Sarah Allen is the Editor and Co-founder of Barista Magazine. Sarah earned her Bachelors degree in English (1995) and a Masters degree in Journalism (2000).

Sarah has worked as a journalist for 15 years, as a staff writer for The Oakland Tribune and The Oregonian newspapers, where she covered pop music, film and the culture of teenagers. Sarah has been covering coffee and the specialty industry exclusively for eight years, and she has for many years been a regular part of the NBC PRESS.

Zachary started working in coffee at Starbucks in Seattle in 2001. He moved to Washington, DC in 2005 and began working with Nick Cho at murky coffee. Murky coffee taught him how to pull shots of espresso, how to cup coffees and appreciate the entire supply chain.

Zachary currently works at Four Barrel Coffee in San Francisco. Furthermore he is the founding editor for Sprudge.com.

Robert William is a dedicated coffee craftsman and a helplessly romantic coffee entrepreneur. JAVA espresso bar, MOCCA coffee shop & micro roasters, KAFFA roasting company, KAFFAbutikk bean outlet & public tasting room, are pioneering coffee establishments of their kind in Norway, thus they have been contributors in making Scandinavia a place on the specialty coffee map since early on.

Robert is holding titles as the winner of various national as well as international barista competitions, including the first WBC, a professional coffee cupper and frequent member on international juries such as COE, yet continuously seeking to understand the intriguing ways from bean to brew.

He travels extensively to other coffee destinations around the globe, sourcing green coffee and searching knowledge directly from the people at the coffees home turfs.

At Nordic Barista Cup Robert will share his experience with buying nice coffees from great farmers in Colombia, as well as presenting coffee varieties and processing traditions. The talk will be followed by a tasting. 

Time to find your magic wand and your wizard glasses from oblivion:

The theme for the 2010 gala dinner is Harry Potter.

The gala dinner and award ceremony will be held at Sporten, built in 1896 in traditional dragon style. We look forward to see a lot of Hagrid's, Sirius Black's and Bellatrix Lestrange's.

More about Harry Potter.

More about Sporten.

Paul Songer began his career in the specialty coffee business at Allegro Coffee Company 25 years ago, repairing and installing espresso machines. He gradually moved from equipment to cupping and training, writing technical manuals and conducting training with sales staff, customers, and internal sensory panels as manager of training and research.

In 1998, Songer took the position of Director of Coffee Operations at Coffee Analysts, an independent lab specializing in the sensory, chemical, and physical analysis of coffee. This led to further independent research and a certificate of sensory analysis at the University of California at Davis. During this period he was a judge for one of the initial barista competitions held at the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) convention in 1998.

He has served for over 10 years on the Technical Standards Committee of the SCAA and has given several technical presentations at their conferences. He has had numerous articles on coffee published and is the co-author of the SCAA Water Quality Manual, which deals with the chemistry of water and its effect on brewing coffee.

He now works as technical director for Cup of Excellence and as an independent consultant specializing in application of sensory analysis techniques to the coffee business, product development, and sensory panel training.

At Nordic Barista Cup 2010 Paul Songer will lecture about basic taste and sonsoric skills. There will be cuppings linked to the subjects.

We har happy to inform you that we have some new names to the impressive list of lectureres.

Jaime Duque from Colombia will speak about bean defects, their causes and the possible solution. He will also present parchment and defect cupping workshops.

Jaime Duque is the director of the Agrado Project in Quindío State in Colombia. Jaime is an Agricultural Engineer and in 1991 he started to work for Quindío Coffee Growers Committee as part of Colombian Coffee Federation.

From 1990 Paolo was head of Research and Development at La Spaziale in Bologna, a company that his father was the co-founder and part owner of since 1969.

Tim Wendelboe runs his own Roastery, espressobar and coffee school in Oslo that specialises in importing and roasting some of the best coffees grown around the world.

Apart from winning the last two Nordic Roaster Competition together with his roasting team, he was the 2004 World Barista Champion and the 2005 World Cup Tasting Champion.

Tim is an experienced lecturer and has been working as a coffee consultant for six years. He recently wrote and published a book about coffee that will be published in English in June.

Tim will be holding a lecture about Roasting- philosophy and quality control.

Stephen Vick is an independent consultant, and is currently working as the East Africa Field Agent for Intelligentsia Coffee and Tea.

Stephen began his work in coffee as a barista for Zoka Coffee in Seattle and spent much of his career as a trainer and educator for Zoka, as well as Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Portland, Oregon. He placed third in the 2003 US Barista Championship and has since served a USBC and WBC judge, as well as a Cup of Excellence international jury member.

A couple of years ago, Stephen shifted his work to origin, applying his well-rounded knowledge of the high-end specialty roaster market to help farmers improve the quality of their coffee and, in turn, their quality of life.

During his time as Quality Control Project Manager for Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers, he implemented rigorous quality control systems and protocols for the 5,000 farmer members of the Kanyovu Cooperative near Kigoma, Tanzania. The cooperative's shift in focus with regards to quality resulted in Kanyovu winning first prize at the 2010 EAFCA Taste of Harvest competition in Mombasa, Kenya.

Mr. Erling Dokk Holm is a renowned researcher in urban development and consumer habits. He is currently working at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design and the Oslo School of Management.

Erling is author of many books, one of them being a  book about the coffee bar culture and it’s effect on city development.

He is also a renowned lecturer and a frequent columnist in  "Dagens Næringsliv" and "Dagbladet" some of the biggest newspapers in Norway.

At Nordic Barista Cup 2010 Erling Dokk Holm will be holding a lecture about the coffee shops influence on social life and the "experience economy".

We are happy to announce that Cafetto will be sponsoring Nordic Barista Cup 2010.

Cafetto and Nespresso also sponsored Nordic Barista Cup 2009 in Iceland. Thank you for your support.

See all 2010 sponsors here.

Sign up for Nordic Barista Cup 2010 here.

Anytime soon you will see ad's and postcards for the Nordic Barista Cup 2010 in Oslo. Keep an eye on this in your café/ neighbourhood.

We hope to see you in Oslo at

Nordic Roaster 15. September LIMITED SEATS - SIGN UP HERE

and/or...

Nordic Barista Cup 16. - 18. September LIMITED SEATS - SIGN UP HERE

Yet another of the lecturers for Nordic Barista Cup 2010 has been confirmed. Anders Bjørk will host a lecture about sales.

Originally Anders Bjørk has an MA in law and has studied/worked in USA and France. Today Anders Bjørk works as a coach with NLP and enneagram as the backbone.

Yet his background is in sales. In 2007-2008 he was the person who gaines the highest turnover for Mediaplanet International, and in 2009 he managed to open new business areas for Mediaplanet.

Anders Bjørk will host a lecture on Saturday 18. September 2010.

Back from right: Morten, Andreas, Tim, Synnøve, Tone, Jens.
Front: Ola, Björg.

The 2010 Organising Committee had yet another meeting in Oslo Monday 8th of February.

The theme for the Nordic Barista Cup 2010 is:

To the core of coffee

The organising committee vision is an event with high standards and a professional competence that will take Nordic Barista Cup to a new and higher level.

One way to do this is to find the leading thinkers and doers in the coffee business to host the lectures. The preliminary lecturers are George Howell, Erling Dokk Holm, Anders Bjørk and Tim Wendelboe.

You can buy one day passes (200 €) or you can buy ticket for full program (500 €).

SIGN UP HERE