What was the best Mystery Coffee of 2022? Favourite Roaster of the Month? Best Coffee of the Month? People voted and now we know the answers to all of these questions.
In the last week, club members from all over the Europe submitted their nominations for the best coffees and roasters of 2022 Mystery Coffee League season.
Before we move on to the winners, let's take a closer look at the state of our community. We're really proud of below charts and map. During the last year, over 120 people from 18 countries decided to submit their Mystery Coffee guess. We know that real number of participants is much higher because each month only about 70% of the people with Mystery Coffee bag in hand decide to submit their Mystery Coffee guess. Nevertheless, we have an active club members in nearly every country of Western and Central Europe. We hope that in 2022 we will be able to colour even more countries on the below map. Our biggest presence is in Germany and Netherlands. Nearly 50% of our active club members are based in these two locations. We also have an active members from UK, Ireland, Poland, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Czechia, Hungary, Croatia, Greece, Sweden and Norway! Really great and diverse community. We're looking forward to our first ever real meet-up in Netherlands later this Spring!
55% of the people joined Espresso Club and Mystery Coffee League community in 2022 which is a proof that our hard work and our sponsors support pay out and we attract more and more people to our Discord server. We are also very happy that we have so many loyal club members which are with us for over a year now. We hope that they will keep going in 2023!
The most important award - Best Mystery Coffee of 2022 MCL season goes to Kawa ๐ซ๐ท for their anaerobic washed Mejorado from Hacienda La Papaya in Ecuador. It was a really one of the highlights of the last year. Ecuador had a big year in 2022 which is also proven by results of our voting. Second place goes to one of the most recent coffees from AMOC ๐ณ๐ฑ - Costa Rican hybrid F1 processed as experimental anaerobic natural "Churro" on Aquiares Estate. Last place on the podium goes to Nomad ๐ช๐ธ and their Kenyan Washed Colombian Typica from Finca San Luis.
In 2022 we also had many beautiful Mystery Coffee packagings. Many roasters went the extra mile for us so we would like to give them a shout-out for the best bag design. By the popular vote, title of the best Mystery Coffee bag design goes to Sumo from Ireland ๐ฎ๐ช. Sumo's label was really a piece of art. Second place again goes to AMOC ๐ณ๐ฑ for their Mystery Coffee Advent Calendar packaging and third to Kafar ๐ต๐ฑ for their holographic seal sticker with Mystery Coffee League logo.
Besides Mystery Coffee, our club members each month vote for the Coffee of the Month which is discussed throughout the month next to Mystery Coffee from the same roastery. Again, many great coffees served as our Coffee of the Month but we have only three places on the podium. First place goes to Shokunin ๐ณ๐ฑ and their experimental Anoxic Red Bourbon Rwandan which gave us a childhood memories with strong bubblegum notes. Second place goes to Sumo ๐ฎ๐ช and their Koju Super Natural Gesha from Finca El Vergel in Colombia. Third place goes to Kafar ๐ต๐ฑ which proven that despite of not so great year for Ethiopia, it was possible to source an excellent washed Heirloom lot from Chelbesa washing station.
We also voted for a Favourite Roaster Overall. Here we taken into consideration many factors like roaster's interaction with the community, roaster's coffee offering and Mystery Coffee performance. All of our previous votes were quite close but in this category winner has won by a wide margin. Favourite Roaster of 2022 title goes to AMOC from Rotterdam ๐ณ๐ฑ. We loved interacting with Rob throughout the whole December which was a Mystery Coffee Advent Calendar month. We hope to work with AMOC again quite soon. Second place goes to Kawa from Paris ๐ซ๐ท and third to Sumo from Dublin ๐ฎ๐ช. Kawa definitely has one of the best coffee selection in Europe at the moment. We also loved how Daniel from Sumo went the extra mile for us with beautiful Mystery Coffee bag design, generous club discount and very unique Mystery Coffee beans.
Congrats to all winners! We are looking forward to working with some of the club favourite roasters again in 2023.
