AlternativeCoffee, 508 Moss Lane, Manchester (2026)

03/05/2026

☕ Roasting Workshop: Coffee & you? Roast | Reflect | Rebuild ☕

Have you ever wondered if we’re a bit like coffee beans? Sometimes it takes a little heat and the right "roast" to bring out the best in us.

We’re opening up our space for a cozy, 4-hour evening to slow down and explore the parallels between a good brew and a life well-lived. We’d love for you to join us.

What we’ll do together:
🔥Roast: We’ll play with the Link sample roaster. You’ll get to see the transformation from green to gold firsthand.
💭Reflect: Over coffee, we’ll look back at our own origin stories. Through some simple, creative activities, we’ll map out the highs and lows that have shaped who you are today.
☕️Rebuild: This will be the fun part. We’ll take the coffee we roasted and the reflections we shared to create two personalized drip bags for you to take home. They’re a little piece of the evening to keep you grounded. ✨

No need to be a coffee expert or a "creative" type—just come as you are. Whether you're here for the caffeine or the conversation (or both!), you’re warmly welcome!

📅 Friday, 15 May 2026
🕔 5:00 PM – 9:00 PM
🔗 Payment link is waiting for you in our Story, scan the QR code also works!

03/05/2026

☕ Roasting Workshop: Coffee & you? Roast | Reflect | Rebuild ☕

Have you ever wondered if we’re a bit like coffee beans? Sometimes it takes a little heat and the right "roast" to bring out the best in us.

We’re opening up our space for a cozy, 4-hour evening to slow down and explore the parallels between a good brew and a life well-lived. We’d love for you to join us.

What we’ll do together:
🔥Roast: We’ll play with the Link sample roaster. You’ll get to see the transformation from green to gold firsthand.
💭Reflect: Over coffee, we’ll look back at our own origin stories. Through some simple, creative activities, we’ll map out the highs and lows that have shaped who you are today.
☕️Rebuild: This will be the fun part. We’ll take the coffee we roasted and the reflections we shared to create two personalized drip bags for you to take home. They’re a little piece of the evening to keep you grounded. ✨

No need to be a coffee expert or a "creative" type—just come as you are. Whether you're here for the caffeine or the conversation (or both!), you’re warmly welcome!

📅 Friday, 15 May 2026
🕔 5:00 PM – 9:00 PM
🔗 Payment link is waiting for you in our Story, scan the QR code also works!

02/05/2026

4 years of The Giving Tree Cafe 🌍☕️

What a beautiful day celebrating diversity, friendship, coffee, and community together at our Open House. From Hong Kong, India, Ethiopia, Malaysia, to Brazil — every booth brought its own culture, stories, coffee, and amazing homemade food. The café was full of colour, music, dancing, conversations, laughter, and the smell of coffee everywhere.

So many people came throughout the day to celebrate with us, and it genuinely meant so much. Happy to see old friends, new faces, students, families, neighbours, and people from many different backgrounds sharing the same space together.

A special thank you to our wonderful volunteer team who managed the café, hand pour counter, food, hosting, and everything behind the scenes with such care and joy. Many of you first joined our Coffee and Life classes over the past 5 years, and now you are the ones serving, welcoming, encouraging, and building community for others. That is deeply meaningful to see.

Super super thankful for every volunteer, every guest, every conversation, every small act of kindness, and everyone who helped make this day possible. 💛

The Giving Tree Cafe has never been built by one person alone. Every volunteer, guest, student, neighbour, conversation, and shared meal became part of the story — like pieces of a puzzle forming something bigger together. Thank you for being part of this journey with us. ☕️

01/05/2026

Just like a coffee tree takes years of patient care before its harvest, our lives are somehow a bit like a slow, intentional brew.

These 2 weeks, 8 students from Turkey, Hong Kong, China, Eritrea, Lebanon, India and the UK gathered for our Coffee & Life intensive at . We arrived as strangers with different mother tongues, but our "flavor notes" were clear :) We shared the sweetness of Turkish hospitality, the resilience of Eritrean stories, and the "interesting" working culture of Hong Kong traditions.

Between the deep reflections, we spent hours learning about coffee! We moved from the science of espresso dial-ins to the steady control of using the steam wand. Seeing those first shaky pours turn into beautiful hearts felt like a victory for the group 🤭🤭

At the end of the course, we’ve spent some time mapping out dreams for the next 3 to 5 years, from family to community projects. My deepest wish is that these dreams, which are like small seeds today, will grow strong and tall in the years to come❤️.

01/05/2026

Yesterday we spent the evening with 20 students from the Coffee Society at the The University of Manchester for a sensory and cupping workshop 🤗🤗

For many of them, it was their first time doing sensory training and first time cupping in a more professional way. We did use the CVA form, learning how coffee scores are calculated, and understanding what actually happens behind the numbers written on a coffee bag.

What I enjoyed most was the conversations. You can really tell when people are genuinely thinking and absorbing. The students asked such thoughtful questions throughout the workshop: from psychology, memory, flavour perception, chemistry, cultural background, to why different people experience the same coffee differently. Those conversations made the session feel very alive. I just love it.

We talked about how flavour is connected to memory and life experience. Sometimes a coffee note is not just “berry” or “chocolate”, but childhood medicine (your childhood medince is bananna or cherry flavor? 😂 a family / culture dessert, or a memory from home.

Sensory is never only about the tongue, it is also about people, brain, emotions and culture.

Really grateful for such a curious and engaged group, and I hope this is only the beginning of a longer coffee journey together.

27/04/2026

Ten years ago, when I first started learning about coffee, I asked my teacher why he worked in coffee and why he became a trainer.

He told me that giving honest feedback to farmers, roasters, and baristas can help them improve their quality, and even their living. That answer stayed with me for a long time. I think that was the moment something started to grow in me.

I don’t believe a license can fix the whole supply chain. It can’t. But I really believe in sensory work. It’s the part I enjoy the most, and also feel it is the "backbone" of coffee industry. It helps us pay attention, be far, to taste carefully, and to recognise the work and value behind each cup.

Becoming a Licensed Q Instructor feels like a quiet full circle moment for me. It is a small reminder to keep doing things properly, and to stay honest to the coffee and the people behind it.

25/04/2026

What’s actually inside your cup of coffee? ☕️⛓️

Last Friday, in we spent a few hours sitting with the heavy history of the coffee trade. A huge thanks to Jane (.mushrooms ) for guiding us through "process drama," which helped us step into the shoes of those who lived this history

We traced it back to 1616, when Dutch traders smuggled the first seeds out of Yemen—the moment a rare drink started becoming a global industry.

One moment that really sat heavy with us was looking at an old Dutch children’s book written in Javanese. The pages were full of bright, happy drawings of families planting coffee. It’s a reminder of how easily stories can be shaped to make forced labor look like a simple, peaceful life.

To understand the scale, we also explored the Cultivation System in Java. This was a massive operation where the government forced families to grow coffee for export instead of food for their own tables. It saved the Dutch economy, but the weight it placed on local farmers was staggering.

One of the moving part was an exercise called "Conscience Alley." We acted as a journalist who saw the grim reality of the farms but was hired to write a glowing story for the public. Walking between two lines of people: half whispering to us to protect our careers, the other half urging us to tell the truth, how will u take the job and write the story?

We ended the day wondering: how would we tell this story in a museum today? How do we find the right words to honor everyone involved, not just the version of "success"?

A massive thank you to Jane and Pui Fong for sharing their heart and expertise with us. For those asking if we’ll do this again 🤭 if there’s interest, of course we’d love to hold space for it.

There is so much more in coffee!

SystemicChange CoffeeCulture

07/04/2026

Just wrapped up Day 1 and 2 of the SCA Brewing Intermediate course. I’m sure the students' brains are buzzing with all the TDS math and the heavy science of diffusion and hydrolysis, but I love seeing together we finally map out the "why" behind the brews.

One exercise yesterday was : Sifting the fines. We brewed two cups—same coffee, same parameters, same method—but for one, we meticulously sifted out those tiny, microscopic particles. The difference was massive. It was like two completely different coffees. The sifted cup was so much sweeter, bolder, and just... pure. A totally "positive" brew.

It made me think about how we live. Those "fines" are like the tiny weights of negativity or wound, doubt we carry around. We think they’re too small to matter, so we ignore them, but they subtly muddy our clarity and bring a bitterness to our days that we just sort of... get used to.

In the end, details are where the truth shows up. We think we can leave those tiny noises untreated, but they eventually dictate the "sweetness" of our entire outcome. In coffee, and in life, we have to face these small details head-on. It’s the only way to break the repeated patterns that ruin the final result.

Really enjoy doing experiments with the class together. Can’t wait for the next lesson! 🚀

16/03/2026

Your coffee didn’t just appear in your cup.

It travelled through history, farms, trade routes and global markets before reaching the café table.

This April at we’re hosting two interactive events exploring that journey — from the colonial history behind coffee to the realities of coffee farming today.

🎮 23 April | 18:30–21:00 – Coffee Farmer Game
Step into the role of a coffee farmer in a hands-on simulation.
Harvest coffee cherries, choose how to process them, and trade your coffee in the global market.
Along the way, you’ll experience some of the real decisions and challenges farmers face today. Will your farm survive the harvest?

☕ 24 April | 14:00–16:30 – Discover the Hidden History Behind Your Coffee
Through coffee tasting and participatory drama, we explore the colonial past behind the cup. Rather than sitting and watching a performance, we will step into different moments in coffee’s history TOGETHER, experiencing the stories, power dynamics and global connections that shaped how coffee spread around the world.

Two events that invite you to see coffee from a different angle.

📍 The Giving Tree, Manchester (M14 4PA)
📅 23–24 April

Come for one event or join both for the full

AlternativeCoffee

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