A visit from Australia

If you are watching the blogs then you’ll know that David Makin is on a whirlwind tour of the world and he stopped by London for a couple of days to work on competitions.

For me this was both really interesting and challenging.  It wasn’t like training someone new to espresso or new to competition.  Quite the opposite – David was the Australian champion in 2006, and only missed out to Scott by a few points in 2007.  He has great technical skills, and is more than capable of brewing different styles of espresso.  I think that David’s open mind is great, and his trip is a chance for him to taste what espresso is around the world, and to see how he can take his forward.  I find this really refreshing because you often get the feeling that espresso down under is very self assured, and they have a very fixed idea about espresso and dosing.

We worked with a few different coffees, and I was a little frustrated that nothing tasted quite as good as it should have and I never quite worked out why (maybe water, maybe machine).  That isn’t to say that David didn’t pull plenty of tasty shots.

David is still in Milan and then goes to Germany before flying home, and has managed to cram in San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Chicago, Copenhagen and London into a hectic couple of weeks!  I think he’ll do very well in Australia this year and I will be watching with interest.  I had a lot of fun hanging out with him, and may even forgive him for the toothpick remark….

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