At the end of April, we held our first ever in-person meet-up in the Netherlands. Almost 30 club members from all over Europe met for the first time in real life after chatting with each other for a long time online. In some cases, even for two years.
Meet-up began on Friday, April 28 with informal meetings in smaller groups. I think it's easy to say that even during the first meetings, many people immediately found the common ground and proved that they can bond not only online but also in person.
The main events started on Saturday morning at the AMOC's Van Nelle Factory roasting space in Rotterdam. For more than 4 hours, we held a series of different cuppings and competitions.
We started with the main dish - 2022 Mystery Coffee League cupping. With all 15 Mystery Coffees on the table from the previous season, meet-up participants had quite a unique opportunity to taste them all next to each other. Happy to report that our 2022 Mystery Coffee League Awards voting proved to be right and the favorite coffee on the table was once again Kawa's Mystery Coffee - anaerobic washed Mejorado from Hacienda La Papaya in Ecuador.
Next on the schedule was Banibeans selection cupping. Luka decided to joined us in person and hold a cupping session with selection of his coffees, including the April Mystery Coffee. It was a close call between Mystery Coffee, which later turned out to be a Panamanian Gesha from Finca Hartmann, and Alex Bermudez thermal shock Castillo, but in the end the peachy Bermudez coffee was a cupping winner.
Later, the first ever live Cupping Collective competition was hold by Chris for all meet-up participants. Club members, with 4 Mystery Coffees on the table, needed not only to guess what's the coffees' origin, processing and varietal but also what's the common theme between all of them and how many roasters have provided beans. It turned out to be a Gesha cupping from four different UK-based roasters. Congrats to Ela on winning the competition!
We finished the event with cupping of the best coffees from A Matter of Concrete. We had on the table many banger beans, but the winner was clear - Colombian washed Geisha from Duberney Cifuentes which was selected as our meet-up coffee!
In the evening, we continued our activities in local beer garden which was followed by the tasting session in one of the finest local wine bars. Some of the club members finished the evening with a late night G&T debrief session.
Few hours of sleep and on Sunday morning we were on our way to Amsterdam to visit DAK Coffee Roasters for an early May Mystery Coffee cupping session. To kick things off, some of us had a chance to try the batch brew from all 2022 Mystery Coffee leftovers combined together which surprisingly was... not that bad. DAK's Mystery Coffee confirmed to be a banger coffee and the whole event was wrapped up with the open cupping of decafs.
After that, some of us decided to visit famous Fuku café in Amsterdam, where we had a chance to try Friedhats' limited releases. The meet-up was wrapped up with a small dinner in Rotterdam.
It was quite a ride. Three days of tasting more than 50 coffees, getting into wine, looking for a perfect debrief drink but most importantly getting to know each other in real life. I really didn’t know what to expect coming into this event. Really, the whole thing could go sideways, especially for the core group which hangs out here daily for even more than 2 years now. However, I think it’s safe to say that the past weekend exceeded the expectations of many (all?) of us, and now we’re stronger than ever It was a wholesome event with a ton of positive energy. Feels quite surrealistic that a bunch of random people which are just into the coffee were able to bond in such way.
All of that wouldn’t be possible without your help. I would like to thank:
- Judy for taking a lead in the final days. I did the easy job - writing emails, IG messages, collecting signups and such. Judy helped on the ground with finding the evening locations, transporting our accessories, helping us with the NL train system, buying a bread and providing an overall support. I’m sure that I forgot about something… Sorry for that! Probably my biggest takeaway for the future is the fact that we need to always have at least one person in the meetup city on which I know we can rely on. In Rotterdam, we had not only one because we also had...
- Bori for helping deliver all our merch, coffees and accessories without me traveling across the Europe with 5kg of the MCL stuff.
- Chris for organising a fantastic Cupping Collective session on Saturday. He set a bar really high for the next year… No idea how he’s going to beat that.
- Luka for the Banibeans cupping session.
- All people which helped with cleaning and cupping prep. I think our lead crust breaker was Alex. Shutout to Matt, Steffi and everyone else who also helped a lot.
- Antonio for sponsoring the cupping spoons and Chris for smuggling them out of UK without any extra taxes.
- Rob from AMOC and Louis from DAK for the trust and hosting us in their beautiful locations.
- Last but not least, all of you for showing up, nice words and extra motivation to do a repeat in 2024!
See you at 2024 Mystery Coffee League Meet-up!
Dawid
