The Independent Coffee Lab

The countdown until we open is getting closer... We are excited to introduce the Coffee House Londons General Manager, George! George looks forward to meeting all of our friends and contacts from the coffee community very shortly! We now have Coffee House London, The Independent Coffee Lab & OCR Commodities all in the same building! 63 Union Street is the place to be for all things coffee! Open date soon to come ✨ 📍 London SE #TheCoffeeHouse #OCRcommodities #OCR #IndependantCoffeeLab #London #Coffee

Join fellow coffee professionals and enthusiasts in experiencing the BEST coffee produced in Peru this year 🇵🇪 💫 ☕️ Ahead of the upcoming auction, Golden Bear Coffee and The Cupping Directives invite you to taste some exceptional coffees, including varieties such as Bourbon, Caturra, SI-09 and Geisha, across both washed and natural processes. All the Cup of Excellence / Alliance for Coffee Excellence, Inc. (ACE) samples on the table have scored above 87 points across the National and International Juries, with the top 10 scoring above 88.64 and the top two lots scoring above 90 points! Whether you are looking to buy your next top lot of coffee, or you’re interested in tasting the best of the best, we will see you at The Independent Coffee Lab on Saturday 23rd November. Tickets available online here: https://lnkd.in/ewzctxKt — Key dates: To taste the lots with us: Saturday 23rd November To bid on CoE lots: Tuesday 3rd December To bid on NW lots: Sunday 1st - Thursday 5th December — This event is not affiliated with ACE and the sample set has been purchased for full price.

Join us each month at the Independent Coffee Lab’s discovery cupping, featuring coffees from a variety of green coffee producers and importers. 📆 NOVEMBER CUPPING: Friday 22nd - 9.30am to 11.30am Free Registration: https://lnkd.in/dvUNaFAu This monthly collaborative event is a UK based networking platform whose aim is to create connections between coffee growers, importers and roasters. Its purpose is to offer coffee producers and / or importers who may not have the time, resources or local connections the tools to increase their market access, as well as physical presence and visibility. We do this by promoting their coffees in collaborative ‘discovery’ tasting sessions held at our coffee lab in Central London (or at another UK location from time to time). It also creates an opportunity for coffee importers and roasters who have an interest in establishing new trade relationships but lack direct connections with coffee growers. We currently showcase a wide variety of coffees produced around the world, including: Colombia, Yemen, India, Ethiopia, Ecuador, Brazil, Kenya and Panama. A selection of coffees featured on our weekly collaborative offer list are available to sample each month. This event is open to all coffee buyers, coffee roasters and green coffee importers. This is a unique opportunity to engage directly with the people shaping the coffee production landscape at origin! Participation is free, but registration is required and space limited - book your spot now!

Green Coffee Importer Spotlight : ARCADIA GREEN COFFEE 🇨🇴 ☕️ 🇮🇪 Introducing Arcadia Green Coffee, an export and import company that sources green coffee by building and nursing long term direct relationships with Colombian speciality coffee producers, whether they be farmers, co-ops or a combination of both. The team is led by two passionate Colombians, Augusto Amaya and Jorge Florez (picture 1), who are proud to call Ireland their second home. Both have extensive experience in trading and shipping commodities and have decided to step out from the corporate world and pour their respective knowledge, experience and expertise into their own passion project. Hence the founding of Arcadia - to bring into Ireland and the UK the best speciality coffee they can responsibly and sustainably source from long term partnerships with Colombian producers. They control the entire logistics chain - from sourcing the beans; selecting which varieties will be hulled, sorted and graded prior to being bagged; through shipping up until the final destination in Ireland. They are an SCA company member, Irish registered business with a sister company in Colombia which has all the required licences and permits in place to export coffee. This allows them to limit the use of intermediaries to the bare minimum, meaning they can pay the highest price possible to the coffee producer, while still optimising price to their end customer. At source, Arcadia can arrange the export based on specific customer requirements of single origin, regional, microlots, decaf or any type speciality coffee produced in Colombia in washed, natural, honey, lactic or anaerobic processes. Take a look at the latest lots that have recently landed in Belfast on the ICL collaborative offer list!

Join us on Wednesday 13th November for a Brazil focused cupping and conversation with Thiago Trovo of Osito Coffee & Cacao 🇧🇷 ☕️ 🥄 📍The Independent Coffee Lab, 63 Union St, London SE1 1SG 📅 13th November from 10am to 12pm-ish This is an open event, no need to book. Just pop us an email or DM to let us know if you’re planning to attend so we know how many people to expect that day 🤗 Osito Brazil is run by Thiago Trovo out of Pocos de Caldas. With decades of experience as a roaster and exporter, Thiago has been instrumental in helping Osito be present with producers on the ground and evolving their offering to include smaller growers in not just Espirito Santo but also Pocos de Caldas, Mogiana and other growing areas. Please join us for a tasting of selection of Osito’s offers and an opportunity to speak to a real expert on Brazilian coffee. Looking forward to seeing you there!

☕ ☕ ☕ COMING SOON ☕ ☕ ☕ We are so excited to announce that there will be awesome coffee and the best vibe back on Union Street!! With The Independent Coffee Lab on the first floor and OCR Commodities London office also in the building, this promises to be THE place for coffee and commodities collaboration! Looking forward to seeing all our friends at Coffee House London Opening date (Party 🎉) to be announced soon....WATCH THIS SPACE! Illustration from the talented Una @inkypaperhouse #coffee #ocrcommodities #London #independentcoffeelab #levelup #comingsoon #goodvibes

At the start of October, we’ve had the pleasure and privilege of hosting our very first Coffee Quality Institute Q Arabica Grader Combo course, expertly delivered by Julian Loayza (and supported by Ben Bicknell).The 6-day course was also followed by a Q calibration (because, why not? 🤣) It is fair to say that this was by far the busiest week we’ve ever experienced at the independent coffee lab. Over the course of 7 (long) days, we’ve brewed way over 1000 cupping bowls and welcomed close to 40 passionate coffee professionals (participants, instructors and volunteers) in our cupping lab and classroom in Central London. While the week was long and exhausting, it was also a great reminder of what makes our coffee industry so special: its wonderful people! We’d like to thank again everyone who came through our doors during that week, and especially all the volunteers who generously donated some of their time to help us and learn more about the program. Looking forward to the next one 😊

We were thrilled to host ‘Taste of Rwanda’ yesterday in partnership with the High Commission of the Republic of Rwanda UK, the British High Commission Kigali, the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), and the The National Agricultural Export Development Board. The event provided a unique platform for a range of top Rwandan exporters to meet directly with buyers in the UK, with the aim of enhancing the rapidly growing trade links between the UK and Rwanda. Some key takeaways from the event include:  H.E. Johnston Busingye, Rwanda High Commissioner in the UK and Alison Thorpe, the British High Commissionerin Rwanda, both expressed the importance of growing the relationship between #UKRwanda, outlining the many opportunities to be explored. Claude Bizamana, Chief Executive Officer of The National Agricultural Export Development Board provided a Rwandan agricultural export overview, where he explored the value change proposition from quality to certification. Philip Schluter, Managing Director at Covoya Coffee, presented the regional advantages that Rwanda has with ideal soil and altitude, as well as key crop cycle sales strategies to meet KPI’S and improve buyer relations. The exclusive coffee cupping session hosted by The Independent Coffee Lab was a particular highlight, where attendees experienced the unique flavours of Rwandan coffee and connected directly with some of the country’s leading coffee exporters.   We would like to thank all our partners, speakers, and attendees for making this event a success. We look forward to working with our partners to continue unlocking more trade and investment opportunities with Rwanda! 🌍☕  #Rwanda #Coffee #Trade #InvestAfrica #Investment #Sustainability #EconomicGrowth #Horticulture 

On Tuesday next week, The Independent Coffee Lab and The Cupping Directives will have the pleasure of coordinating a large coffee tasting at the ‘Taste of Rwanda’ trade and investment conference held at The Law Society near Chancery Lane in London. Over a dozen coffee growers, producers and cooperatives will be showcasing their coffees at the cupping session, many of whom will also be making the trip from Rwanda to attend this event. If you are a coffee buyer looking at making direct connections with producers from the land of a thousand hills, this opportunity is not to be missed! Link for registration is in the post below 👇🏼 Cupping starts at 10am. We look forward to seeing many colleagues from across the coffee industry! ☕️

And we’re... back in action! 😊 After a somewhat slower month in August, things picked up unexpectedly quickly in September, hence why we have been a little bit quiet online recently. There is a lot happening at the lab right now so here are some quick updates from us: Discovery cupping - September Edition ☕️ After last month’s trip to Liverpool (thanks again for a great day Khipu Coffee!) our discovery cupping is back at the lab in London. Join us this Friday from 9.30am at our monthly tasting featuring coffees from across the world, produced and / or imported by a variety of companies: South India Coffee Company 🇮🇳, Sabor Coffee Ltd 🇨🇴, Royalty Specialty Coffees 🇵🇪, Great Rift Coffee Company 🇰🇪, Tomorrows Coffee 🇪🇹, Arcadia Green Coffee 🇨🇴, Aqeeq Haraz Bunn 🇾🇪, and more! Free registration on our website: https://lnkd.in/dvUNaFAu CQI courses - last call for volunteers 📣 We’re gearing up for a busy 7 days of Coffee Quality Institute courses with Julian Loayza and Ben Bicknell starting next week on Monday the 30th. Both courses (Q Arabica Combo and Q Calibration) are now fully sold out but we still have a few slots available for volunteers who would like to donate a bit of their time to help out during those days. This is a great opportunity for people who’d have an interest in potentially joining a course in the future to understand what they entail, learn from the presentation, exercices and exams, while also hanging out with passionate coffee professionals along the way! If you would like some info about the volunteer 1/2 day slots available, feel free to DM or send us an email at info@londoncoffeelab.com Lab membership - V2 Launch 🚀 We are pleased to announce that the 2nd (improved) version of the lab membership program for coffee producers, importers and roasters is now live. We’ve streamlined and simplified the different plans available, while also adding a couple of additional services and options for coffee producers and roasters. On the importer side, it is very much still the same services but redistributed slightly to make them more appropriate for the majority of businesses. All the updated plans are available at https://lnkd.in/eG9T6yyw