2022 is behind us. It's time for 2023 and new season of Mystery Coffee League. Bigger than ever! Here is a quick summary of the last year, upcoming changes and preview of our first 2023 Mystery Coffee which is already available to order!
2022 Season in numbers
More than 120 people participated in the last season of Mystery Coffee League. It's more than 400% increase compared to our first, inaugural 2021 season. We hope for even more in 2023 and another breakthrough season in the history of MCL. Here are some key 2022 Mystery Coffee League Season numbers:
- Total of 15 Mystery Coffees from 8 origins
- 122 participants from 20 European nations and 853 submitted guesses
- Roasters from 10 different European countries
- About 1000kg of roasted coffee for Mystery Coffee League and Espresso Club members in 2022
We hope to further increase these numbers in 2023. If you would like to learn more about each of our 2022 Mystery Coffees, visit our Coffees subpage.
Full season standings are available here.
2023 changes
To reflect the changes and newest trends in the specialty coffee world, we will be expanding our varietal selection list by some new positions like Typica Mejorada, Aji, F1 hybrids or Mandela.
We will be also moving away from SCA Tasting Wheel. Instead, we are going to use Coffeemind Tasting Wheel moving forward. We are happy to announce that Coffeemind agreed for use of their wheel in our competition and even offered opportunity to host a free webinar for club members at some point throughout the year. Make sure to keep an eye on Discord to not miss that unique opportunity! We believe that Coffeemind tasting wheel provides us and the roasters more flexibility and real-life options for tasting notes.
You can find all MCL rules here.
2023 sponsors
Prize pool for new season is getting bigger. We're happy to announce that Acaia, Kruve and Penny&Meriwether are staying with us for the next season. Acaia Lunar, set of Kruve glasses, trophy cupping spoons and some additional prizes from Kruve will be a part of quarterly prize pool. We also have new sponsors onboard! 1zpresso provided a K-Max grinder for one of our winners. ACME is adding 50€ gift cards to quarterly prize pool.
We would like to thank our sponsors for their support!
Discussions with some other companies are in progress. Quarterly prize pool is already bigger compared to 2022 season but that's not the end. More informations on that soon, but we can already tell that this year we will be awarding not only TOP3 of each quarter, but also at least one person selected randomly outside TOP3 which participated in all three rounds of given quarter.
2023 plans
Putting aside Mystery Coffee League for a second. Our biggest initiative of 2023 will be our first ever real-life meet-up. We plan to host the meet-up in Netherlands between 28-30 April 2023 with main event on Saturday. We don't have any strict plans yet but the main event will include cupping of all 2022 Mystery Coffees. Meet-up should start with optional dinner on Friday. Amsterdam cafe tour and additional cupping session is planned on Sunday.
If you're interested in joining the meet-up, make sure to follow meet-up thread on Discord.
Besides meet-up event, we want to keep working on improving Mystery Coffee League experience. Main goal is to create an UI where you will be able to see your past guesses and some performance statistics.
We also want to keep a closer eye on beans selection for Mystery Coffee and showcase really unique lots at very affordable prices. Mystery Coffee will never cost more than 20€ for 125g-250g bag. In that way, Mystery Coffee League will provide not only a chance to expand your sensory skills but also to try some of the best coffees in the world. In the recent months, MCL naturally evolved into such format. Looking at our beans selection in second half of 2022 we had a chance to try varietals such as Typica Mejorada, Aji, Geisha, Sudan Rume, Java or F1 hybrid.
New merchandise should be also in the works. In 2022, we managed to release our own ceramic cups, cupping spoons, Fellow Carter cups, notepads, stickers, magnets and more... We would like to repeat the cups run and we dream about releasing our own coffee dripper in collaboration with one of the leading brands.
January Mystery Coffee
Our January Mystery Coffee is live! Roasted by Diamond's Coffee Roastery from Bratislava 🇸🇰. Diamond's is a small, family business so we are happy that we can support them. They are doing a great job in Slovakia and Central Europe, bringing one of the rarest and most reasonably priced lots in Europe. One of these lots will be our Mystery Coffee which as promised above will be a premium selection pick. Black and gold box, smaller 200g bag and only 12€ price point!
Mystery Coffee is available to order for the whole month. However, please keep in mind that submission deadline is January 31 EOD so plan your order accordingly. If you would like to order a Mystery Coffee, click here. If you would like to get extra discount on your order, make sure to visit our Discord server!
Reminder about our #eu-split-the-bag initiative. If you would like to try more without buying whole bags or split some shipping costs, you can look for split partner on our Discord server!
We're happy to announce that in February, Mystery Coffee will be roasted by one of the best newcomers to specialty coffee scene in Europe in 2022 - Three Marks Coffee from Barcelona 🇪🇸. Marco and his Team are currently looking for Mystery Coffee for us which again should come in smaller bags as premium pick.
In March we will be cooperating with Industra Coffee from Brno 🇨🇿 and in April with Banibeans from Ljubljana 🇸🇮.
Exciting season ahead of us! We invite all fellow coffee enthusiasts to MCL. If you're not on our Discord server yet, make sure to join to get an access to exclusive discounts, be able to submit your MCL guesses and be part of our community! Simply install Discord app and join here.
