Amsterdam Coffee Festival was made extra special this year by the presence of the Brandmeester’s owned Velopresso. We built this trike for them in 2015 – just in time for the Utrecht start to the Tour de France – and earlier this year their FCL1-Velo espresso machine was converted to a dual-fuel machine running on electric or gas (see January story below). The ACF was the first public testing of the electric machine and it performed fantastically well as expected (operating on electric the start up time is cut by 2/3 to just 15 minutes and the return to pressure during coffee operation is lightning quick). Lasse made the trip to the Netherlands and shared operator duties with the team throughout the festival, and got loads of great feedback from the public.To Lasse’s delight Brandmeester’s had another ‘ace up their sleeves’ in the form of their truly excellent Sumatra IPA: a delicious fruity and floral pale ale with a distinct coffee flavour in the mix. Great tastes aside the beer also makes the link to the trading routes of old where ships laden with IPA went east and returned with cargo of coffee beans – two rather fine commodities!