Espresso – Page 6 – Abstract Gourmet

WA Latte Art Competition

Last Sunday I headed down to the WA Barista Academy to have a chat with Ben and a few of the more discerning baristas and latte artists in Perth about the upcoming WA Latte Art Competition. Once again an AASCA sponsored event, and part of the lead up to the Australian and World Latte Art Competitions to be held later on this year.

The format of the competition is basically as such: You need to make 3 types of 2 identical drinks. One is a latte (flat white / monk head / foamless cappucino), the other is an espresso macchiato (piccolo latte), and the final is a drink of your own creation. Then points are allocated to the taste of the drinks, the quality of the designs, and the similarity between both patterns (so you can prove it wasn’t a fluke the first time), and a bunch of other factors.

So it was a good day, and I got to meet a few more of the cool people that make up the Perth coffee scene, like Clare from the newly opened “Tiger, Tiger” in the city, Corey from Core (soon to be Epic Espresso), Megan from Core, Jeremy (WA Barista Champion), and Dom of “My Favourite Perth Cafes” and “How to Poach an Egg” comments fame on this very website.

After the formal procedings we got into “Barista Jam” mode, and I made a mockery of the Mazzer Robur by adjusting it three times in the wrong direction…before realising what the hell I was doing and finally getting some decent shots after about 20 minutes. Then attempted many poor excuses for latte art that Ben assures me could be good enough to use in the competition, which according to him I have a good chance of performing well in, when you take into account nerves of competitors and the like… but I will need to start churning out something a hell of a lot better than my recent efforts for me to want to take the step and compete.

I’m more of a big fish in a little pond kind of guy…

International Syndication

Well recently I was lucky enough to get my espresso cubes article picked up by slashfood.com, and now it seems that someone else has picked it up from there…

I must say, it’s rather strange seeing my photo and name attached to a post that is otherwise completely incomprehensible. So if anyone out there can translate Japanese for me, I would appreciate it.

Latte Art Video: A brave new world

Ok, well i’m not sure if this is going to go anywhere or not, but I’m toying with the idea of doing some video blogging… Just short clips of various/random kitchen/food/me getting drunk and falling over comically type things. I’m aiming for somewhere in between Jamie Oliver’s trip to Italy, and the Funniest home video where the guy gets hit in the nuts with a stick.

So as a first effort, here is perhaps one of my crappiest ever efforts at pouring latte art. Not helped by the fact that I had to hold my phone with one hand, and normally use it to tilt the cup towards me a little… But no excuses…

So there you go… Video blogging… Feel free to let me know if this is in any way amusing/interesting/helpful/cathartic, and I may or may not continue.

To infinity and beyond !

Oh the fame…

My humble photo got posted (with permission) to the Cafe Experiment. Yay :)

W.A Barista Competition

So over Easter I was forunate (or unfortunate depending on your point of view) enough to be asked to help out with the running of the Western Australian Barista Competition. It was held at the Western Australian Barista Academy, and co-ordinated by my good mate Ben.

I was a runner for the day, which meant i was running (or ambling…with a bit of a sashay every now and then) around after the competitors, helping them get their competition spaces set up with cups/trays/saucers/cultery, and anything else they wanted to use.

The format of the competition is pretty simple. The baristas had to make 4 espressos, 4 capucinnos, and 4 signature drinks.

The signature drink is basically an espresso based drink of the competitors own creation, and believe me when i say there are a lot of creative people out there.

Each competitor gets 15 minutes to prepare their workspace, then 15 minutes to make their drinks and serve them, then 15 minutes to clean up.

They are judged by a panel of 4 sensory judges, who are testing for flavour, body, acidity, mouthfeel of the coffee, and 2 technical judges who are watching them pull the shots, use the grinder, and doing a few shot timings etc, to see how quick its coming out.

This is (essentially) the first time a competition of this nature and composition has been run in WA. In the past other company’s have run their own flavour of competition, but none of them have been AASCA (AustralAsian Specialty Coffee Association) approved. AASCA abides by all the WBC (World Barista Championship) rules and regulations, and also requires a completely independant group of judges.

So there were probably about 15 or so competitors over the course of the day. Lots of nerves, lots of good coffee, lots of amazing signature drinks, an occasional spillage, and a lot of encouragement from the crowd.

All in all it was a great day, and it panned out like so:

1st Place: Jeremy Hulsdunk, Muffin Break
2nd Place: Nolan Hirte, Lemon Espresso
3rd Place: Vanessa Moore, Core Espresso
4th Place: Tim Grey-Smith, X-Wray

Must say 1st place was very much a dark horse. If you’re not familiar with Muffin Break, they are basically a muffin shop, that sells…umm, muffins… and stuff. Pastries, sandwiches, things like that. They are not exactly known for their coffee, so for a guy who works there to win the state heats of the Australia Barista Competition is pretty friggin good. I watched Jeremy’s performance though, and must say he knows his stuff. I believe his family owns the Muffin Break store that he works in, which probably explains why his barista skills are not being put to use in a more well known cafe, but if anything it proves that you can get a decent coffee wherever you go… it all depends on the barista :)

Congrats to Nolan and Vanessa too, Nolan gave what i thought was easily the performance of the day… throwing in a few behind the back bar tender moves with a sweet Kiwi dub soundtrack (Kora i believe).

So a great day all up, met some lovely people, chatted and hob knobbed with all sorts of WA coffee & food personalities, and saw some excellent skills on display.

I’ll hopefully get some more photos off Ben to post up.

More Latte Art (let me know if this is boring)

Ok, some more latte art shots that are really starting to take form now.

A few changes I’ve made to my routine after chatting with Ben of previous posts fame (and a professional coffee trainer).

1) Stretch the milk less.

There are two stages to steaming milk, stretching and rolling. Stretching is the name given to when you are actively incorporating air into the milk by leaving your steam wand close to the surface of the milk and drawing air down into it. Basically if you do this for the entire time you will get lots of big foamy bubbles (which is bad for latte art). If you don’t do it for long enough however, you’ll just get hot milk, with no velvety texture at all. I however, have probably been over stretching to make sure I get nice texture (which i think adds to the mouth feel when you make a nice latte), but also makes it really hard to pour latte art with any definition.

So now I just stretch for a few seconds (this is specifici to my Silvia of course) before rolling. Rolling is when you put the steam wand deeper down into the milk and get a vortex going around it, which rolls the milk around and distributes the heavier foam throughout the rest of the milk…giving you a really nice consistency.

2) Pour slowly and wiggle

If you pour too quickly it’s really difficult to make sure you’re getting all the milk in the right place to do art. So now I start by pouring really slowly, and when I see the milk starting to break through the crema on top I wiggle the tip of the jug to bring the heavier foam out, which I can then start pouring through side to side to get the shape of the rosetta.

3) Make good espresso !

Bad espresso will never lead to good latte art. The better the espresso (nice dark reddish/brown crema, well extracted) the more well defined the latte art is going to come out. If you pull a weak blond looking espresso, it makes it that much harder to get a nice looking rosetta on top.

p.s – if this is getting boring, let me know.

Category: Espresso