2009 Australian Barista, Latte Art and Cup-Tasting championships.

[au_d2]

Re: 2009 Australian Barista, Latte Art and Cup-Tasting championships.

Coffee In Good Spirits

I didnt really watch too much of this, but was amused to find out that Kirby had won.Kirby was a late substitution for another competitor and put her routine together in the 45 minutes before the competition, with the help of CS member Mark (hope I got the name right)!

You certainly did Luca.

What an amazing story this is ... If it wasnt for this forum .. Kirby might not have been going to Germany to represent Australia in the 5th annual Coffee in Good Spirits competition (its been going on for 4 years already)

It was back in November, 2008 here on Coffee Snobs that I discovered the world of Specialty Coffee, and in particular - Single Origins.  Up until this point, I was NOT a coffee drinker.  I had other passions, like wine, chocolate, cheese, spices etc.  Coffee to me was all the same ..  On the Gold Coast, the coffee scene here is way behind Melb and Syd, so the opportunity to discover GOOD Coffee was Low.  I just never got into it.

Anyway, back in November - I was at my friends warehouse (hes in IT/ Plastic Card Printing) and the Local Roaster walked in to get his computer fixed.  We started chatting about Coffee and was surprised to find out he roasts just across the road .. so checked it out.  Saw a whole variety of specialty green beans get blended and roasted -Chinook Air Roaster. ... Got hooked.  The Science behind roasting and blending really appealed to me.  And the possibilities to discover different tastes, different origins !!!

I found this website shortly after ... And was surprised finding more like minded individuals.  Wow ... .... there really are people who CARE a whole lot about what coffee they drink .. AND ... how they can produce the best possible CUP.

Found out that the Nationals were going to be held on the Gold Coast, hey I live here  What a perfect opportunity for me to learn more about the industry.   I responded to Dave Makins call for volunteers posted on that Geeky site (hello Luca  8-) )

I must say that I have never been more surprised on how friendly and helpful everyone is in this "Specialty" Coffee Industry... it was like I had know you all for such a very long time.  If you continue like this, the specialty coffee industry shall continue to grow and thrive.

Back to Kirbys story.

Kirby Berlin was originally competing in the Latte Art competition.  She missed out on a spot in the finals on a countback by 23pts (?), but she really missed out by just 1 point .. She and Habib Maarbani both scored an 8-8-8.  One of Kirbys 8s was 1 point off being a 9.  Habib though deservingly went through.   Kirby had packed her gear, and came along on Sunday to enjoy the Finals.

Nim Namasivayam had made two finals on Sunday: the Coffee in Good Spirits and the Cup-Tasting.  He had a tough decision to make, and decided to concentrate his efforts on the Cup-tasting. He informed the judges that he would like to pull out of the Coffee in Good Spirits comp.  After frantic discussions between the judges, the ruling was that if there werent at least 5 competitors, then there would not be a first place prize given - ie .. no one would win the trip to Germany to represent Australia.

Kirby was approached .. there was less than 45mins before the comp.  I happened to be in the backroom.  I also happened to have a couple of things in my backpack.  I asked Kirby if she wanted some secret ingredients for her signature dish  (its going to remain secret until the Worlds)

A case of right place/ right time.

Unfortunately, something broke in the stream for a while after that and we didnt get the rest of the Good Spirits comp.  

Acutally - Its excellent that the cameras failed to record her performance: Dont want the competition to find out our routine .. gives us more time to refine the routine before the Worlds.  Last years winner was very very classy ..
Check out the European competition videos on SCAEs website.
http://www.scae.com/
Heres the winners performance : Tasos Delichristos
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=p2y6bf0UDjw

Scottys performance though .. that was awesome.. very funny .. love the flying spoon at the judges trick.

Oooh, oooh, oooh ... nearly forgot: I heard that a few competitors, including one winner, used Andys coffee on the weekend, but hes being awfully quiet about who.  Does anyone think that we can drag it out of him?

Cheers,

Luca

Andy is very proud that his beans were the awesome Canvas used to create beautiful Art, by Erin Samson.

Its actually two winners for Andy and the CS community.. Erin and Kirby >> congrats to both of you .. do Australia proud.

Thanks Andy .. It was a pleasure to meet you.

Sincerely yours
Mark Leo
(ps .. Hello too to Sam Liao, Congrats to you Coffee-Kid, youre going to be a power house next time around ! ... Sam and I actually have the same surname.  When I was born here in 1974, the doctors couldnt spell Liao ... Leo it was! )

........

ALSO ... . I was kindly given some competition beans from Tim Adams (1st), Con Haralambopoulos (3rd) and Jesse Hyde (5th).  If youre on the Gold Coast and want to try some, send me a PM.  I also have the recipe for them and would love to share them with CS, but will have to first get permission.

rant over  ;D for now

[elbeano]

Re: 2009 Australian Barista, Latte Art and Cup-Tasting championships.

An absolutely legendary performance from Scotty I reckon.

[jamver0]

Re: 2009 Australian Barista, Latte Art and Cup-Tasting championships.

Its available on the uStream Gun Barista videos at the URL above. Youll have to hunt around.

Unfortunately, something broke in the stream for a while after that and we didnt get the rest of the Good Spirits comp.

[jimmyb]

Re: 2009 Australian Barista, Latte Art and Cup-Tasting championships.

Anyone got Scotties good spirits routine on vid? Its worth watching.

[luca]

Re: 2009 Australian Barista, Latte Art and Cup-Tasting championships.

Oooh, oooh, oooh ... nearly forgot: I heard that a few competitors, including one winner, used Andys coffee on the weekend, but hes being awfully quiet about who.  Does anyone think that we can drag it out of him?

Cheers,

Luca

[Dimal]

Re: 2009 Australian Barista, Latte Art and Cup-Tasting championships.

An excellent review Luca.... [smiley=tekst-toppie.gif]

Wish I could have been there to soak up some of the atmosphere you describe. Congrats on being within a whisker of top taster too mate. Very, very well done indeed.

Congratulations too, to all the winners and placegetters and everyone who competed in this great competition. As someone else mentioned above, it seems that great coffee was the overall winner through the weekend. Excellent stuff everybody.... 8-)

Mal.

[luca]

Re: 2009 Australian Barista, Latte Art and Cup-Tasting championships.

Hi All,

Many thanks for the kind words.  I will try and get up a fuller blog post in the next few days.  I didnt really take many photos, given that Syd, Mike, Nim, Simon and others all had digital SLRs there, so mainly text from me, Im afraid.  Syd will be uploading competition photos here: http://syd-low.com/09aascachamp  Contact Syd if you would like to reproduce the photos.

Barista Competition

Three gruelling days and a lot of wonderful performances.  I was privileged to sensory judge four competitors and walk away having enjoyed some very yummy espresso, indeed.  I also got to be a timekeeper and see a number of performances close up, including that of the champ, Tim Adams.  Given that overseas competitors may be looking to this thread, Ill make only general observations to preserve the competitive advantage of our guys overseas!  There were a number of interesting labour, time and mess saving devices that were employed by most competitors and most competitors also realised that the competition can be won and lost on setup time.  The transition to a more taste-focussed scoring system didnt really result in more informal and sloppy presentations, but it certainly did make it harder to work out how well people had done if you were anyone other than a sensory judge.  I suppose that the most valuable information as a spectator came from watching the pours very closely; generally speaking, the kinds of pours that the simonellis favour seemed to do well and the kinds that the simonelli punishes were presumably also punished on the sensory score sheets.  The new format requires the competitors to prove themselves in an additional semi-final and most of the competitors whose performances I watched - fewer than I would have liked - delivered strong, polished performances on both days.  For this reason, I suspect that some competitors may have found that their coffee peaked on one day and died the next.  

Tim delivered an amazing performance on the day and before the results were announced, the phrase dark horse followed his names in many of the whaddayareckon conversations that I had.  As Wolffy said, Tim really put the work in himself to win this competition.  I hope very much that all Australian competitors will volunteer to lend a hand for his WBC training.

Latte Art

I think that the past three Australian world championship victories have really increased the seriousness with which people take this competition.  Consequently, the audience seemed to be pretty tense and on the edge of their seats for both the opens and the finals.  I had to laugh when Will from Maling Room beat both Habib and Kirby to win the opens by pouring a pacman eating a ghost, given that I got laughed off the machine with my attempt at the same thing a few months ago at the caffenatics competition ... might have been something to do with my crappy latte art skills.  Nonetheless, given that I cant find the ustream vids of the latte art comp, Ill post up a crappy attempt here:



Kirby and Habib were both on 23 points in the open, so there was a countback.  This only makes sense if you understand how the latte art comp works; you are scored for various categories, then the scores from those categories are matched up to a band.  The points listed in that band are added together to give you the final score.  So the countback procedure for breaking ties is the addition of the raw scores, rather than the scores in each band.  Confusing?  Read the score sheets!

Anyhoo, the finals were a clash of the titans, with Erin and Habib on the same number of points and spectators biting their nails as the countback procedure was used.  Erin was eventually declared the champ by 8 points after countback to be immediately congratulated by Habib.  Given the amount of training that Erin has put into the various comps over the years, I think that we have a great chance at this years WLAC.

Coffee In Good Spirits

I didnt really watch too much of this, but was amused to find out that Kirby had won.  Kirby was a late substitution for another competitor and put her routine together in the 45 minutes before the competition, with the help of CS member Mark (hope I got the name right)!

Cup Tasting (Cupping)

OK, so if you have never seen a cupping competition before, you should know that it is an awesome competition to watch.  This is what it looks like from the audiences perspective:



24 cups of filter brewed coffee are placed on the table.  These are divided into 8 groups comprising two cups of one coffee and one cup of another.  The competitors task is to taste through all of them and pick the odd one out.  The cups are then emptied and the bottoms of the cups selected are revealed to the audience to see if they have been marked as the odd ones out.  Though it takes a few hours of coffee grinding and brewing and many volunteers to set up the competition, it is done and dusted in a matter of minutes.  Dave Makin had cleverly worked out the dimensions of the stage so that a whopping six people could compete at a time.  The videos should be pretty good; I loved the soundtrack for the first open heat!

Anyhoo, I originally started competing in these comps because the game plan was always to keep in touch with the coffee industry by setting up a coffee review (http://coffeereviewaustralia.com/) and I wanted to see if I could have some objective measure of credibility.  I havent yet managed to win one yet, but I have had an irritating five podium finishes.  Nim and I did a bit of training for the event and it was very satisfying to finish second to him in the opens.  As for the finals; fantastic performance by Ben nailing 8/8 within cooee of Caspers time last year!  Ben finished a few seconds faster than me, so the competition was clearly over before my last cup was revealed.  Nonetheless, Im glad that Ben and I were able to keep the revealing of the cups interesting until the end!



Nim and I owe major props to CS, Andy and Brother Baba Budan for giving us coffee to practice with.

The Rest ...

Other than the competition, the whole weekend was absolutely frenetic.  Nim and I thought that we could save some cash by cooking at the apartment that we booked -- wrong; we didnt even have time to buy groceries!  

The guys from BeanScene seemed to really get behind the event; they printed a bunch of rather nifty stickers and programs for AASCA and I think that they even delayed printing the bulk of the magazines to do so.  It was a shame that Steve was sick, but Brad and John seemed to really get into the whole event.  The magazine looked fantastic, but I havent been able to read it yet.  

The coffee companies exhibiting at the show put all other food shows that I have been to to shame; it was utterly ludicrous to be able to get excellent coffee at a trade show ... that doesnt even happen at so-called coffee festivals!  I walked over to Campos and got a shot from John Ronchi, JP at Veneziano and Anne Cooper at Di Bella ... craaazy stuff.

Other than that, it was also great to have an opportunity to catch up with various coffee industry people and meet other.

Cheers,

Luca

[thecaffiend]

Re: 2009 Australian Barista, Latte Art and Cup-Tasting championships.

Hey guys
who knows how I can get in touch with tim, WELL DONE to him!!!!
Wanna run a feture story on him in the next edition of BeanScene
Whoever can help, please contact me on 0432210963 or email @:
editor@beanscenemagazine.com.au

Thanks

steve AGI

[Presso]

Re: 2009 Australian Barista, Latte Art and Cup-Tasting championships.

All the winners are here

http://www.aasca.org.au/

[Presso]

Re: 2009 Australian Barista, Latte Art and Cup-Tasting championships.

Well Done Tim,

He works for one of the coffee distributors up here

NON-sponsor link removed by Mods in accordance with Site Sales and Posting Policy.

Nice work!

[Dimal]

Re: 2009 Australian Barista, Latte Art and Cup-Tasting championships.

Have you heard his accent?  

Ahhh.... Nope :-?

[jamver0]

Re: 2009 Australian Barista, Latte Art and Cup-Tasting championships.

Have you heard his accent?

[Dimal]

Re: 2009 Australian Barista, Latte Art and Cup-Tasting championships.

Has anyone confirmed that he wasnt born in NSW or VIC?

Trying for some reflected bling there TG.... ;D

[Thundergod]

Re: 2009 Australian Barista, Latte Art and Cup-Tasting championships.

t is an absolute thrill to have Tim Adams as the 2009 Australian Barista of the Year and our inaugural Queenslander to take the AASCA Prize.

Has anyone confirmed that he wasnt born in NSW or VIC?

Congratulations to Tim.
Next stop...the World!

[first_crack]

Re: 2009 Australian Barista, Latte Art and Cup-Tasting championships.

It is an absolute thrill to have Tim Adams as the 2009 Australian Barista of the Year and our inaugural Queenslander to take the AASCA Prize.

I think we should applaud Tims achievement as his journey has been without the historical support of a coffee company in behind him! HE has done this on his own.....He has taken it on himself to to travel to Melbourne to compete in the 2008 ABC Opens for his first ever comp.

He then competes for the 2nd time in December to win the AASCA QLD 2009 Barista Comp. Then he is like the monkey that steels the peach at this weekends championships.

This is why I am a big advocate for the new format as it more rigorous and requires the barista to be more consitent and to lift another gear at each finals stage, of which Tim has executed.

Big props to all the other competitors, it was a tough 3 days.

Peter Wolff