GUEST CONTRIBUTION: RISHIMON

Kekekekeke zerg rush lol.

See? I can be plenty Korean. Can't tell me apart can you?

Ostensibly, this is supposed to be about the Aroma Coffee Festival. But for both of us, it's not going to work out the way we want.

For all its hype as being the coffee festival of Sydney, the coffee component was rather lacklustre. None of the really interesting boutiques were available, the queues were immoderately long despite there being a fairly large number of coffee stalls available, (was your half-hour wait for Toby's Estate worth it?! Well, was it?!) no Campos, no Mecca, no Single Origin. 'Nuff said.

That being said and done, it was still okay. I had a pretty decent shot of Dane's, got to try and learned to hate several blends of coffee, which I can neither remember the names of, nor do I want to.

Where the festival really shined was the rather large 'other' category. This consisting of chocolate, tea and spices. I'm not even going to comment on spices, as a) how the hell do you partake of spices? and b) I didn't really try anything nor buy anything spice-related, which may have been to my detriment. That said, the spice stalls consisted of nice things like jams and relishes and confusing and odd things made of hibiscus. Possibly alcoholic.
The chocolate was good. Really, that sums up it well. Lots of different available chocolate products, lots of free samples, cheap to boot. I managed to snag 200g of chocolate-covered coffee beans for the paltry sum of $5, which was a great damn purchase. In retrospect, I should have bought a lot, LOT more. The consortium we formed to purchase fudge was a wise investment. A deliciously wise investment! Apparently, they appear every week on the Rocks Markets to sell their soft and textured wares, so go seek them out.

Other highlights included: watching baristas get absolutely destroyed by judges in the latte art competition, getting free coffees at the competition with lovely little ferns and trees on them and the coffee machine expo. Getting to stare at and touch some of those machines was a delight.

Gripe: It's too short. 7 hours? C'mon. Ideally, they should stretch this thing into a night festival, but it being the bane that is winter, that may prove infeasible (in which case, move it to summer...or hold two!) If you're not going to hold into the night, make it two days at least.

All that being said and done, it was worth it. I'd go again in a heartbeat, and would strongly suggest you do so too. It was muchly fun, and worth your investment of time and moneyz (even if I turned up late...but that's another story).

Addendum: The weather was really good for that day. Cool, but not cold, with a very light hint of rain. A very fine coffee mood kind of day. This probably contributed a lot to the day, and I hope it happens again.