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I’m very excited to announce that there will be a second edition of The World Atlas of Coffee, and it is released in all good bookshops on October 4 2018. If you’ve got the first edition then you’ve got 95% of the material in the second edition. There’ll be fun stuff happening all day at the cafe, even if you just want to pop in for an espresso, as well as books for sales, signings, limited edition stuff, and I’ll be running a couple of fun workshops downstairs in the training centre too! The publisher is again happy to work directly with cafes and coffee businesses – if you’re interested then sign up here: Note: Even if you’ve signed up in the past, I’m afraid GDPR means I’m going to have to ask you to sign up again.

The UK coffee industry has been in the news recently, as a group of politicians that make up the Environmental Audit Committee have come up with several proposals, but this is by far the most eye-catching (and headline-grabbing): The growing demand for coffee means that the Government should act urgently to tackle avoidable coffee cup waste. We want a few things, I believe, from the coffee market and the consumer: Choosing to use less disposable cups (i.e. ceramics or reusable cups like KeepCup) Disposing of cups in a way that allows recycling (i.e. specialist collection points, separate from traditional recycling collection bins) Potentially encouraging the use of potential alternatives like biodegradable cups and lids, and encouraging their proper disposal too – should the cradle to grave energy costs not be higher than disposable cups. I’m hesitant to suggest spending a lot of public money in a situation where three companies stand to benefit, but I’d be fine with the government lending money at preferential rates or incentivising those companies to build out better collection systems.

In challenging economic times budgets for green coffee buyers are going to be tested – and this is compounded by high levels of competition for speciality coffee, and I think a lot of companies will accept a lower threshold of quality, that they might describe as “good enough”. (This isn’t a criticism of producers or millers, I think the market will simply pay more for a lower quality product). Brexit only looks to make life harder for speciality coffee – currency weakening, coupled with ever higher prices for speciality and more competition than ever… It might be a new brand for them (i.e. the Starbucks Reserve model), though I think several speciality coffee companies who have raised money through equity crowdfunding are going to hope that Costa makes an acquisition instead… I’d probably bet on the latter.

We started it as “an occasional journal of coffee”, with some strange ideas about not having any ads in it, and trying to pay people well (or at least better) for their work. It was a spare time project for three people with very little spare time. I will miss it, I will remain frustrated that it never really met its potential or found its audience, but I learned a lot in the process and more than anything I really enjoyed reading it. There was a part of me that wanted to dive deeper into why it didn’t work, why it failed – because I think those things are interesting and worth talking about –