To qualify as a true coffee achiever these days, you can’t just drink coffee all day at work. No. The coffee has to be your work.
You’ve got to care about the coffee beans, as if they had actual feelings; understand the delicate chemistry of exotic brews; and be able to craft a perfectly balanced cup with professionalism and flair. And it doesn’t hurt to have a goatee and a slightly obsessive-compulsive personality, especially if you want to make it to the United States Barista Championship, coming this May in Long Beach, Calif.
That was the goal of the 24 members of the local coffee-pouring community who converged recently at Navy Pier to compete in the preliminary Great Lakes regional competition, now in its third year.
The subculture of java-obsessed hipsters in the audience may have looked casual, dressed in knit caps, interesting eyeglasses, long striped scarves and Converse sneakers (plus one very nice biceps tattoo of a steaming cup of the stuff), but this was no laid-back coffee klatsch.
For one, there was enough caffeine in the air to wake the dead by the time the contest had been whittled down to six finalists. And quite a few members of the audience were armed with notebooks and cameras to record the moves of their favorite barista, which is a word for that person who makes the fancy drink that you didn’t need 10 years ago and now must have at least three times a day.
Emcee Nick Cho didn’t have to bother the crowd with an extensive explanation of the rules during his lounge-act chatter. Everybody already seemed to know that each of the six finalists had 45 minutes (15 each for preparation, competition/performance and cleanup) to prepare one espresso drink, one cappuccino and one espresso-based “signature beverage.”
They would compete in shifts at three individual stations, each outfitted with a foot-tall digital stopwatch; a workspace with one gorgeous triple-barreled La Marzocco GB-5 espresso maker with two milk-steaming schnozzles, a grinder, a blender and a “knock box” (for banging the “puck” out of the “basket”). Then four “sensory judges” and one head judge would taste the beverages, while remaining as stony-faced as Mt. Rushmore.
Which might seem rude to the uninitiated: What, you don’t smile when someone takes the time to fix you a nice cup of coffee? But that sort of behavior is dictated by the extensive judging rules: no facial expressions or movement during the taste evaluation. And because coffee is a commodity, there’s also a team of more interactive “technical” judges, who swoop in with clipboards as each task is completed, to evaluate such things as the coffee spillage and milk waste, as well as cleanliness, grinder usage and milk-frothing technique.
Oddly compelling
Without the rule book on hand (it’s available on the Specialty Coffee Association of America site, www.scaa.org),the effect of watching the 2007 finals, for the layman who had absolutely no idea what was going on, was a bit like watching one of those “CSI” shows on television. Which is to say, oddly compelling.
Like those crime-lab scenes, coffeemaking tends to be a generally unthrilling task. But not here. First there was mood-enhancing background music, chosen by each contestant (a Brazilian beat for one, plinky guitar music appropriate for carrying sacks of beans for another). You had your race against time (“Finished, with one second remaining!” Cho shouted, when one finalist completed his drinks, to great applause).
Your science-class sensibility (Amber Sather melted chocolate and “charged” the milk component of her signature drink, which incorporated chestnut, cinnamon and cherries, while finalist Chris Kornman used a mortar and pestle to crush pomegranate seeds for his signature, which also used blackstrap molasses, “fusing old and new traditions”).
Hints of exoticism (Steve Fritzen made a drink with lime, lemongrass and a single origin espresso, with blueberry and pineapple notes, “grown at 1,500 meters , by a farmer with six children And even an element of danger (“They told me not to use hot liquids in here,” said finalist Matt Riddle, the defending champion, as he filled a whipped cream charger. “But I’m going to do it anyway.”)
So it hardly seemed 2 1/2 hours had passed by the time the judges disappeared behind the curtain to calibrate their scores.
Waiting for them to return, it was hard not to notice that nobody was relaxing with a cup of coffee.
“I tried to practice for five hours a day, starting a month or so beforehand” said Chris Kornman, who looked happy if slightly strung out after the competition, which was his first, and during which he used his own personal espresso blend of four coffees, two each from Brazil and Ethiopia Yirgacheffe.
“I feel good,” he said. “I felt like maybe my espresso might have been a little short … I felt a little better about the espresso shots yesterday. The drip was a little slower, which means I was either packing it a little too hard or putting too much coffee in the puck. But, um, we’ll see.”
The kind of practice required to reach the regional finals has obvious perils. “I did taste a lot,” said Kornman. “But part of being a responsible coffee drinker and server is knowing when to say when. You learn to start spitting out. . . . I did sleep. I managed to keep myself from overcaffeination for the most part.”
When the judges announced their decision, the returning champ, Matthew Riddle, had triumphed again, cementing a barista-culture reputation as a coffee making icon.
`Amazing privilege’
When Riddle, the Web developer for Intelligentsia Coffee, stepped up to receive his $300 prize and portafilter trophy, to wild applause, Cho quizzed him a bit on what it was like scoring the highest total points ever last year as winner of the national contest, then coming in third in the world competition, in Berne, Switzerland, which no other American has done.
“I’m just like anybody else,” he replied, dressed in an argyle sweater. “Obviously it was an amazing privilege, but when I got there I realized that everyone there was just like me. Everyone is a guy who just loves coffee, and loves doing what they do.”
But the truth is, anybody would have been dazzled by his economy of motion, his articulateness, his poise and his supremely unshaky hands – not to mention his crisp shirt and his perfect soul patch – as he prepared his three drinks (signature beverage: a cold espresso cocktail crafted from a Bolivia and two Brazils,” “non-homogenized organic milk whose sweetness complements my espresso but doesn’t overpower it,” and a crystallized ginger infusion). In fact, his skills made the occasional nervousness, the spillage, the momentary brain freeze of some of his competitors more glaring than they might have been in a regular coffeehouse situation
“How do you feel [about this win]’.” asked Cho, holding the microphone in front of Riddle’s face.
“Nervous,” Riddle said. But on the outside he was the picture of calm.
How to evaluate a barista
What are the judges looking for? According to Section 10.0, in the official Specialty Coffee Association of America rule book, it is:
– One who has a mastery of technical skills, craftsmanship, and who is passionate about the profession.
– High quality beverages served.
– One who has a broad understanding of coffee knowledge.
– One who may serve as a role model and a source of inspiration for others.
That’s the Boy Scout version. According to Tracy G. Allen, rules and regulations chair of the World Barista Championship Committee, they’re also looking for someone who can make a killer cappuccino and doesn’t waste a lot of product while doing it. “With the espresso shots,” he said recently by phone, “[sensory judges] want them to be kind of a caramel color with a mahogany stripe. … And you judge it on taste and tactile balance.” Cappuccinos, he said, “are the make or break for these guys, because the foam is so important — we judge on the quality of the foam — and the taste. You want it to taste like coffee and be accented by the sweetness of the milk, but you don’t want it to taste like milk. We’re in the coffee business, not the milk business.”
And the business of coffee is where the technical judges come in: “Their job is to watch … for wasted movement and wasted product. Milk is $3 a gallon, and espresso is about $7.50 a pound. There’s a flair to this and a show to this, but it’s also a huge tool for companies.”
— Emily Nunn
———-
ernunn@tribune.com
