Eep. This is tomorrow night. I’ve been tardy I know, but If you can make it along please do. The words come from Jen @ 5 Senses

What comes after # 1? Another super cheap $15 barista competition fundraiser.

Time to re-group with Barista Jam #2 and get down to business. Consider our first get together hosted by the lovely people at Elixir Coffee Specialists a who’s who / meet and greet. Now that we are all friendlies, it’s time to talk a little bit more seriously about this year’s upcoming barista competition.

We are looking for all potential competitors, hopeful judges, volunteers and sponsors to make themselves known and come join us for another beer and pizza session at Epic Espresso in West Perth this Friday the 23rd from 5pm onwards. We obviously don’t want to waste all the prize money on advertising, so it’s up to you to get the word out there to anyone you think might be interested.

We are planning some comp focused training during the evening. We’ll aim to spend time each Barista Jam breaking down a section of the scoresheet in order to offer insight and tips on getting the best results beginning with the espresso section. On the table at 5:30pm sharp (before Pizza) will be the top ten Honduras COE samples for cupping. It will be an opportunity to discuss flavours, characteristics and pesky” Nuancessssss” with the comp blend descriptor training in mind.

Lastly, we are keen to reward some budding artists! 5 bucks in the hopper, 1 cup, judged by comp rules, winner takes home a fancy new Reg Barber.

If you’re interested in providing your venue for #3 we are keen to hear from you.

See you this Friday,

Jen

Facebook event link here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=101782406543046

It’s been a huge day today as day one of the Detpak W.A Barista Championships got underway. This year W.A has 16 awesome baristas vying for the title of the states best, and a chance to be flown to the Gold Coast to represent W.A in the national finals early next year.

The first day of competition today at the Mount Hawthorn Community Hall had 11 competitors all strutting their stuff. Everyone competing admirably and doing their bit to further the appreciation of good coffee in W.A.

Tomorrow sees a further 5 competitors round out the barista competition, and the the states best latte artists will take to the stage
to see who can take away the Pura Milk Latte Art championship.

Finally, the who’s who of Perth’s coffee palates will compete in the Fairtrade Cup Tasting competition, a fast paced race to pick the odd coffee out of 8 sets of 3 cups. The winner is whoever gets the most right in the fastest time.

The event is open to the public and everyone who is into coffee at all is encouraged to come down. We have a coffee cart selling $2 coffees made by our competitors, and coffee roasting demonstrations run by local home roaster Trevor Green.

Tomorrow’s action will get underway at 9am and run through til the afternoon, so there’s plenty of time to come along and see what the best baristas in the state have to offer.

Here’s a few shots from todays action taken by Jon Wilson:

Directions to Mount Hawthorn Community Hall

This is an informational post for people looking for information about the WA Barista Competition for this year.

The event is scheduled to be held on the 7th and 8th of November, at the Mt Hawthorn Community Hall, on Scarborough Beach Rd in Mt Hawthorn.

Over the course of the weekend we will be running the local W.A heats of the Australian Barista Competition, the Latte Art Competition, and the Cup Tasting Competition.

Entry for the competition is done online via the newly launched AASCA (Australasian Speciality Coffee Association) website. Links to all the categories being run on the day are below:

Entry for Australian Barista Championship WA State Heat

Entry for Latte Art Championships WA State Heat

Entry for Cup Tasting Championship WA State Heat

The links above will take you to the AASCA site where you can either use your existing AASCA membership number to enter the competition, or else sign up for a new AASCA membership at the same time as you register. The website also handles online processing of competition payments.

More information in regards to the event will be released, including barista jams and information nights, will be released as they come to hand, but for now if you are interested in competing (and if you’re a passionate W.A barista then you should be), please head across to the AASCA site and get your entry in, then get practicing !

We had another great day at the Latte Art championships and the Cupping Competition last Sunday. I bravely stood up to the plate again and sacrificed my tastebuds to the cause of coffee to judge the latte art competition in the morning, because as we all (should) know, latte art is much more than just drawing hearts and flowers on top of coffee. The milk temperature and texture and the way it combines with the espresso is paramount to getting a good score. So no matter how lovely your patterns are, if your coffee tastes like microwaved nescafe, you will lose.

Fortunately the competitors on Sunday were a much classier lot than that, and after some stirling efforts from many competitors, the winner once again was Production Supervisor and latte artiste extraordinaire, Kim Godleman of 5 Senses.

Sadly I was judging the whole time of the comp, and with no minions to run around taking photos for me, I didn’t get many shots of the actual competitors during the day. The 5 Senses team did get a few shots though, that you can check out here.

Next up was the cupping competition, and true to form, I had not practiced once. Still, my steely nerves and trust in my palate was strong. I managed to get a break for lunch in between the latte art and the cupping, so I primed the tastebuds with a potato and ham calzone and a lemon lime and bitters. A lunch of taste champions no doubt. A few swirls of mineral water just to round out the bitters and we were good to go.

         
What is cupping you say ?
Cupping is the traditional method for breaking down the flavour profiles of brewed coffee. You roast a bunch of coffee to a certain level (generally lighter than for espresso), grind it to a specific courseness, and then let it steep in hot water (not boiling) for a set period of time. Then breaking through the crust of grinds on the top and inhaling deeply the aromas of the brew, and drawing out as much detail as you can about the nose, before slurping it as you would if you were tasting wine. Aerating the coffee across your palate and assessing the acidity, body, and length of finish etc.

The cupping competition is designed to be a high speed spectacle that mirrors this tradition. Each competitor is given 8 sets of 3 cups. 2 of the cups in each set are the same coffee, and one is different. The point then is to guess the odd one out, in as fast a time as possible.

The winner of the world cupping championships last year scored 8 out of 8 correct in less than 1 1/2 minutes. That’s 24 tastes of coffee in under 90 seconds… and 100% accuracy on what he was tasting.
Whilst I doubt I’ll ever be in that league, I’ll explain the method I use for this competition (If you can call it a method).

How I do it
Basically I taste the first cup in a set, slurp it across my palate and look for one single defining character of that coffee. Some coffees are predominantly sour, some particularly bitter, others are really earthy, or acidic, or just have some weird kind of funk to them. I then use that one characteristic to match against the other cups. If the next cup has it too, then they are likely to be the same, if the next cup doesn’t, then test the third, if the third has it, bingo. You can also try and use things like the heat profile of steam coming out of cups, and the colour of the brewed coffee if you need a little help. Though often it’s just more confusing.

So in a sense, you’re really not tasting coffee at all. You’re pulling out one flavour component that you can use to match against. Of course being a professional coffee taster, those flavour components are going to be a lot more apparent to someone who does it every day than to a weekend cupping warrior. But the concept is still the same. Of course the problem arises when the coffees all start to taste like each other, or when your mind starts to wander, and the taste you were matching against suddenly slips from your mind.

So how did I do ?
Well, not bad, but not good enough to take out the win this year. I was dead certain of the first set, which I pushed out after only one sip of each cup, and later found out I had it wrong. Which still confuses me as to how I could be so certain, but then these things happen. I managed to get 5 out of 8 sets right in a little over 4 minutes. Pipped by a stirling performance by non other than barista to the stars Ben Bicknell, who managed an outstanding 7 out of 8. A host of other competitors also came in with 5 out of 8 actually. So perhaps we’re all just talented :)

For the record, here are the results from the two days of competition:

Barista Competition Final Results

1st: Mark Chandler from 5 Senses Coffee / WA Barista Academy 546.5 points
2nd: Jespa Bood from Ristretto 454.5 points
3rd: Charles Stuart from Rocketfuel 453.0 points

Latte Art Final Results

1st: Kim Godleman from 5 Senses Coffee
2nd: Dale Fewson from Café 54
3rd: Natalie Donaldson from Epic Espresso

Cupping Competition Final Results

1st: Ben Bicknell from 5 Senses Coffee 7/8 in 3 mins 58 secs
2nd: Angela Kowalczyk from Epic Espresso 5/8 in 3 mins 32 secs
3rd: Matt O’Donohue (that’s me!) Executive Producer of Abstract Gourmet 5/8 in 4 mins 7 secs

Just a quick update with some photos and to announce that Mark Chandler of the WA Barista Academy has taken out this years WA Barista Competition. Mark had an excellent routine and amongst a small but quality field came out on top to take the win.

Mark signature drink of a pear puree, blueberry reduction and espresso with beetroot dust on top was both tasty and well constructed, and his overall routine and technique were enough to put him over the line.

                                             
Great effort this year by all the baristas though, who despite the hurried time frame, came together to put in some fantastic performances.

I was lucky (?) enough to judge all 9 competitors over the course of the day, and despite being massively over caffeinated now, really enjoyed the day. Big thanks to Ben Bicknell for pulling it together, the rest of the judges, runners, helpers, and competitors, and current Australian barista champ (and runner up in the WBC) Dave Makin for swinging over to lend a hand with judging and keeping things in check.

Look for more photos from the latte art and cupping competition tomorrow !

The W.A Barista Competition is happening again this coming weekend. This one has snuck up on a lot of people, but it’s still definitely on and definitely happening. You might be a little confused as to why the 2009 competition is being run in late 2008, and you wouldn’t be the only one. But due to the World Barista Championship changing their scheduling to run earlier in the year, all the of the state and national heats needed to be pushed forward so that we could have them all run in time for the World finals.

Your support and involvement is still very much needed. So if you’re in Perth, and have a love of good quality coffee, then come down to the event and check it out ! Details are as follows:

AustralAsian Specialty Coffee Association – 2009 WA Barista, Latte Art and Cupping Championships

When: 22nd and 23rd November 2008
Where: Mt Hawthorn Community Hall, 197 Scarborough Beach Road, Mt Hawthorn

The WA Championship Circuit is here again! With an early Australian national finals in January 2009, the AASCA WA Barista, Latte Art and Cupping Championships will be held on the 22nd and 23rd of November 2008.

Open to any resident of WA, the 3 championships offer a range of formats for the coffee professional to show their prowess, whether it be by showcasing their unique signature drink in the Barista Championships, pouring an immaculate milk design in the Latte Art Championships or demonstrating their understanding of the taste of coffee in the Cupping Championships!

This year’s competitions will be held at the Mt Hawthorn Community Hall with events proceeding over both the Saturday and Sunday. Entry to the event is free for spectators providing a great insight into the ‘behind the bar’ environment where coffee is crafted, tasted and presented. Come along and be part of the booming specialty coffee scene in Western Australia!

For more information about competing or judging in the Barista, Latte Art or Cupping Championships, email wa@aasca.com or phone 0439 511 881.

Contact:

Ben Bicknell
Email: vicepresident@aasca.com
Phone: 0439 511 881

How good was it ? It was awesome. So many coffee people in one room, sharing tips and tricks and blends and beers. I was massively proud to be amongst so many people from such diverse backgrounds, all getting into the spirit of things.

We had coffees sent from all over the country, including some fantastic beans from Eureka. We had Black Sheep and Blue Horse, and beans from every coffee producing continent on earth (well I think we did anyway).

There were people from cafe’s all over the city, as well as a good turn out from local roasters. Five Senses and Fiori were well represented and had brought out a stack of great single origins to try. Standouts for me were the Mao’s Blue Horse Ethiopian Harrar from Fiori, and a Sumatran from Gayo Mountain by Five Senses.

There was an impromptu cupping which gave the a bit of background to story of the coffees and the processes they’ve gone through before ending up in our cups, and then the latte art smackdown took centre stage.

The competition was fierce… almost as fierce as the sledging from the gallery. There were some great pours, some not so great pours, and some mind boggling 3 dimensional pours… in the end, the man with the skills to pull it off was none other than Jackson of Tiger, Tiger. Who took home a fine swag of booty courtesy of the nice folks at Sunbeam.

The jam was also a swan song of sorts for Jen Murray, our current barista champ here in Perth, who will be heading over to Canada for a while shortly, leaving the Perth coffee scene much less cooler than when she arrived. Much love to Jen on her travels, and well done for putting together such a sweet sweet event all on the whimsical prompting of yours truly :)

Check out the photos and see what you missed out on if you were too cool to show up :)

                                                       

You’ve seen it here, you’ve seen it on Cafe Grendel. You’ve seen it in cafe’s… It’s spoken about in hushed whispers in coffee shops and espresso bars all throughout the city… all the cool kids are totally coming along (isn’t that right Mooba?) that’s right… it’s the Barista Jam !

This coming Sunday… this very weekend, the first proper barista jam will be going down at the WA Barista Academy in Northbridge. It’s a chance for everyone either in or on the fringes (peering gleefully over the shoulder) of the Perth coffee scene. You are all invited, regardless of your preference for coffee machine, roaster, grinder, tamper, fair trade, direct trade, share trade… you get the picture. Leave the ego at the door (mine fits in a custom designed warehouse), and enjoy some great coffees, food, beers, and have a crack at taking away some prizes in a winner takes all latte art smackdown !

Be there or be L7.

The post that needed to be written, and the actual reason I went to Melbourne in the first place (because unfortunately noone will pay me to eat for a living yet). The finals of the Australian Barista Championships.

There has been much said about the competition this year, and the overall standard of the competitors. I was fortunate enough to be able to judge the competitors in the Open Heats, which were run before the Australian Barista Competition finals. The Open Heats are basically the last chance for any barista who hadn’t made it through the state heats to get into the final.

The competitors were all very strong, with Con Haralambopolous coming out on top despite running over time and having to redo the shots for his cappucinos. Which was an outstanding performance.

During the finals I basically tried to keep out of everyone elses way, whilst doing a bit of running, table setup, and then taking photos of competitors from as close a vantage point as I could. It was a day of very tough competition. I personally could not pick who was going to win, even after having observed each person from up close. The level of technical competence and slick performance from each barista was quite overwhelming.

Of course my personal favourite and all round local hero was Jen Murray of W.A. Jen Put in perhaps one of the best performances I’ve seen her give (and I’ve seen this routine many times), pulling out some fantastic looking shots, as well as a stellar signature drink, which was good enough for her to take out third place ! She also got my vote for most awesome soundtrack, which was the Somersault soundtrack by Decoder Ring…very cool.

Second place in the finals was the ever consistent Con Haralambopolous from the Open Heats. Con is what I’d call the quiet achiever in the scene. He’s a down to earth guy who just does his thing in a truly honest way. His routine was much smoother than the heats, and he was always going to be a contender with an interesting molecular gastronomy take with a coffee soil in his signature drink.

The winner this year, was David Makin. David’s routine was slick and polished, and although I couldn’t see a lot of difference performance-wise between him and the other competitors, the results in the cup clearly indicated there was a big one, with an over 100 point difference between him and the rest of the field. He also finished in 14 minutes, a full one minute under the allotted competition time, which is normally unheard of. He’ll go on to Copenhagen later this year to compete in the world finals.

The other big event of the finals was Australian Coffee Cupping Championships, which I had another crack at, after a promising result in the Perth heats, getting 6 out of 8 cups and being pipped by one.
The finals were another story altogether though, with some seriously tough triangle tests to deal with.
One competitor in the early rounds scored 0 out of 8, which made me feel a little sick.

I managed to hit 4 out of 8 in my heat though, finishing in a mostly respectable 3 and a half minutes. The winner of the heats though, was the lovely Emily Oak, who hit 6 out of 8 to take them out.

So on to the finals and Perth girl Catherine Ferrari, taking on local fave Toshi from St Ali, and Emily Oak. It was a fierce comp and Catherine was on fire. Taking out 6 out of 8 cups to win the day, and become the Australian Coffee Cupping Champion. A fantastic result for Catherine and her very proud mum who had come over to watch the competition with her.

And so after some sustained partying and a few too many drinks, the greater coffee loving community of Australia slinked back to their respective cities to rest their weary heads after a weekend where too much coffee was barely enough.

Cheers to all the great people I met over the course of the weekend. Nim, Luca, Emily, Emma, Aaron, Syd (and your awesome photos), Mel, Bruno, and all the other judges and helpers who did such a fine job.

So I’ve finally decompressed and mostly decaffeinated myself from a heavy weekend of espresso based activity at the W.A Barista Championships for 2008. And what a weekend it was. A myriad of competitors (well, 18 of them anyway), all of excellent quality, were vying for the title of W.A Barista Champion, and I’m proud to (secondarily) announce the winner was Jen Murray of the W.A Barista Academy.

Jen’s performance was fantastic and polished. Her style relaxed and natural, her technique rock solid, and most importantly, her coffees tasted fantastic. Jen works as trainer for 5 Senses, and you can tell the time spent correcting other peoples mistakes definitely pays off. Perhaps one of the issues many baristas face when coming into these competitions is that it’s not just standing behind a machine and making coffees. It’s communicating and connecting with the audience and judges to convey that you know what you’re doing and why. Jen’s consummate ease in explaining what she’s doing, at the same time as doing it, set her up for a well deserved win.

Runner up this year was Vanessa Moore of Epic Espresso. Vanessa consistently performs well in these competitions and was always going to be at the top of the field. The consummate ease in the way she goes about her work and her dedication to the job will serve her well when she competes in the Open Heats before the Finals in Melbourne later on in May. She also took out the latte art throwdown (!) (or was it a smackdown) with a seriously symmetrical rosetta.

So then onto the fun end of the day. After the final competitor of the barista competition, and a steady lineup of hopefuls wanting to take out the latte art crown, it was up for the final event of the day. The W.A Cupping Championships. Cupping is of course not what you think it is (if I know my readers), but is the method by which roasters and coffee tasters break down the flavour profile of coffees by grinding them relatively coarsely, adding water, and slurping and smelling the coffee to work it all out.

The idea behind the competition then, is to have 8 sets of 3 cups. Two of the cups have the same kind of coffee in them, the third has a different one. The fastest person to correctly identify the most number of odd cups from each set, wins. Now I’ve cupped coffees before. Not on any great scale or length though. I’ve been to cupping sessions at roasters and cafes, and done a little at home when I was back in my home roasting days. So I figured, what the hell… I’ll give it a shot.

                 

Mc Grendel did an excellent job of building the drama, as he went down the line and announced whether each cup was a “Yes” or a “No”, and despite my attempts to look relaxed, I was getting the shakes (though that might have been to the 20 or so coffees I’d had to judge earlier). So to cut a not very long story even shorter, it came down to a final group of competitors. The score to beat was 4 out of 8 cups correct. I took my time, slurped, swirled, drew in long questioning breaths, and made my choices.

MC Grendel then went down the line and lifted the cups… “No”, “Yes, “Yes”, “Yes”, “Yes”… wait for it… “Yes” !, “No” :(, “Yes” ! 6 out of 8 in total. I was pretty happy with that, mostly because i’d just been judging baristas for the past two days and assessing how their coffees tasted, so if I had no palate of my own to rely on, it’d be only fair to question what the hell I was doing there.

So I thought I had it, but you can never think too soon. Catherine Ferrari of European Foods and Brazilliano was right next to me, and as another barista competition judge, wanted to make sure she did well. Which of course she did. Finishing well before me, and eventually coming through with 7 out of 8 cups correct. It was an excellent performance, and testament to her skills that even after two days of coffee tasting, she could pull up the win.

After all was said and done, and we’d been through the score sheets with the baristas to make sure they each get some good feedback from the event, and hopefully feel encouraged enough to try again next year (which they should ! the standard just keeps on getting better and better), it was off home to relax, rejuvenate, and not drink another coffee for a looong time (well the next morning anyway).

Special thanks for the event must go to Ben Bicknell, whose tireless efforts at pulling the whole thing together almost single handedly do not go unnoticed. Also Rob Forsythe for being a font of knowledge and a great help to all the judges. To Nicki and Azza Kindred for winging their way over from Tassie to help out, and to all the other judges and helpers, and time keepers. It’s people like these that make events like this one happen, and continue to grow the coffee scene in Perth.

Bring on next year :) and go Jen Murray for Australian Barista Champ 2008 !