I had no idea what to expect when I was invited by Garfield Kerr, the CEO of Mokha 1450 Luxury Specialty Coffee and the President of the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) UAE chapter, to be a judge at the semi-finals of the UAE AeroPress Championships held in Dubai on 7 November 2025.
However, when I walked into the venue, I was greeted with a room full of music with a live DJ, loud cheer and tons of people from the UAE coffee community.
My first reaction;
“what am I doing here and can I really judge such talent?”
Enter…. Imposter syndrome.
Sure, I’ve been writing about coffee for over 18 years, met countless experts like James Hoffman, Maxwell Colonna Smalls, been invited to many events, attended several coffee conferences, ran my own coffee shop for three years, tasted coffee from almost every region in the World and earned a SCA Sensory Skills certificate. The list goes on.
So, I was lucky when I saw my number one coffee buddy, Naveed of The Need For Coffee, as I could chat, relax and soak up the atmosphere.
This helped me to relax and as I took a walk around the venue watching other judges judge the prequalifying rounds, I began to gain more composure, talking to myself (not aloud) “yes, I can do this”.
After about two hours, it was my turn together with my other two judges, one a lady from Brazil that has been in coffee for over 10 years and an Emirati lady who imports Yemeni coffee.
In short, we were not allowed to see the contestants, so we were seated backing them as I guess this might bias our judgement or perhaps, we may be overtaken by the methodology.
So, here we go…
Upon tasting three cups of coffee, we were told, point to the one you think is the best and if 2 out of the 3 judges chose a cup, that barista, only identified by a colour, unknown to us, was the winner.
On the first go, the other two judges chose a cup that I didn’t. Then I thought “oh dear”
However, for the remainder of the cups, you would be glad to know that I always picked the winner.
The highlight for me was when one of the cups had a distinct taste of guess….
Coconut.
Wow!
I still wanted to know what methodology that barista used because all the coffees were the same for all contestants.
I definitely picked that cup and so did my other two judges – unanimous decision.
And then before you know it, it was all over.
I pray I’ll be invited again and I’m grateful to Garfield and his team at Mokha 1450 for organising the event.
The great pictures were taken by none other than Naveed.
From Coffee With Love 