DeCon 2025 roundup
Here's a roundup of what happened during the first Decent Espresso conference, held two weeks ago.
- Collin made the same filter coffee a dozen times for us to taste, with a different ion added each time. Epsom salts, Phosphate, Nitrate, Sodium and more. And… he explained how each water additive interacts with the flavor of coffee.
- Shuying gave two 1 hour presentations on Chinese tea. The first day was a tour of China, with the prepared ahead of time and sipped cold. The second day she surprised us by serving freshly brewed tea on a DE1 backstage, using a new brewing technique she'd created at her tea research center, which used Scott Rao's filter3 basket. Scott advised that controlling flow into the leaves to a steady state, limiting agitation, would help even more. During the “extended DeCon” in the days after, Levi designed and laser-cut silicon flow contrictors at various flow rates, for filter3 baskets. Since every DeCon attendee received a free fine Keemun tea sample pack, we'd like to followup with people, send them this new filter3 flow constrictor, and continue with the group sourced experimentation of brewing delicate tea the DE1.
- Henry presented a management view of how to run a mobile coffee business, Ryde talked about the history of the Australian coffee scene, Eddie talked about the crazy experimentation in Shanghai cafes, Paul gave a masterclass on dialing in, and Scott Rao spoke about “going long”: brew approaches on the DE1 that yield a large drink or take a long to brew.
- Everything was multi-camera filmed, and we'll be releasing videos on youtube soon.
- The day after DeCon, Bugs and I “at last” got married, with all of Decent and the DeCon attendees joining in.
- And for four days afterwards, about 25 people stayed in Hong Kong for daily coffee tastings from 8am to 10am, followed by tourism and eating.
- Many attendees brought alcohol from their home, which we used to make cocktails most evenings. I'm making Chinese pickled scallion martinis (called a Gibson) from the gins people brought, whilst Bugs is making a less potent alternative: whisky & orange juice.
- And many also brought cheese, which we ate together on our picnic and hike.
We're already discussing DeCon 2026. Our current thinking is to NOT make it larger, but cap it at 80 people, which is how many people we had this year. This size was at the edge of manageable, with convivial conversations, people making each other coffee on public-facing DE1, and lots of new friend-making.
#decon #conference #hk #hongkong
Updated 2025/03/14