“Want to come visit us in Vienna beginning of September and go to Vienna Coffee Festival?” is pretty much equivalent of ‘an offer I can’t refuse’, so here we are lined up by the entrance of Marx Halle on a hot September Saturday, all ready to get caffienated after we deliberately skipped our morning coffee. With baby on the way I’ve been trying to limit my caffeine intake to 3-4 cups per week and exploring the world of decaf specialty, but I didn’t want to miss such a cool event and was determined to limit my sampling to a possible minimum. Easier to say then to do.

I started off with a Strawberry Double Fermentation Honey filter from Koun Coffee - I was shocked how a coffee can smell and taste of strawberry and suspected some flavouring, but then I found out about the fermentation process where dehydrated strawberries are fermented together with coffee cherries for 8 days right after they’ve been gathered and then dried for another 13 days in the sun and it started to make sense. Fruit-coffee fermentation is definitely a new trend I was not aware of (pregnancy related limitations definitely set me back a bit with regard to newest trends and fashion in the specialty coffee industry; or is it just living in Munich?), almost every other roastery on the fair had a coffee fermented with strawberries or other berries or fruits. I have mixed feelings about this practice - I think it’s a great way to innovate and experiment with new flavours, but to me it is also borderline artificial flavouring of coffee, which I generally oppose.

However I got myself another “fruity” coffee, Chelbesa Danche Ethiopia by Trevo. This one hasn’t been exposed to any fancy fermentation, however it does taste stunningly of peach ice tea. For now it is resting in my freezer, but I hope to make some delicious Japanese-style iced coffee with it soon, hopefully temperatures will remain suitable for that kind of drink for a while. Their stunning stand representation with beautiful mountains pictures is also worth mentioning, great work.

I also finally tried cascara (coffee cherry tea), something that has been on my list for a while. Costa Rica Cascara from Kavoholik Roastry is the one I liked most. To me it has great resemblance to rosehip or hibiscus tea, just more smooth and less acidic. I enjoy it every once in a while, great benefit is that it has way less caffeine then regular filter coffee.

Fresh Black Coffee Roastery from Ukraine was the next one that caught my eye, they had colorful boxes on display that turned out to be drip bag sets, which I’ve learned to appreciate for camping and hut-to-hut hiking trips - they are light, easy to brew and definitely way more delicious than anything you can get on those faraway trips. Guys were very interesting to talk to, they do a lot of cool experimental fermentation like e.g. China Yalan Li Yulan Coffee from China, where coffee is grown on the same plantations they grow tea and thus gets very interesting flavours. I was very greatful they spoke russian to me, since my ukranian is definitely nowhere near speaking level yet, unfortunately. I’ve settled for Experimental Fermentation Drip Bags, although the box I got didn’t have the chineese one I mentioned, but right in this moment the guy asked me if I like more funky or conservative flavours and brought out the new edition of the box after I’ve voted for funkyness, which made me very happy since that one included one bag of the chineese coffee and I was really willing to share it with a friend who is both into chineese tea and coffee and would probably be curious to try smth. unique like that.

We took a break to get hydrated and try ourselves in a coffee related quiz that was taking place on one of the stages, however since only every 3d question was about coffee and the rest just trivia or kids questions, we weren’t very successful. Oh well, how nice that you can find solace just a step away and my next stop was at Wild Kaffee Rösterei stand (I know, boring, they come from Garmisch and I don’t even like them that much tbh.), but it turns out that the delicious 25grams cold brews that I’ve been lucky to try already thanks to my friend who brought me some from last year’s Vienna Coffee Festival, are made with Wild Kaffee beans and I dafinitely wanted to take some home with me to enjoy on the remaining hot late summer days.

Really greatful for this nice late summer coffee adventure and I would definitely return again to explore more delicious coffees!