Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
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have at one time or another offered public tastings, and all provide a wealth of information via their Web sites, blogs and in cafés. Consumers demonstrated their interest last year when Mama Coffee hosted the first Prague Coffee Festival. Kolsky expected around 600 attendees, but more than 3,000 came through the doors. "It shows a huge demand for information about specialty coffee," he says. Along with workshops, presentations and discussions, the event gave palate-aware consumers the chance to taste coffees from cafés around the Czech Republic as well as 100 specialty coffees from Czech roasters and several abroad. "It was a really interesting opportunity to compare certain coffees," Kolsky says. "These are coffees people are not used to drinking every day." Also in attendance were several coffee experts and educators, including Petra Vesela, Czech's two-time national barista champion. Vesela is playing a significant role in educating the Czech public about specialty coffee: She recently published a book on the subject, and she offers public courses teaching coffee preparation to baristas of varying skill levels. In the same vain, Kavovy Klub (which translates to Coffee Club), led by well-known baristas Adam Dvorak and Zdenek Smrcka, offers workshops, courses and catering with the goal, in the words of Smrcka, "to improve coffee culture in the Czech Republic." IN THE CAFÉ These growing legions of educated customers are helping to support Prague's increasingly vibrant café scene. Doubleshot runs a shop under the name Muj Salek Kavy (My Cup of Tea); Tucek says the offerings there include "more conservative" blends and then "something crazy" on a second grinder. "Those who know us will try this [latter coffee] and others will start with the more conservative blend and then gradually make their way to different coffees," he says. On a monthly basis, the shop changes its three filtered coffee offerings along with the brew method, an approach that a number of shops have employed in hopes of showing consumers that anyone can craft a great cup. "This was our business model from the continued on page 56 Fresh Cup Magazine • freshcup.com 55