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I’d like to keep everyone abreast of whats going on up here in the ‘toon’ and introduce this new event which Alex Forsyth and I are organising! Last Wednesday of the month each month with any luck!
First of hopefully monthly Latte Art Throwdowns in the mighty town of Newcastle upon Tyne. Bring your jug, cup and etching tools and have a crack at Newcastle’s best baristi.
We’ll have a load of single origin coffees to try through the pour over and hopefully some beers too.
Are you interested in seeing what this Latte art thing is all about? Come along and watch!
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=239307260213
Please feel free to invite people who you think might be interested!
This is designed to be a fun event for watchers and partisipants alike. The aim is to increase awarness of quality service skills and to learn new skills too.
Don’t worry if you can’t pour anything, by the end of the night you should be able to or at least know how it works.
We’re not afilliated to any supplier or cafe and we would like to take this to different locations each month. It’s just about creating a communty of quality focused coffee nuts.
Plans are on the way to have a plaque that we can compete for each month, have an open air event in the town centre, take the throwdown to Pumphreys and loads more!
If you are interested in hosting an event in the future please give us a shout!
First event!
Type: Music/arts – Jam Session
Price: Free admission.
Date: Wednesday, 26 August 2009
Time: 18:30 – 21:30
Central Bean Cafe,
32 Gallowgate Rd,
Newcastle upon Tyne,
United Kingdom.
http://tinyurl.com/nlxggh
Alex’s Contact info
Email: talkingschmak@gmail.com
Stu’s Contact info
Email: mentness@hotmail.com
Hi guys!
As you’ve seen in previous posts, I like a good Etch from time to time.
As I went to art college (yes i did!) this side of coffee really appeals to me. A big blank canvas that you can make into what you want and then drink all of its creamy goodness afterwards. Perfect.
Here’s the challenge:
Submit your etches/links to etches in the comments and we’ll all have a judge when the the deadline comes
To get you in the mood or thinking of all the etches you can do here is a little tester I did in my coffee break today. If it isn’t obvious it’s Stewie Griffin from Family Guy.
Deadline 1st of December! – should give us enough time to get some good etches in!
I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank my ever dutiful girlfriend Lorna. She puts up with my coffee obsessed rambling and is even going to come with me to Trieste (I hope she knows what she’s in for).
Lorna works at ‘Based Upon’ in London and is a very skilled sculptor. She made me this fantastic tamper for my birthday which is surely worth a fortune. I’ve been so scared to even touch it, until today, keeping it in its little box out of harms way. It’s was made by taking a cast of one of my other tampers and making a mould. Lorna then sprayed individual beans with gold and silver coloured alloys (based upon speciality) polished them all by hand before setting then in the mould with clear and dark resins. A final polish and some a good gluing to the base and you get one very happy barista.
Thank you so much
Right then……..
I’ve been have a little fun with etching over the past few hours.
They all look a bit dead but have a look and see…..
Puppy
Moose Hippo Brown Bear Paula and the Moose
Moose
Can you guys do better? I should think so.
Post some links to your photos in the comments
I’ve enjoyed myself greatly this week as I was joined by my little sister Georgina in the showroom at Pumphrey’s. (I say little but she’s 17 now and by the time I get this blog post up she’ll probably be able to drive me around after passing her driving test. Ohh, the luxury of trips back and fourth to the pub)
I’ve been slowly drip feeding Georgie with coffee information over the past few years hoping to increase her knowledge but not scare her away from the coffee industry. I think it’s worked. She seems to have discovered the infectious world of coffee now and there is no stopping her. The key was latte Art.
Georgie is an artist and has always been fascinated by the pretty patterns that I pour on the bar and in practice for competition. She loved them so much that it got to a point that she asked me to teach her.
We reached a pivotal point in her learning process yesterday when she nailed 5 rosettas on the trott and felt confident enough to challenge me to a mini ‘Throwdown’.
Post your comments on who you think wins bellow!
The Photos From Cafe Culture that John Sherwood took are now up to look at
http://www.scae.com/gallery/list/30/caffe-culture-london-olympia-2008-photos-by-john-sherwood/
The latte etch is mine…. not Phil’s!
Hello again and Sorry Guys!
As you may or may not have seen, my absence on the net has been somewhat apparent. In the last three months I haven’t Blogged, TMC’d, Barista Exchanged, Flickr’d or Facebooked to any great extent. Have I fallen of the earth? Well, you’d be excused for thinking that but I am in fact alive and well if not a little tired and stressed. The climax of the Rugby season, the tax year end, a UKBC hangover and the acquisition of an XBox 360 all contributed to the to my lack of bloggage. Also, thinking back, I didn’t actually have anything of interest to blog about, probably a good job I didn’t.
I blog today baring news of a mini success in the UK Latte Art Championship. Cafe Culture 08 was on last week at Olympia in London, an excuse for a holiday down to see my ever patient girlfriend and a chance to compete in some competition, glutton for punishment I Know. More than anything it was a chance to meet up with all the guys I’d had the pleasure of spending the few months before UKBC stressing with. I wasn’t intending to attend but I had a last minute e-mail badgering me from Paul ‘Squeaky’ Meikle-Janney.
It was nice to see Hugo (current UKBC Champ) on the La Spazialestand pumping out espresso to the masses for the two days. I also finally met up with the ‘Dirty Makem’ Steve from Hasbean who I’m amazed I hadn’t met sooner than now. I do love these sorts of event, there is defiantly a bit of a barista scene developing and I had a lot of support from like minded coffee geeks and barista buddies in the comps.
Back to my mini success, which to be honest I’m a little embarrassed about. The competition in the preparation room was of a great standard and there were some fantastic rosetti being poured, myself included, this didn’t translate to the stage very well at all and I think I only saw 5 rosetti poured, 4 of which were Phil from Origin’s who won the Comp. This was the first competition of this type that I’d entered and I think there was very little competitive experience on show. I buckled under the eyes of about 70 of my peers and almost threw my cappuccinos away after my first pour, decided against it as time is so tight and bashed out some solid hearts on my machiattos. I had I hurriedly prepared a triple heart cyclical etch in the prep room which seemed to go down well with the crowd. I sculked off the stage my head down, so disappointed. Why can I pour so well on my bar but then as soon as I’m on a stage collapse so dramatically. Luckily everone else had done the same if not worse and I ended up coming second equal with a girl called Estelle, who was really nice.
The second day saw me take on some cuppersin the Cupping Championship. I love this event. Its like fast drinking penalty shootout. I was gutted when I was drawn against the World Barista Champion James ‘The Hoff’ Hoffmann who was nipping in and out of seminars to compete. I lost 5-4 tasting some fantastic coffees from Steve at Hasbean. James went on to beat Se Gorman of Cafe Krem and Guy from Green Mountain coffee in the final and will represent the UK in Copenhagen.
This week I will be mostly preparing training material, and trying to make the most of my competition results this year with promo material for Pumphreys.
Great to see you again Tristan, Hugo, James, Steve, Will, John, Helen, Matt, Lance, Se and Norton.
Ohh it was nice to get that out, the blogging bug is back!!!!!
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
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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