2010 W.A Barista Competition – Day 1

2010 WA Barista Competition

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

2010 W.A Barista Competition

flat white rosetta

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 !

2009 WA Latte Art and Coffee Cupping Competition

Tanghy limbers up WA Latte Art and Coffee Cupping Compeition

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

Perth Barista Jam Wrap-up

The espresso flowed Things got blurry

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 :)

Video: Milk Texturing and Latte Art-ish

So this is the video I said I would put together for a few people who seemed interested in the latte art side of the coffee making process I posted recently. I should state formally and for the record that I am no expert or professional when it comes to milk texturing or pouring latte art… I practice the Jeet Kune Do of coffee… formalising my routines by taking the essence of understanding from as many different sources as I can find.

I’ve been playing around with my little coffee machine (the Rancilio Silvia) for the last couple of years now, and have picked up tips and tricks from all over the place. Most notably Coffee Geek, and Coffee Snobs (both of which I’m pretty sure I qualify for).

Music is ‘Woo Hoo’ by the 5,6,7,8’s which you can find on the Kill Bill soundtrack if you’re so inclined :)

For a few more indepth explanations of latte art, check out these links:
www.coffeegeek.com/guides/frothingguide
www.xpressivo.com/theespressoguide/recomended_latte.asp
www.xpressivo.com/theespressoguide/recomended_latte_art.asp

Newsworthy

Poached obsession

So on a lazy Sunday morning, waking up at the crack of noon, making my lady and I some poached eggs and easing ourselves into the day the way only we can… It was a nice surprise to find this little blog mentioned in an article in The Australian. I’m not sure why I get a buzz out of seeing myself in print, it’s happened a few times now, but I guess it’s nice to get a little recognition, or at least to know that I’m not the only person reading it… which would be sad.

The Australian reads me.

So I had a call from Steve the day before to let me know that he’d come across it, and so we headed out and bought a copy to see just exactly what was there. The article is an interesting piece based on an article in the New York Times, about how food bloggers are having an impact on how restaurants and other establishments market themselves, and under what level of scrutiny they fall. It was critical in particular of US bloggers who interrogate staff on the opening night for all the information they can get, so they get their review out first.

The article then went on to talk about Melbourne food blogger Ed of Tomatom, and how he’s had positive experiences with people finding reviews of restaurants on his site, that have been largely ignored by traditional media reviewers.

So… in short, US bad, Australia good… bloggers, keep your opinions to yourselves. The bit involving me was a link at the end of the article (I tried to click it, but it went nowhere), to a page I put together that lists the top Australian food blogs by querying technorati for rankings. So a nice little spot of publicity, and a bit of excitement on an otherwise yawn worthy weekend… Still, that’s just the way we like them around here.

The excitement over, I went and made myself a coffee and in my rush to drink it, managed to spill it over the paper… from fame to coffee stain in 2 seconds… still, the coffee was great, and my latte art is reaching a stage of sloppy consistency that will no doubt have the real baristas quaking in their boots in no time, as they prepare themselves for the W.A Barista Competition.

Some days are good like that.

morning coffee