Accidental Encounter of CAFFA

It's coincidence that we ended up at Malaysia first coffee expo. Coffee Art and Fringe Festival Asia (CAFFA) was sponsored by Nescafe, Dankoff, Degayo, Coffex, Soyfresh, Eciatto, etc. Well, since the media has done their job reporting about the event, I will just be describing some of my worthy experience and encounters over there (So, it's gonna be short, lol).

Well, the festival is not quite a large one, with only about two rolls of booths represented by different companies. The first we visited was Dankoff, the leading coffee specialist in Malaysia. They demonstrated pour over method at the counter which attracted quite some customers to try their coffee, they also showcase their classic gold Victoria Arduino Athena lever machine by Nuovo Simonelli. Another booth would be from Barista Guild Asia, coffee education specialist. Their baristas did quite a good aeropress demo and offered SCAE certified courses for coffee lovers who would love to take coffee making as their future career. Their uniforms looks cool too! The other booths we visited were Coffee Stain by Joseph (they served us ice drip coffee, which they had made for 8 hours just for the expo; their senior trainer is super awesome!), Coffex (the macho looking barista served us ristretto with the company's sleek Kees van der Westen Speedster espresso machine, which tasted damn amazing!!!!!), Degayo (they served coffee from Tobing Estate, Aceh, Indonesia), and they did a roasting demo using their home made roaster modified using a hair dryer and baker's oven. And guess who I met?!!! The celebrated coffee blogger and My Espresso Cafe owner, KF Chan!!! I have been a reader of his blog for so long, but this was my first time meeting him in person! I took the opportunity to consult him about his opinion of how a good cup of espresso should be. Okay, let's come back to the booths. Departure Lounge, a well received cafe located right in the Solaris Dutamas, also served us good cappuccino with their milk white SanRemo semi-auto machine and grinder. Next of course, would be my personal favourite, Espresso Lab!!! At the booth, they showed off their Gene Cafe mini roaster, as well as a selection of green beans, which are available for purchase if anyone has a roaster at home. Besides all the local roasters and cafe, the famous Italian "illy" was also there, brewing milk based coffee for people who like their page (took me some time to get into their page using the barista's Samsung smartphone, got distracted by the cup of cappuccino they brewed for me, haha). They were using La Marzocco Strada EP lever machine, which has two cool gear box like lever handle, it even has USB for easy firmware update (to us, their coffee tasted typically illy, with chocolatey and sweet taste, with slight bitterness). As for Eciatto, we don't really fancy their Musetti blend, so didn't really try their coffee.

I guess that's it! There goes my short description of the event. We didn't really had the opportunity to attend any of the coffee talk due to our busy schedule, but we did had 3 espresso, 1 ristretto, 3 cappuccino, 1 caffe latte (done by accident), 1 cup of aeropress, 1 Kalita wave dripper coffee, and 1 clever dripper coffee. Result? Half drunk and heavy headache the next day!!!

LOL, Nescafe is main sponsor???