Sunday, February 10, 2008

1 year Antwerp Barista


Dear readers, Coffee lovers, Barista's,

1 year ago is was stuck with this boring website of mine and i decided to go for a coffee blog. I barely knew what a blog or blogspot was or how to run it, but bit by bit i came into it and one year and 200+ articles later we can celibrate this first anniversary.
Not that i'm a big fan of anniversary's, but i'm very happy i made it this far.

The highlights : there are too many nice experiences i had troughout the year, but the best is the knowing Barista's from all over the world are following and appreciating the blog. My start was Antwerp and this Blog helped me reaching many more people in this city. I guess i gave basic Barista training to approximately 150 persons and advanced training to 8, all of them now fully passionate on Latte Art, Specialty Coffee etc....

What's up for next year?
Mainly Specialty Coffee.
Hopefully i can use this new Specialty Coffee website and blog to reach people in and outside Belgium and share the same coffee beans.
So often i see fantastic beans coming into the Antwerp Harbor, and so often they are just getting old and losing their taste or they're being shipping to other places in the world. My ambition is to pick out the best of them, roast them with the highest care possible and distribute them with all advise necessary.
No, i'm not going to start roasting them myself, but i see so many good roasters and roasting equipment in Belgium, that it's time to push them a bit further than their regular and often boring Java D'oré, Dessert, Mokka, Feest or other melanges. And if they dare to do singles it's not really for espresso but drip.
So, bring on the microlots and best brewing systems and let's drink more and better coffee than before. I'll try to show you all the road i'm driving on ; have a nice trip.

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