Each year, the Specialty Coffee Association organises a few events bringing many specialty coffee companies from around the world together. These events provide a platform to share the latest technologies, as well as to share and learn with one another. It is often a dream of many coffee enthusiasts to attend some of these international events, where many of the biggest and best specialty coffee companies set up booths, showing the cutting edge of developments in specialty coffee.

This year, some of the Homeground team were fortunate enough to experience the Melbourne International Coffee Expo (MICE) 2022 for themselves!

While the main draw of MICE 2022 was definitely the World Coffee Championships, the team members also had some down time to explore the expo as a coffee enthusiast.

Here are some of the things that we managed to do at the expo:

Meeting our coffee idols

Each of us has individuals that inspired our coffee journey in one way or another over the years, and some moments at MICE 2022 really brought out the fanboys in us as we got to meet some of our favourite coffee idols in person.

Elysia with Lex Wenneker from Friedhats

Drinking coffee

Being the coffee capital of Australia, one can only begin to imagine what a condensed version of Melbourne might have been like in the expo halls!

We grabbed the chance to try Anthony Douglas’ championship winning coffee at the Axil Coffee Roasters booth – the anaerobic natural Sidra from El Diviso in Colombia is definitely a coffee deserving of the championship trophy.

We spotted the Paragon, used by Sasa Sestic in the recent Australian Brewers Cup competition at the Nucleus Coffee Tools booth, and even had the opportunity to taste the mind-blowing difference that extract chilling made to the final cup profile for ourselves, and you can consider us sold.

St Ali’s amazing booth, the St Ali’s House, was an exemplary model of an amazing coffee drinking experience. Offering a course of espresso, white, plus filter coffee that was changed every day through the four days of the event, housed in a well-constructed booth providing a relaxing ambience, this is a booth we’ll remember for a long time.

Volunteering

Contributing to the World Coffee Events as a volunteer is also a fantastic way to connect with skilled baristas and fellow enthusiasts from all over the world. Through our various volunteer shifts as Brew Bar Baristas and Competition Calibration Assistants, we learned many invaluable lessons, exchanged knowledge and revitalised our passion for coffee.

Spending money

What’s a coffee event if you don’t leave with enough goodies to match the hype?

When presented with the great many coffee roasters from Australia here, we had a blast buying coffees and coffee merchandise from the various booths in the expo. At the top of our list is definitely the merchandise and coffees from ONA Coffee, followed by the wide selection of amazing coffees from Zest Specialty Coffee Roasters at a close second.

For coffee enthusiasts and professionals alike, a visit to one of the biggest coffee events in the world is an unforgettable experience. A visit leaves you in awe, and passionate and curious about coffee once more – we hope you’ll be convinced to visit one of the international coffee events in the future, and be inspired just like we were today!