FHA2016 which runs from 12-15 April is the largest trade show on food and hospitality in Singapore. One of the specialised event of FHA2016 is Speciality Coffee & Tea 2016. I’ve to thanks Mr Cedric Tan, a esteemed barista and coffee cupper, for providing me with the access to FHA2016.

I visited Day-1 of the trade show and arrived just in time for coffee cupping at Knockhouse Supply Co‘s booth. Knockhouse is a  coffee brewing equipment and specialty beans supplier. They are also hosting the “Cupping Lab” and “Espresso Bar” in their booth space.

The “Cupping lab”, as it sound, provides cupping of coffee from at least 7 local roasters. The full cupping schedule is available on Knockhouse’s page.  I managed to speak to the gentleman from Latorre & Dutch Coffee who was running one of the scheduled cupping, and learned that they are a supplier of green beans (un-roasted coffee beans). Their website provides pretty good  information on the beans we can get from local roasters, its definitely useful when you want to train your palate or if the bag of beans from roaster lacks information you desire.

Mr Hiroshi Kato, a pour over master from Kalida Japan was also present at Knockhouse’s booth. I’ve gotten some tips on how to prevent the water from dripping during the 30-40s bloom time 🙂

Jervis, the Singapore’s Latte art champion and the owner of Kinsmen Coffee was also at the Knockhouse’s “Espresso Bar” to demonstrate those competition routines. Did I mention that I had the privilege of learning latte art from Jervis about half-a-year ago?

Regina, who is Singapore’s Barista Champion was on the other side of the “Espresso bar”. She demonstrated the meticulous effort of adjusting the dose weight on the scale before extraction with the Profitec Espresso machine. I enjoyed a very balanced cup of flatwhite prepared by Regina which was extracted at 1:2 ratio, and made with the Buenos Aires Gesha beans. I also learned from Regina that her current favorite tampers are from Pergtam and Pullman.

And finally, I got the witness the Alpha Dominche Steampunk in action. It looks like something you would expect from a sci-fi movie. The Alpha Dominche Steampunk is a programmable machine which uses full immersion to brew the coffee. Agitation is one of the control parameter which is not usually available in automated machine. The agitation is done by the air-bubbles injected through those tiny holes. It is designed to produce consistent taste. And it is available as a commercial coffee machine at the moment.

Another innovative product I found in FHA2016 is the El Rocio domestic espresso machine from Korea. It has multiple PIDs (Yes, not one but three!) to ensure superb temperature stability, and a knot on a dashboard which allows the pressure to be changed during extraction.

Over a Rocket’s booth, I was introduced to the R60V espresso machine which allows the barista to perform pressure profiling. The R60V is a domestic espresso machine, and the pressure can be bound to different phase of extraction programmable through a mobile app or a dashboard.

There are also many new products from Hario that are not yet available in the market. One of them is a swan neck kettle that doubles as a boiler and it comes with a thermometer attached.

Victoria Arduino was also present with their gravimetric (weight based) espresso  machine.

And lastly, a new weight based grinder from Mahlkönig which is not yet available in the market.

Its a huge event! I spent nearly 3-hours in the Speciality Coffee hall alone. I’m glad to have took the time off work to make this visit.