SCA Korea Chapter at the Cafe Show Seoul. We’re Almost Back to Normal!

In South Korea, November is known as the coffee season of the year, making coffee more aromatic with the autumn leaves. Every November, Cafe Show Seoul has been held for the last two decades and SCA South Korea Chapter joined this year’s Cafe Show with a variety of programs.

SCA South Korea Chapter organized the SCA Coffee Technicians Program (CtechP), Coffee Skills Program (CSP), Korea Coffee Champions’ Talks about WCC Milan, Meet the SCA Chapter Coordinators, and a Korean AST group meeting. Each program welcomed the community in-person at the show sharing the knowledge, experiences, and coffee of course! Each program was exciting enough to forget the pandemic and there were many cherishing moments talking over a cup of coffee to plan the next programs and meetings. To show an appreciation to the community who joined us, we would like to share the highlights of our community activities at the show.

The most talked about and well-received program offered at the show was the CtechP Hydraulics foundation. This is newly designed and launched by SCA for the coffee professionals who have to maintain and repair coffee machines at their work. To introduce this new program to the community in the best format, some of the Korean CtechP ASTs voluntarily joined the Korea Chapter project earlier to prepare the lecture and materials in translation together. It was a wonderful collaboration by multiple ASTs offering two days of class together using the same materials. The class was also nicely supported by machine and water sponsors who made the hands-on experience plentiful. A total of 32 learners joined this inaugural CtechP and the classroom was heated by the passionate professionals like the boilers in the machine! We would like to extend a big thank you to these CtechP ASTs, Yonghae Kang, Jungho Bang, Youngmin Lee, Gidong Cha, and Dongjun Oh.

On the special stage at the show, three Korea Coffee Champions were invited by the Korea Chapter to share the stage to talk about their experiences and tips at the World Coffee Championships recently held in Milan, Italy. It was very interesting to hear how each champion made a unique and different approach to the worlds. Sangmin Joo dreamed of being on the world stage and had to win over 299 Korean cuppers at the nationals. He felt so pleased the dream came true and enjoyed every moment in Milan resulting in 3rd place. Charlie Kyoungha Chu, who represented Australia and won the World Cup Tasters Championship, also shared a moment that he lost his focus while competing. He said his relentless training made his palette and sensory abilities strong enough not to be distracted by his thoughts. Lastly, Hyunyoung Bang, the Korea Barista Champion, asked the audience and himself ‘why we’re doing this?’ because the championship is a pretty long and painful journey sacrificing a lot of things as a working barista. And we believe he will compete again as he seems to have found his answer. They all won the talk battles, obviously. With the world experiences, we felt they’ve quickly grown from the national champions to the global specialty coffee ambassadors.  

We also had a popular booth with a flower SCA logo and back wall. The chapter coordinators sat down with the community members and coffee enthusiasts consulting on the SCA education, Korea Coffee Championships, and community activities. The chapter education coordinators had a group meeting with more than 30 Korean ASTs for the first time in a long time. They talked about the education updates, new Coffee Sustainability Program, and the new SCA whitepaper: Towards a Definition of Specialty Coffee. And more importantly they had a chance to connect each other in-person.  

Except for the fact that everyone wore masks bothering the interestingly mixed coffee aroma at the coffee show, it felt like we were back to normal! SCA Korea Chapter can’t thank you all enough: thank you so much to the ASTs, partners, KCC champions, volunteers, participants, and the wonderful Cafe Show Seoul organizer. We look forward to meeting you all again at the next coffee show!