New website & Sprudgies nominations
December is the most exciting month for the club given our second edition of Mystery Coffee Advent Calendar, this time in collaboration with AMOC. We decided to use this opportunity to introduce a new layout to our website which is just a preview of the upcoming changes in 2023. Next year, we would like to further expand functionalities of our website by providing personalised experience to our club members via the user panel. Our competitors will be able to find there their previous guesses along with some performance charts and statistics. We also plan to hold our first ever real event! More on this in January.
2022 was a breakthrough year for us which proved that Mystery Coffee League is a great and unique opportunity for fellow coffee nerds to socialise and have some fun together. Mystery Coffee League and Espresso Club are slowly getting more and more recognition within the specialty coffee community. That's why we decided to try make it to the final voting of 2022 Sprudgies Awards in "Best Coffee Event" category. Nominations are open until 5th of December. If you would like to help us, nominate MCL! It takes only a few seconds. Click here to access the submission form. Simply type Mystery Coffee League. That's it! Thanks!
1zpresso and ACME join MCL as the newest sponsors!
Prize pool for the next season of Mystery Coffee League is also getting bigger. We're happy to announce that 1zpresso and ACME join Mystery Coffee League as our newest sponsors! Acaia and Kruve decided to stay with us for another season as well!
Quarterly prize pool for 2023 includes Acaia Lunar, Kruve accessories, ACME vouchers and 1zpresso grinders! We would like to thank our sponsors for their commitment and support for our community. Prizes definitely are not the most important part of Mystery Coffee League. However, they certainly help us with growth. More club members mean even more exiting Mystery Coffee League beans and more special edition runs.
Q1 2023 line-up
Time to present our roaster's line-up for the first quarter of 2023. You can expect three really unique beans to kick-off 2023 MCL season. Here are the details!
January - Diamond Roastery, Bratislava, Slovakia 🇸🇰
Diamond's Roastery is a Bratislava based family roastery which has been lovingly run for over 5 years now by Tomáš a Dáša (with the help of their two little daughters).Â
Everything started in 2014 when they were gifted a plastic popcorn maker and 1 kg of green coffee from Kenya for Christmas. However, this Kenyan coffee was not quite up to par when it came to its quality and so they bought green coffee from a great roastery in Great Britain, began to study, taste, learn, which quickly led to the realisation that a plastic popcorn maker is really not enough.
So in 2015 they bought the Huky 500g roaster and made their first large order of coffee- two 60kg bags of coffee from Rwanda. Despite proving to be quite the predicament, it did bring provide them with a lot of experience with roasting and experimenting. In October of that same year, they headed off to Kyiv to attend a 4-day roasting course led by Paul Songer (judge of the Cup of Excellence, a competition evaluating the quality of grown green coffees), where they got to try roasting on 100g roasters all the way to 12kg giants.Â
Just two months later, in December 2015, they exchanged their Huky for a 3kg gas roaster and decided to set up a roastery. As their goal was not only the emphasis on quality but also the education of customers, they organized several cupping and lectures during the year of 2016. However, all this still took place in their "free time", in addition to their regular work, so they had very limited time to develop a roastery. So Tomáš and Dáša leaned into it and decided to roast full time.
Here's what they say about their roastery in their own words, three years down the line:Â
How did the name of your roastery, The Diamond’s roastery, actually come about?
The name was coined by Dáška and it was supposed to symbolize coffee diamonds- in other words, the best selection of coffee that you'll want to drink all day :)
And while we're at it, who comes up with those hilarious phrases that are on your packaging?
Some of the phrases (in Slovak) are thought up by us. Some of them are sent to us by our customers and, of course, we are also get inspired on the web.
Who has been your inspiration and motivation?Â
We've never really had anyone specific as our role model or motivation. Our ultimate motivation was to do something meaningful and make people happy through our coffee. To this day, we are most pleased when our customers like coffee.
Now that you have a well-established roastery, what are your next steps?
Our core project is still the roastery and we will focus on that the most, however, we would like to expand it with a bakery, but only after Dáška ends her maternity leave.
When and where did you have the best cup of coffee?Â
Our taste preferences change over time, so we do not have the best coffee list. But at the moment, the thing that is definitely winning are beautifully clean and lively wet-processed coffee.
What's your favourite batch of coffee that you have ever roasted?Â
With each new coffee that comes to our roastery, we feel a certain level of excitement and anticipation of what we'll be able to make of it. Almost like butterflies in the stomach :)
February - Industra Coffee, Brno, Czechia 🇨🇿
Industra Coffee is a dream project of a coffee power couple, Petra Střelecká and Adam Obrátil, based on the outskirts of Brno. Petra and Adam spent a lot of time together on an experience in London, where they moved in a varied barist and gastronomic scene for several years. They then started serving coffee in Brno eight years ago, at a time when places with good coffee could be counted on the fingers of one hand. At the beginning of 2021, the moves of the café, the corona and Brexit shuffled their cards so much that they decided to go for it and start roasting on their own!It started innocently. Adam simply flew to London one summer to make coffee for the Costa Coffee chain. Then he went to taste coffee in reputable London cafes and… and it tasted different there! He was so impressed that he "hit" and started working for London's Taylor Street Baristas.
During this time, he did not lag behind and took Jeremy Challender courses at Prufrock Cofee and Ben Kaminsky at London's Square Mile Coffee Roasters.
Adam has built a good reputation in the coffee world, both at home and abroad! He placed second in the British championship in the preparation of aeropress, and in the Czech Barista Championship he placed third in 2013 and the fourth year next year, including the victory in the form of the best prepared cappuccino. In 2018, he won second place among Czech baristas.
Meanwhile, Petra went to London to see Adam, because in one piece he was talking about nothing but coffee. She, too, found a job in a coffee shop, and the community of people around the legendary Prufrock Coffee, Messrs. Gwilym Davies and Jeremy Challender, also led her to the top London coffee scene. In Prufrock, she helped run the kitchen and was responsible for its operation. At the same time, she improved her coffee skills and eventually worked as a barista in Prufrock.
Petra has won the Czech Brewers Cup three times. At the World Brewers Cup in 2017 in Budapest, she was the only woman in the world to make it to the finals.
We met Petra and Industra Team at coffee festival in Katowice this November. She promised us fancy, colourful bottles for Mystery Coffee beans!
March - Banibeans, Ljubljana, Slovenia 🇸🇮
Banibeans is a roastery from Slovenia started by Luka Banovic. Story of the Banibeans:The story and idea of ​​specialty coffee roastery was born when I was only 16 years old. I didn't like the coffee very much, mainly because of the taste. It always seemed to me that the people around me drank only bitter coffee. I thought about it a bit more and immersed myself in the production processes themselves, as well as roasting and preparation. I have found that roasting can have a decisive effect on taste. At the same time, I found in Slovenia that there is a real shortage of specialty coffee. That's why in 2018, when I was 17, Banibeans were born.
Gradually, I gained more and more knowledge about preparation and roasting and thus upgraded the offer and products. And today we have an online store with quality specialty coffees, which are freshly roasted in Ljubljana every week.
In one place, I offer coffee lovers first-class coffee from all continents. Careful roasting ensures the development of unique flavors and aromas in coffee beans. Each customer can choose the size of grinding according to their required preparation.
Banibens' mission is to enable as many people as possible to drink fresh, quality coffee. I want to enable people to drink the first cup of coffee oriented towards sustainable development in Slovenia and at the same time follow the values ​​based on environmental protection and fair production of coffee beans.
Right now Luka is a 21 year old young roaster with already few years of roasting experience. We also met him at the coffee festival in Katowice this November. We love his enthusiasm and we believe that Mystery Coffee League participation could be a good opportunity for him to show his skills to community of coffee nerds located around the whole Europe.
As you can see, exciting times are ahead of us. If you are new to the club and would like to join the Mystery Coffee League just download the Discord app and join our server. We will be happy to answer any questions and help you with the first steps. Simple as that!
