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Seeing as Mr Hoffmann is running around the globe, kissing babies and opening supermarkets these days I thought he might appreciate this T-shirt. I knocked it up in my lunch hour and can make some copies should anyone want them (With Mr Hoffmann’s consent of course).
EDIT – T-shirt available at cost from www.mentness.shirtcity.com if you’re a geek like me!
Hello everyone. Sorry I’ve been a bit quiet of late my attentions have been somewhat skewed due to my entry into the UK Barista Championships Finals last week.
First of all Congratulations to Hugo Hercod of Relish who was a deserved winner of the title ‘UK Barista Champion’
Good Luck in Copenhagen
I’m delighted to tell you that I finished 14th with my first attempt and indeed first finals of a coffee competition.
I have learnt so much in entering the UKBC that I can hardly recognise the person who started the journey 8 months ago. If you are thinking about entering next year, DO IT. I’ve made some great new friends, pulled some great shots and made some horrible signature drink combinations which turned the stomachs of many of my friends. I can’t recommend it enough.
The Championships were set in amongst the hustle and bustle of Hotelympia at Exel near Canary Warf in London. The SCAE had a fantastic little corner set up with staging and workshops surrounded by a multitude of café related stands, espresso machine suppliers and scantily clad cake stalls!
24 competitors were whittled down to 6 over 2 days. Unfortunately, this included myself which I was initially a bit peeved at. I think the emotion of the event got to me a bit and with hindsight my placing was correct if not a little high. The competition this year was apparently of a lot higher standard than last year and competitors were just not making the technical mistakes that they have done in previous competitions. Great news for the industry! We are defiantly making some inroads. This competition, thanks to ‘The Hoff’, SCAE and sponsors is defiantly getting some weight now.
A great big thank you to everyone who was involved!
One thing I would recommend which would (in my opinion) create more interest and give the general viewing public a little bit more insight into the passion and dedication of the barista is to mic up the competitors. Speaking from a spectator’s point of view the only interesting part of each performance was the pretty table set up and the fantastically knowledgeable compares who took us through what they managed to hear of each performance. A set of radio mics can’t be that hard to get a hold of, can they? Maybe a little bit of a better back stage area for competitors to store and prepare all their kit before, during and after their performances. I know there was a little bit of grumbling about that.
They are the only little niggles from the three days and I only mention them in the pursuit of pushing the Championships forward over the coming years. Just because people are volunteering to organise UKBC doesn’t mean that they should be immune to any criticism or not take any advice. Having said that, everyone who was involved did a fantastic job and it all went very well.
After the Semis we all had an opportunity to let ‘what hair we had left’ down at Square Mile Coffee Roasters in Bethnal Green. The home of Anette, Steven and James’s new venture played host to the UKBC Barista Party. A charity Latte art Smackdown inevitably raised it’s ugly head and I duly choked under the pressure of the ‘whooping’ crowd. See here (Thank you very much Tristan, you swine).
Thank you to everyone I finally met down there. It’s always a bit funny meeting people who you’ve only had ‘cyber’ relations with, the mutual recognition of Hugo and I on the first day was testament to this. Special thanks to Tristan, Will, Lance, Jonathan, Barry, Helen and Matt who have all become good mates over the last few months. Thanks for making this such a fantastic event for me. I have every intention of competing again next year and indeed for several years into the future as I really want to represent the country on the ‘World Stage’.
Before I finish I must thank my family and Pumphreys Coffee for their support over the past few months. Paula, Stuart, Malcolm, Georgie and Jill, thanks for the support and for putting up with my moods. Above all thanks to my beautiful girlfriend Lorna, without whom I’d have been lost at the competition.
To finish, a little bit of a tease:
I have heard rumblings of a barista ‘boot camp’ weekend which I cant see myself missing, more information will follow here soon I’m sure.
Thanks for reading
Yesterday I spent a fantastic day at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol at the Beyond the Bean Barista Jam, a precursor to the 2008 UK Barista Championships which will be starting very soon, see previous posts. A star-studded line up of current, ex competitors, judges and sponsors were all in attendance to offer words of advise and support to the 25 potential competitors in attendance.The day started quite a bit earlier for a few of us who had traveled quite a distance to attend, notably Graeme and Sé who had flown in from Northern Ireland, and after our well needed caffeine hit and a complementary Danish it we were straight in to the welcome session.
We were welcomed by Helen from Beyond the Bean and given our name tags and asked to assemble in the working are for a presentation by Sé Gorman and Ed Buston (2nd and 3rd last year). They took us through Ed’s 2007 presentation and critically analyzed it with Ed making deliberate mistakes to highlight the importance of each element in the judges scoring. Sé told us some of the disastrous things that have happened to competitors in previous years including his own of forgetting his jugs which broke the ice and made everyone feel more relaxed. After they had completed their presentation we split into 3 groups to discuss smaller parts of competing in greater detail, judging, espresso and cappuccino.
Judges with WBC judge Jeremy Regan
(Jeremy going through the Judges Score sheets)
This session was aimed at looking through the sensory and technical score sheets in detail from a judge’s perspective. I found it extremely valuable as I had taken everything at face value when I read the sheets a few months back, letter of the law I suppose. It was great to see the judges interpretation of them and of which parts effected each other and those that didn’t. Thoroughly worth while!
Espresso with Ed Buston
(A multitude of La Spaz portafilters and tampers)
This session was based on distribution and tamping with extreme highlighting on the consistency of it. Judges want to see consistent tamping and apparently they have little systems of symbols they use to represent your distribution and tamp style to see if it is accurately replicated through all the espresso shots in the performance. News to me but it makes sense I suppose. Ed also explained the theory of the distribution and tamp to us all skillfully avoiding prescribing a best technique. Again it was very helpful, cheers Ed.
Cappuccino with Sé Gorman
(Sé going though Cappuccino scoring with Will and the group)
I’ve wanted to meet Sé for a while now and I’m very glad I did. He has a wealth of knowledge and is a fantastically nice chap. He came up with probably the most valuable information of the day as he went through cappuccino production. Cappuccino holds the least amount of scoring on the sensory score cards but the routines you set up while doing cappuccino can make you or break you. Deciding which order you serve you drinks in is vital to you chances and Sé gave us some great pointers to set us on our way. He also highlighted how much better a café can get and how much staff, owners and employees will learn from competition. ‘The best learning experience of your life’, I think he said.
Lunch
(Lunch Time)
We then had a little chin wag over some cheesy baguettes and some cappuccinos. I managed to have a good chat to some roasters who were local to Bristol over lunch before we split into 2 groups for the afternoon.
‘Blending and Roasting’- Blind Cupping with Peter James and Jim Hoffmann
(Peter, Sé and James at the cupping table)
A fun little here with 8 coffees ordered on the makeshift cupping table by Peter James from James Gourmet. A mixed bag of British roasted coffees, some supermarket, some micro roasters, some pre-ground, a single origin and a single estate coffee. Luckily for me I spotted the single estate and the single origin which were pretty darn tasty and picked out the pre ground without much hassle.
Signature Drinks mess around
(Robin deep in thought)
I think due to the over running of the previous group and the mess they had made our signature drink session was a bit of a free for all. I tried some milky cumin mix with the Clifton espresso which wasn’t undrinkable but I wasn’t really getting into it as there were too many people for each machine and I ended up trading latte art secrets with Will and Robin who reassuringly both had latte art on as their phone backgrounds, I am not alone!!!!
Having never been to a Jam I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the day but I was pleasantly surprised and learnt a lot about competition.
Things that could have maybe made it an even more enjoyable day than it was:
More espresso machines or a better machine to Jammer ratio, perhaps a bit more time on signature drinks and maybe some stuff about flavour paring.
More time to chat to other guys maybe a drinks party afterwards to get to know each other. I know the B the B guys would like that!
Despite all the coffee fun yesterday the star of the show in everyone eyes was defiantly this device we found in the gents toilets:
Many thanks to:
Helen, Jonathan and Matt from Beyond The Bean
Steve Penk from La Spaziale/SCAE
Sé Gorman from Cafe Krem
WBC Judge Jeremy Regan
James Hoffmann from ‘Square Mile Coffee Roasters’
Ed Buston from Clifton Coffee
Peter James from James Gourmet
EDIT
Find Jim Hoffmann’s blog post on the event here
Beyond the bean review here
As my knee was injured this week I have managed to sneak away from Rugby for the weekend and see my girlfriend in London. A great opportunity to take in a few coffee sights and tastes I thought to myself. It is not often I manage to get down to the ‘Big Smoke’ so I thought I’d make as much of it as I could. A quick MSN message to Mr Hoffman and I had organized a meet up at Flat White on Sunday. The journey down on the train was fairly painless and I bought some internet credit on the train. Having managed to get most of Mr Hoffmann’s new blog posts read, of which there seemed to be about 10, I wrote one of my own and spent a bit of time on Facebook. I can honestly say one of the best journeys to London I’ve had. The train is where it’s at!After being greeted by the ‘Mrs’ at about 10pm there was just time to go to bed, ready for a relaxed stroll around London on Saturday.
Cardigans and ‘The Heff’
We got into town at about 12 and went for a little shop around Oxford Street, apparently when I’m not in my work clothes I can look like a bit of a bum. There are quite a large range of shops in ‘that, there, London’ and Lorna and I were soon rummaging through all sorts of clothes that she deemed me able to wear! As we walked a little further down past the novelty T-Shirt shops and Multinational Flagship stores I noticed what I thought was a person dressed in a polar bear outfit.
It turned out to be a Playboy bunny, not like any I’ve ever seen and I might add not one of my preferred playmates. From what I could see there was some kind of demonstration outside the newly opened Playboy Boutique. There were lots of fancy dressed people holding banners saying things like ‘EFF OFF HEFF’ and ‘Playboy exploits women’. Quite a commotion! One thing sticks in my head when it comes to demonstrations outside places like this, why are there never any attractive women holing banners saying ‘I’ve been exploited’? Whoops did I just say that out loud? I know what you are thinking: ‘It’s ‘Sid the Sexist’ writing this post’ but I’m not too bothered what you think to be honest……cue the abuse!
After we had had our fill of demonstrations and cardigan shopping, that’s right CARDIGAN SHOPPING, we made our way to ‘Flat White‘ in Soho! A great little café run by Kiwis on Berwick street.
After my first flat white, beautifully decorated with a rosetta, and Lorna’s Mocha, I ordered another shot. To my surprise Lorna asked if she could have a sip. Now this is where I nearly fall of the edge of the seat on which I’m perched onto a couple of ‘women of a certain age’ sitting nearby. Lorna has a never ever shown any interest in any type of coffee and only likes tea when its brewed with the tea bag in the room next door. So I said ok with a little snigger.
Flat white from what I’ve seen of their brewing updose quite a lot and pull really small shots, double ristrettos I think, correct me if I’m wrong. Anyway the point I’m getting at is it was a particularly strong shot, not one for the faint hearted or the ‘beginner’. As I’d predicted the result wasn’t pretty. Lorna’s face went from interested and exited to sucking a lemon! I haven’t laughed quite so much in a long time! The shot was good, a little acidic for my taste but coupled with their excellently textured milk it makes for a great flat white.
Great café. Great guys. All the best to them. There have been a few little changes there since the last time I was there with a kitchen being added and a new décor with the intention of serving breakfasts and light snacks. Still in pride of place are their two 2 group La Marzocco Linea machines and their bank of Mazzer grinders which were taking a hammering as usual! I’ve always had to wait for coffee when I’ve been there and always had a good chat to Cam while I’ve been waiting. Good café …. Go there if you’re in Soho. After another flat white and a packet of filter ground Finca La Fany from El Salvador I stumble down the road and back to the flat for a ‘veg’ in front of the Rugby highlights!
The Hoff and a Tour of Soho’s Coffee Shops!
After another lazy start we made our way to meet Jim at ‘Flat White‘ at 2pm. We arrived at exactly on 2 and spotted him tucking in to a Flat white by the bar chatting to Cam and the guys. As always he was sporting some ‘Coffee Stash’ this time a bag from the ‘Nordic Barista Cup‘. Quite funnily it was emblazoned (under the flap I might add) with Nespresso, the home coffee making system from Nescafe. They apparently paid a fortune to sponsor the event and make a world record attempt! From what I’ve read no one who was there from the industry took it at all seriously and just enjoyed the money the big boy put in. The attempt was on the open day so I’m sure they sold a few brewers from it. Not my cup of tea, excuse the pun!
After the usual pleasantries Jim started to inquire as to where I’d been, café wise, when I’d been down to London. I’m embarrassed to say that none of the café’s he mentioned I had been to apart from ‘Monmouth‘ and ‘Flat White‘ which we were in. Incidentally, ‘Flat White‘ use ‘Monmouth Espresso Blend‘. There were 2 café’s in the immediate vicinity which he mentioned so we decided to nip off for a little tour of Soho!
On the way to the second café of the day we passed ‘Algerian Coffee Stores Ltd‘ on which was shut but the window was rammed full of old brewers, obscure coffees, and strangely some honey from Berwick, which is quite near where I live in Northumberland. I would have quite liked to have had a good root around in there as I love the old stuff.
Just around the corner we reach Bar Italia. As you can see from the pictures here Bar Italia is the hubb of the Italian community in London’s Soho. Bar Italia has been in Soho from 1949 and they still have a 4 group 1950’s Gaggia lever machine which is in constant use! I’m not sure how much of the original machine is actually there though as it looks like most of it has been fixed and replaced over the years. The bar and the baristi don’t look as if they have changed for 20 years and they have a wonderful old cash register straight out of ‘Open All Hours’.
Jim had given me a little word of warning before I went in and having just read his review of it I can understand why! The café oozes Italian arrogance and you don’t feel very welcome there. Maybe it was because I wasn’t Italian, I don’t know, but I quote Jim here ‘I felt in the way’. He’d also said he would have liked to have had a camera to see my reaction to the espresso. I tried not to purse when tasting it. Lots and lots of robusta were my first thought which were backed up by the nasty aftertaste. In fairness to the barista it wasn’t badly pulled. I would hate to work with a blend with that much robusta in. I don’t think I’d feel comfortable serving it to anyone, but then again I don’t really think that customers feelings are even on the agenda in Bar Italia. We were robbed blind for our espresso at £2 each (It had to be my shout didn’t it) and went on our way. Still, as a café it’s one to experience and I certainly don’t regret visiting at all. I recommend a visit if only for a few minutes to experience the ‘experience’. Ooh forgot to mention, its open 24 hours a day!
Next Café and a little walk to Charing Cross Road for Café Vergnano 1882.
My first impression of the place was that it seemed to publicize itself very well with an A board out side saying ‘Best coffee in London 2005′. Their brand is everywhere in this café. If you didn’t know where you were before you ordered your drinks you soon would after seeing the 1882 logo on your cup, napkin, chocolate covered bean, your glass of water and even your drink if you’re a ‘mocha’ fan. When you get inside the first thing that grabs your attention is the beautiful Elektra Bell Epoque Q1-C espresso machine.
I don’t think I’d ever seen one in the flesh before, in fact I hadn’t, so you can imagine the warm fussy glow which developed. We took our espressos as quick as we could leaving Lorna to pay, she still manages to get herself in between me and a freshly poured espresso with an alarming success rate I’m sure she does it just to wind me up. Again a strong robusta twang, it actually slightly soothed the palette after the harshness of the Bar Italia espresso. Nothing to write home about though! I have to stress I am picking fault here and outside of my training room I’m normally lucky if I get a shot pulled half as good that. It’s the sad state of affairs that I’m trying to correct as much as I can at the moment.
So we find a seat and start to have a ‘right good chinwag’. Mr Hoffmann is always a pleasure to chat with, as I’m sure anyone else who has crossed paths with him will agree. He has a wealth of knowledge and is always very liberal with his advice and ideas. We had to keep checking Lorna’s pulse every now and again as we were obsessing out on industry stuff and what James is up to at the moment. I can’t imagine how boring it must have been for her. It must have been hell! Still, it was a great couple of hours for me anyway!
Thank again Jim. Keep in touch mate and I hope you’re not judging me in Scotland. Best of luck with all your ventures!
And now for a little fun:
Double entandre street name award goes to………….
These dates have just been announced on the UK barista championship Website
Regional Heats 2008
www.ukbaristachampionships.co.uk
The seven regional competitions will be:
London 7th November 2007 (Venue TBC)
South West 14th November 2007 (Venue TBC)
Midlands 21st November 2007 (Venue TBC)
North 9th January 2008 (Venue TBC)
Bristol 16th January 2008 (Venue TBC)
Scotland 23rd January 2008 (Venue TBC)
Northern Ireland 30th January 2008 (Venue TBC)
Finals will take place at the Hotelympia Show on the 19th – 21st February 2008.Quite an interesting twist this year in that for the first time the top 24 highest scoring baristas out of the heats will be invited to compete in two days of semi finals before the final six compete for the title on the final day.
This means that there will be a little less pressure on the regional heats giving competitors the chance to fine tune their performances before the finals. It should make for an exiting couple of days down at Hotelympia and should ensure there is a vast array of barista talent to pick things up from. I love the idea of so many baristi from the UK being in the same place at the same time, chatting and exchanging ideas.
I’m still a unsure as to which regional I should attend because I’m almost bang in the middle of the two nearest events, Scotland (rumored to be Glasgow) and North (possibly Sheffield). If I’m not bothered about being the ‘Scottish barista Champion’ I should pop up north as Mr Hoffmann has recommended that it may be a slightly easier heat. It may come down to the ‘Polar Challenge’ training dates and where they fall which will decide where I go in the end.
I’m starting to put together a training regime to try and mash all the shambles of drink ideas, coffee options and possible themes into something which the judges will like and hopefully score well. Also, I need to practice getting all the technical elements into a routine that I won’t forget and will hopefully become second nature to me. I have been seriously considering taking some training from ‘higher Sources’ but there may need to be some fairly large monetary decisions to be made there.
There is a silly latte art comp going on on James Hoffmann’s Blog which is well worth a look.
I’ve added my own to the fold
I nearly messed my pants when I did this!
I know there is know Latte art, but you just try and pour 16 shots and nearly a litre of milk into a grinder.
My hands were shaking quite a bit!
Cheers
Stu
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