffee Tools. Ingo has been supporting us for a few years now, being one of our longest distributor relationships. He has been running a very informative YouTube channel and workshops which have provided us with crucial feedback on the Nano 7’s development. This was the first time that we had all been in the same place at the same time and finally got to meet face to face! This is going to be a coming theme in this post..

Not long after we met up with our friends at Nucleus and started to plan and prepare for the WCRC sample roasting section. During the booth set up we got the Link units that were going to be used on stage and got them serviced and calibrated.. Deren worked his magic and added in some new test filters on the motherboard to help with external electrical noise from all of the coffee machines, kettles and heavy use equipment in the expo. This was a massive success; all roasters worked perfectly with no interference from the surrounding equipment noise. All of the competitors got their samples roasted and we all learnt a lot about how a major competition like this is organised. Day 1 of the expo was the sample roasting section of the WCRC and nerves were high, we were on standby for support and by the end of it there were no major issues and all competitors were ready.

It was so interesting to see how the world’s best adapted to the Link system and utilised its features. The Link team and I sat down and recorded a webinar breaking down the approaches and utilisation of the features available on the Link, this was a lot of fun and so insightful. If you feel like watching and learning about how the world's best approach their sample roasting in a competition you can watch it HERE.

During the WOC expo we got to meet so many friends and new faces, we also got to connect with some long time friends that we hadn’t been able to meet in person until now. We got to meet up with José ‘Pepe’ Jijon and his son José Jijon from Finca Soledad, Ecuador. Pepe was recently voted as the most notable coffee producer in the 15th annual Sprudge awards. We set up our side of the booth alongside Nucleus, prepared our roasters, readied our brewers and loaded up some new beta altitude profiles, more on those later.

Profiling beans from all over the world

We got to profile and roast a huge range of coffees, species and processes. We were brought some delicious geshas from Panama, pacamara from Honduras, liberica from My Liberica, Malaysia plus several arabicas and a few surprising experimental robustas from Brazil and India to name a few. Having so many varied coffees being brought to us with little time to create new profiles, it was the perfect place to test some altitude profiles that I have been working on for the last few months. I am happy to report that they worked very well in every situation we were put in. For sampling and quick filter brewing we did not need to make any adjustments aside from utilising the boost fan adjustment for robusta and an adjusted profile for liberica. 

Due to the differences in screen size for the robusta, being smaller and the liberica being much larger, the fan needed to be adjusted. Even more so for the liberica natural processed coffees. Profile wise I mainly edited the fan profile, giving the profile quite a lot more fan than I would for arabica in order to achieve ideal circulation. I also dosed no more than 70g due to the screen size being so large and the shape being more elongated. Dosing anything more would cause it to get stuck on the temperature probe due to its massive screen size. Along with a higher starting fan speed, I also tapered it off quite aggressively as the coffee starts to lose moisture. If you have access to liberica or want to have a look at the profile, you can download it here. This profile is tailored more for filter brewing and cupping.

The new altitude profiles have been a long-term project that I have been developing and testing on every coffee that I can get my hands on. The new altitude profiles have currently been adapted into two different sets for both natural and washed processed coffees for filter style roasts. I will be working on the same set styles, but tailored for espresso as well for both processes. In time and with more availability of coffee in the future I will expand the processing to include honey processed and possibly some more of the newer experimental processing styles.

Experiencing the full cycle from coffee producers to roasters, traders and home enthusiasts

We started our morning running back and forth from the WCRC stage and started roasting some of a washed Kenyan coffee that Ingo had brought for us. Not long after we started to get some curious guests asking about the roasters and, before we knew it, we were doing demos and Q&A’s for crowds of people. Being peppered with questions from producers to home brewers and everyone in between, it was an incredible experience! One of my favourite moments  was having producers bring us their samples to roast and then brewing and sharing it with them as well as roasters, traders and home enthusiasts completing the cycle. It was truly a special moment being able to learn about the coffees they grow, how they tackle processing and taking that to best suit a roast on the Kaffelogic Nano 7 and being able to brew it straight after roast and have them taste it. 

Over the next two days of the expo we got to talk to so many interesting people learning about different parts of the world, getting perspectives from people that knew of us and those that didn’t. We got to hear some great insights about how home roasters were using their benchtop machines, what they liked and didn’t, how they approach their roasting and how it helps them. We got to hear from both ends of the spectrum of users - from those that don’t use Studio and just press play with the core profiles and love the coffee they get - all the way to those that deep dive into Studio creating their own custom profiles and managing every detail. It was such a great experience being able to connect with the full range of users.

A deep-dive into new processing technology and techniques

During the WOC Expo we all got to meet so many passionate people in the industry and to experience some of the new tech that is emerging and making waves. Some of the more notable tech that I enjoyed the most was around brewing and coffee itself. I loved being able to catch up with so many of our producer friends and being able to dive deeper into learning about processing, particularly around fermentation. Something a little closer to home, I have recently been diving into the world of advanced filter brewing, so being able to talk to some of the team of Sibarist and use some of their filters has been a ton of fun. Many of the roasters attending were tasting sets of coffees from the same farms, but with different processing to see how this impacts taste. Being able to be exposed to so many coffees so close to each other was incredible for pallet and perception development. A nifty item that I managed to pick up at the expo was the dual lipped lanyard cup from Loveramics, it has a flared lip and rounded lip to highlight different characteristics of the same coffee. The flared lip highlights more of the aromatics in the coffee and the rounded lip is a more traditional experience with a slight boost in perceived sweetness. This helped me to maximise my experience with every coffee tasting that I came across.

Next stop - Berlin… and Zurich!

After WOC concluded and we said goodbye to all of our new and long-time friends, the Kaffelogic team headed our separate ways. As Rich moved on for a short holiday and Deren headed back to New Zealand, I moved onto my next stop, Berlin, Germany. I was to be in Berlin for a few days to help one of our competitors select coffees for the upcoming German Barista and Brewers Cup competition. I joined up with Erhan Dizbay, roasted up a large flight of coffees for tasting and profiled one of the favourites for espresso. Over three days we cupped and roasted in our apartments and at the training space and were  able to push the coffees as much as we could. 

After this brief stay in Berlin, I was off on the final leg of my three week journey across Europe to Zürich, Switzerland. I was heading to Zürich to meet up with Ingo again from Roast Rebels to catch up with some feedback and test some profiles, coffees and to learn more about other roasting systems with the goal of being better set-up to help users convert their profiles from Kaffelogic to other systems. We spent the first day catching up and debriefing from the successful expo in Copenhagen. We started to plan for the next expos to provide an even better experience for attendees that come and visit us. We got to visit Mame Coffee Roastery and got to taste some amazing coffees from their high end lineup. After some time getting to see Zürich as a tourist, it was time to head back to the hotel in Schaffhausen, a long train ride away, but with a stunning view of the Rhine river. 

After a quiet weekend in Schaffhausen it was time to catch up with Ingo again at his showroom in Zürich. With luggage in hand I headed over for a final day of roasting before heading back to New Zealand. We spent the day testing many different coffees on the new sets of altitude profiles as well as testing how water activity affects the roast. This seems to be primarily around the first crack point with a higher water activity reading appearing to cause a higher first crack temperature. Alongside this, I also refined the liberica profile that I created during the WOC expo with the remaining samples I had left over. For the first time I got up close and personal with other coffee roasters and got to learn more about how they work. 

After a long final day of roasting, it was time to head back to the airport and depart on my journey back home. Fortunately with only a short layover in Singapore, and 24 hours of flying, I finished up a trip that I will never forget. It was truly an incredible experience and I learnt so much around green coffee, roasting and processes, not to mention the new world of roasting competitions. It was such a pleasure working alongside the Nucleus Coffee Tools team to pull off a successful sample roasting session in the competition. We are ever grateful for the insight and innovation that they share with us to bring better, easier and more accessible roasting to everyone. 

I look forward to the next one, see you in Houston!