It always gets bigger and better in Dubai when it comes to events and the World of Coffee 2025 Edition followed suit. I only had the opportunity to attend one of the three days but still didn’t get to experience all the halls, perhaps that’s because I over COFFEE’D myself and lost count after my tenth cup – The emoji of distress 
comes to mind. In summary WOC Dubai is truly becoming a global coffee even and is here to stay by the looks of it, featuring all the coffee tools, suppliers, coffee farmers you can think off together with world champions gracing the stage and preparing coffee for you. Nevertheless, here’s a quick round up of my adventures;
Meeting Martin Wolf
Crowned recently as the World Brewers Champion, Martin used to make coffee for me at my fave coffee shop in Vienna, Austria, Balthasar, so not only was I pleasantly surprised to learn that he would be visiting but that I bumped in to him (pic with him at the top of my post) but that he got to brew coffee, which I got to taste again. What did I learn? That he uses the WDT for filter coffee (post on my Instagram).
Geisha Coffee from Hacienda La Esmeralda Coffee Farm
The first time I tasted coffee from this world-famous coffee farm in Panama, which was award the most expensive coffee back in 2011, I had my café in Cape Town. The memory of that cup still lingers with me – jasmin earl grey blue flowers – sounds crazy but what an impression. So, I was happy to see the farmers brewing coffee at the Espresso Lab Stand and got to taste not 1, but 3 cups of coffee between naturals and washed…. YUM!
Bluewater
Wandering around near the competition stage, I bumped into Alexander from the company, who is based in Dubai and can be seen at Roast Trip in al Quoz. In summary as over 90% of coffee is water, getting the water right is paramount, so I was happy to chat and learn more about their new technology, which removes impurities, adding Swedish minerals, allowing you to alter TDS amongst other things when brewing your coffee. For example, you can alter the minerals for espresso or filter. As you know, with more water being used for filter, the water quality is very key. They also offer their device for the home too (tempting once I get a bigger pay cheque). Incidentally they won best new product of the year.
Ligre Espresso Machine
The owner, Lina Gronbach, reached out to me prior to WOC to ask me to visit their stand and check out their Ligre Youn espresso machine with a difference. She introduced me to their slick design, made with satin-finished anodized aluminium and which one could easily be mistaken as an automatic coffee machine, but the sleek wooden handle portafilter gives it away. Brewing can be done with just a few lever buttons at the top with options for both manual and automatic on offer and an “uber” style milk technology that froths perfectly micro foam too. A very aesthetically pleasing espresso machine costing just under EUR5,000 with its patented technology, and grinder to pair. Lina showed me how to use the machine and prepared an Italian style espresso. Growing in popularity in Germany amongst serious coffee snobs, it has already won gold at the German Design Award and the iF Design Award – no surprise there.
Coffees galore
I was happy to meet Khaled the Siphonist, whom I follow on Instagram and who was on hand to brew coffee using …. You guessed it a Siphon.
I also stopped over one of my fave coffee roasteries, Cypher, where I had their Palestina Coffee as my first milk based coffee.
I invited a friend of mine who is thinking of opening a coffee-based business to enjoy the atmosphere, which he did.
We wandered across many stalls including Kiss the Hippo, Grandmother, Subko and many more.
By far the largest stand was a coffee brand from Saudi Arabia, The Black Knight, where I met the CEO, who gave me not one, BUT 4 bags of coffee to take away. Very generous and customer focused no doubt.
So, that’s my round up of WOC2025 and I am already looking forward to the 2026 version, where I hope to attend more than one day insha’allah.
