head() on Kafka stream gives NoSuchMethodError

The following error is thrown, (when I call KafkaStream.head(), as shown in
the code snippet below)

* WARN - java.lang.NoSuchMethodError:
kafka.consumer.KafkaStream.head()Lkafka/message/MessageAndMetadata;*

My use case, is that I want to block on the receive() method, and when
anything is published on the topic, I 'head' of the queue to the calling
method, that processes it.

I do not use partitioning and have a single stream.

import com.google.common.collect.Maps;
import x.x.x.Task;
import kafka.consumer.ConsumerConfig;
import kafka.consumer.KafkaStream;
import kafka.javaapi.consumer.ConsumerConnector;
import kafka.javaapi.consumer.ZookeeperConsumerConnector;
import kafka.message.MessageAndMetadata;
import org.codehaus.jettison.json.JSONException;
import org.codehaus.jettison.json.JSONObject;
import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Properties;
import java.util.concurrent.Callable;
import java.util.concurrent.Executors;

/**
* @author agupta
*/
public class KafkaConsumerDelegate implements ConsumerDelegate {

private ConsumerConnector consumerConnector;
private String topicName;
private static Logger LOG =
LoggerFactory.getLogger(KafkaProducerDelegate.class.getName());
private final Map<String, Integer> topicCount = Maps.newHashMap();
private Map<String, List<KafkaStream<byte[], byte[]>>> messageStreams;
private List<KafkaStream<byte[], byte[]>> kafkaStreams;

@Override
public Task receive(final boolean consumerConfirms) {
try {
LOG.info("Kafka consumer delegate listening on topic " +
getTopicName());
kafkaStreams = messageStreams.get(getTopicName());
final KafkaStream<byte[], byte[]> kafkaStream =
kafkaStreams.get(0);
return Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor().submit(new
Callable<Task>() {
@Override
public Task call() throws Exception {
* final MessageAndMetadata<byte[], byte[]>
messageAndMetadata= kafkaStream.head();*

final Task message = new Task() {
@Override
public byte[] getBytes() {
return messageAndMetadata.message();

};
return message;

}).get();

} catch (Exception e) {
LOG.warn("Error in consumer " + e.getMessage());

return null;

@Override
public void initialize(JSONObject configData, boolean publisherAckMode)
throws IOException {
try {
this.topicName = configData.getString("topicName");
LOG.info("Topic name is " + topicName);
} catch (JSONException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
LOG.error("Error parsing configuration", e);

Properties properties = new Properties();
properties.put("zookeeper.connect", "localhost:2181");
properties.put("group.id", "testgroup");
ConsumerConfig consumerConfig = new ConsumerConfig(properties);
//only one stream, and one topic, (Since we are not supporting
partitioning)
topicCount.put(getTopicName(), 1);
consumerConnector = new ZookeeperConsumerConnector(consumerConfig);
messageStreams = consumerConnector.createMessageStreams(topicCount);

@Override
public void stop() throws IOException {
//TODO
throw new UnsupportedOperationException("Method Not Implemented");

public String getTopicName() {
return this.topicName;

Lastly, I am using the following binary

kafka_2.8.0-0.8.1.1

and the following maven dependency

<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.kafka</groupId>
<artifactId>kafka_2.10</artifactId>
<version>0.8.1.1</version>
</dependency>

Any suggestions?

Thanks
aarti