Poll #1: Fav Tag

Barista thoughts

One of the things I love most is dialing in coffee. Not only does it make me feel important, I also get the opportunity to make things as difficult as possible for my coworkers.

How?

I employ a method where I use as many tools and variables as I can.

First I make sure that I get as many groupheads functioning at different temperatures as possible. Next I whip out the scale and dose a weight of coffee that is always a prime number and at a level that will make the work bench as messy as possible. Secondly I will make the pre-infusion time that is also a prime number so that it is difficult to keep track of when we really get slammed on bar. Now with the introduction of pressure profiling, things get more fun. Not only do we have to keep track of pre-infusion time, we also need to keep track of full pressure brewing and post-infuse. (#prime numbers, muahaha).

What do I accomplish?

Well over my many years of coffee experience (probably up there with Howell and sweetmarias …er…..) I have found that cloak and daggers is the trick to coffee. The more confused I make people, the more amazing and buddah-like I seem. So in order to continue to feel important, I find it essential to confuse not only customers but also my coworkers….no…wait, ESPECIALLY my coworkers.

Now dosing like 13g of coffee, preinfusing for another 17 seconds, full pressure pulling for 19 seconds and postinfusing for 23 seconds is a lot too keep track of…so I thought it’d be less confusing to introduce some new terms that are easier to “get a hold of”.

Video

CNBC 2010

First off, mad congrats to all the competitors but especially the PRBC representatives. I sense a shift in the dominance of Canadian coffee eastward where it is more flat and oily.

I was proud to find out that Jeremy and Ben made it to the finals as they are two top notch guys. They both supported me immensely (as did Phil & Seb, obviously) last year when I competed and I could not be happier for them. I had no idea about competitions or anything like that. I believe going through the process had pointed me in the right coffee direction and only then did I begin to understand coffee. A post documenting the first day of competition can be found here. Also a shout out to Chris (I have little to say because I had zero involvement with his presentation).

Ben got second place. I am ecstatic. He’s a passionate person and the embodiment of a what a REAL barista should be. He is passionate about his craft, passionate about his co-workers and passionate about the customers. I am proud to be trained by him as he brought me from Pallet town to where I am now. Salut!

Jeremy got fourth place and as a first-time competitor he truly looked like a polished veteran. Jeremy has a connection with flavours that is unparalleled and his ability to rope people into the excitement with him really showed on the stage.

I was not able to be there and therefore have no pictures to [legally] share.

Kudos friends, you done good!