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East Coast Roadtrip – Ashville and Charlotte

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Ashville seems to be something of an odd place considering its location. I wasn’t aware of its reputation as being one of the more relaxed, liberal (though I hate the word) cities in the South, but when you get there it does have a very different feel. I also appreciated the rocking chairs in the Counter Culture training centre there!

Happily rocking away

The presentation was in the evening, so we wandered around town a little with Mary who runs the training centre there. I bought a book or two (on Chris Deferio’s recommendation – Thanks Chris!) and we drank too much chocolate ganache of various flavours. The event that evening was very different to the one in Durham, but not in a bad way. The focus was a bit more onto espresso techniques and it was mostly baristas from nearby shops and one lovely chap who was a pro cyclist and also a bit of a coffee nut who trains in the mountains when Canada is too cold. Latte art seemed pretty popular…

Kneeling and pouring latte art

After the event a few of us hung out for drinks and we got chatting to a couple of guys from the Dripolator, a shop in town. We vowed to make it there for breakfast before leaving town, and we I ate my first vegetarian meal of the trip – I’d never had tempe before so I was curious!

The shop was cool, a big space but its layout meant it felt quite intimate wherever you were in the room. Coffee was drunk, and thanks again to Jay the owner for his hospitality and also for the awesome Dripolator mug.

Me, Jay and Anette

After Cindy had purchased a suspicious green smoothie we hit the road heading back across to Charlotte for the event that evening.

Brent and Banks have a great space to work from, and the event that night was pretty full. We tried to sneak in a quick dinner at Dish before hand, but it was quickly becoming clear that sneaking in a meal in the South is pretty hopeful.

A good mix attended the talk, though a fair few from a rival local roastery which was interesting. I always like the bit afterwards where you get to chat people, hang out and it becomes a bit less formal. One couple had driven up from Greenville for the event, which was cool – especially as they were huge hardcore coffee people and a few other local enthusiasts had turned up as well.

Talking to the audience in Charlotte

The hotel we stayed at was lovely – the Blake, and it cemented itself as memorable by having a member of staff who was convinced Anette was someone famous “under cover”.

After a fine breakfast, and some NASCAR discussion we hit the road towards Atlanta, with a pitstop ahead at the home of the chemically imbalanced – Greenville.

Tags: anette, Barista, counter culture, Espresso, Latte Art, roadtrip, techniques, training
Posted in News, travel | 1 Comment »

East Coast Roadtrip – Counter Culture Roastery, NC

Monday, March 17th, 2008

I confess I knew more about Counter Culture’s coffee than I did about the company itself. I was excited to visit their roastery and also we were honoured to stay in the House of Chang.

I also confess that the change in the clocks caught me off guard and it took me a little while to realise that all the people rapidly filling the Counter Culture training room were not overly punctual!

I wasn’t sure how many to expect for the event, and it turns out the NPR interview had been heard by more people than I’d expected. The idea of the presentation was to do a little introductory talk about my history in coffee and then to move into some single estate espresso, first cupping the coffees then pulling them as shots. What we didn’t bank on (or I didn’t anyway) was that around 75 people showed up to listen and that is a lot of people to have cup at once, especially as the majority hadn’t ever cupped before.

Peter Giuliano did an amazing job of organising and guiding them through it and then Anette and I pulled shots of the Kenya Gaturiri and Biloya on the FB80 whilst SERBC champ Lem Butler pulled shots of the Finca Mauritania PN on the their Linea. The response was amazing from those that were already well into coffee and those that were merely interested. I think we often underestimate the general public’s capacity for coffee and taste exploration, and it was a crowd I really enjoyed talking to. I won’t pretend that Dan Kehn of home-barista didn’t make me nervous by filming the whole thing, and in truth I’ve yet to bring myself to watch all the video he posted.

Talking to the Counter Culture training room, full of people

Standing room only, which was nice

It was the kind of audience you really want to talk to. A mixture of people, backgrounds and interests that were all motivated by wanting to drink better (in every sense) cups of coffee. I really enjoyed the event, and it was kind of odd signing lots of stuff afterwards. (I never know what to write! Sorry if I scrawled anything stupid on a reader’s card.)

The roastery itself was very cool, and I am grateful to Counter Culture for them being so transparent about their operation. I was incredibly jealous of their setup – with the one bag (60kg) Roure and the one bag Renegade as main productions roasters and then 10 kilos Samiac (I think I spelled that correctly) for smaller batches of really special stuff. Tim Hill did a great job roasting up the coffees I sort of asked for (my e-mail about the single origins was more philosophical than direct…) and I wish I could have chatted to him for longer.

After we’d finished cleaning up Peter Giuliano appeared with some dried coffee cherries (minus the beans) and proceeded to make a variation on qishr, which is a tea made from the dried husks. I think it was traditionally sweetened but just steeping the cherries in hot water was surprisingly sweet and the general agreement was that it was like rosehip tea. I didn’t expect it to be as delicious as it was.

Peter and Qishr

After a quick drink with the CCC crew we headed out to eat at Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill. Cindy, Anette, Peter and I were joined by Brett (the co-founder and co-owner of Counter Culture) and I had the most memorable food experience of the trip (just) with the Shrimp and Grits there. Everyone who has had it there talks about it fondly and it could well be my ultimate comfort food. I want to eat it again right now, because I am writing about it. So good. If you go to Chapel Hill and don’t eat it there then you are officially crazy. The chef, Bill Smith, briefly appeared to say hello and talk to me about a meal he had once had where they had roasted the fish in tobacco leaves (he also had been listening to NPR!)

The next day we hung out at the roastery again, and also I talked a little with Lem about his performance for the upcoming USBC and also about his sig drink and the like. Lem has a very natural, relaxed charm and it was a fun couple of hours.

Lem pulling shots and making drinks for us

We couldn’t leave Durham without a quick coffee at 3 Cups (I am such a coffee tourist, I have to buy all the t-shirts) and also to the Loco Pops just around the corner (the cookies and cream one is so very, very good) before filling ourselves way to full at Mama Dips. A final coffee at Open Eye and we hit the road and headed down towards Ashville.

Tags: anette, counter culture, cupping, el salvador, ethiopia, kenya, roadtrip, roastery, Roasting
Posted in travel | 10 Comments »

East Coast Roadtrip – Washington, DC

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

Washington’s event was the first one in a Counter Culture training centre, and I was curious to see how it would be set up. We were due to cup at 10, but first we headed to a place called Tryst for a little breakfast and coffee (thank you David, for coffee and for suffering my request to make me whatever was good – sorry for being difficult!)

Cindy makes her animals fight for our entertainment

Anette thought the animal crackers were a nice touch and I realised I was drinking my first proper milk drink of the trip!

Then it was time to cup. The open cuppings at Counter Culture have a different approach to most cuppings I have been to. They tend to only cup three coffees, and the discussion afterwards is quite intense with a lot of descriptors going up on the white board.
I agreed with Aaron on my favourite coffee of the three – for me the new Peruvian Valle de Santuario microlot beat out the Rwandan coffee and the Idido Misty Valley on the table. Most people liked the Rwandan Nyakizu, and I can see why – very clean, high acidity (I thought) but still balanced. Amongst the cuppers was Greg Scace, and I confess to getting sidetracked talking about pressure and all things a bit nerdy.

Cupping in DC

Lunchtime!

At the end of the cupping Nick Cho and Trish arrived, but then were hustled out of the room along with everyone else so I could do a phone interview on NPR (which apparently is a big deal around here!) Having not said anything too stupid we headed out and everyone piled into cars and vans to get some lunch at Open City, before eating way, waaay too much gelato (and excellent gelato I might add) at Dulcezza. Rob, the owner showed us the production area and I loved this old bit of kit for making churros:

Old machine for making Churros

Post gelato coffee and lounging around was provided by the Big Bear cafe, and the press of the Biloya there really hit the spot.

The presentation that evening was on a few things – my background in coffee, food pairing and some competition/signature drink stuff. There was a nice crowd and the training centre was beautifully set up (I chose the 3 group FB-80 to play on, over the 3 group Linea…) but still these sort of talks do make me nervous when there are a lot of very wise coffee people in the room. It went pretty well and a fair few people stayed behind after to chat about the sig drinks, more about food pairing ideas or just to talk coffee. Some of the baristas from Easton had made it down so they must have had an overload of my ramblings!

Starting my talk in DC

Not many went out to dinner, and I enjoyed some calmer coffee talk and debate with Nick, Trish and Cindy over some fine Peking Duck.

A quick thank you must again go to the Jensen/Ultimo household for hosting us during our stay in DC – much appreciated. The next morning we headed to Murky Coffee in Arlington for a quick cup and also for me to have a chat with author Michaele Wiseman who joined us for lunch afterwards. Finally the sun came out (until then it had been Londonesque rain) and once lunch was done it was time to hit the road again and head down to Durham, NC and the home of Counter Culture.

Inside Murky Coffee Arlington

Aaron looks especially happy to be in the school photo

Tags: counter culture, cupping, easton, Espresso, Latte Art, roadtrip, scace, training
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2007 – A review of the year

Wednesday, December 26th, 2007

January

The year started like every year started with the UKBC heats and once again I was part of the crack team (read Steve Penk and me) driving up and down the country building stages and setting up the heats. Ed Buston won in a quiet Midlands heat, and Se Gorman won convincingly in Northern Ireland. Meanwhile people argued about Teflon killing you and I had a pleasing moment of enlightenment thanks to Andy Schecter’s idea of extraction ratios.

Espresso Extraction Ratios

February

More heats – the North won by Lou Henry, the Southwest won by Hugo Hercod and then the London heat which, though very stressful, I managed to win after which I posted the blend recipe to stop myself using it again.

March

So – the UKBC final rolled around and I managed to win again, though the competition was much closer than the year before – I won by about 30 points opposed to around 200 in 2006. I also realised at this point that this would be my last year competing as three years in a row of competition and all the work that goes into it had been enough. Lugging a refrigerated centrifuge onto the stage probably hadn’t been worth it but the Coffee and Donuts drink was very tasty, I thought at least! Still – I was very happy though Tokyo seemed a long time away…. The other highlight of this month was my first tv appearance of the year on Ready, Steady, Cook! I was up against Se Gorman and was a happy loser on this occaison (you get a nice hamper of edibles!)

Klaus finishing off the last of one of my sig drinks

April

On the most popular posts of this month was my photographic guide to some green coffees but as I had announced I was moving on from La Spaziale it was mostly a month of good old fashioned work, bar a quick trip over to Copenhagen to watch the awesome Lene take first place in the Danish Barista Championships.

May

The complete blog links page (now updated) becomes the most popular thing I’ve ever published. Anette and I go over to Antwerp and whilst I suck at the Latte art competition, Anette storms to victory becoming the World Cup Tasting Champion! This is far more interesting and important to me than an auction lot generating $130/lb but the press don’t agree.

Anette celebrates her win (mostly for the UK!)

June

I know no longer work for La Spaziale UK. For 2 and a half years I’d been their barista and training manager and in that time I don’t think there was another coffee company in the UK that I would rather have worked for. No one else was as forward thinking, as interested, invested or passionate about espresso and coffee. However we have big plans for something else so it was time for me to move on, and also for Anette to leave her position at Mercanta. The first thing we do is hop on a plane and head to the West coast of North America for a little roadtrip. We head from the wonderful hosting of the Elysian guys in Vancouver to hanging with Schomer and seeing Synesso in Seattle, then on to Portland (everything I expected) for lots more good coffee before limping down to San Francisco to sleep and hang out with Ritual. The final stop being a couple of days in LA with the new Intelli.la crew, and be driven around a little by Tonx. A truly inspiring trip – my only regret being not able to take four times as long to do it.

Cupping at Intelli LA

July

At this point I realised that Tokyo was now looming very seriously on the horizon so it was time to retreat indoors with a GB5 and practice, practice, practice. I do love competition but I don’t love the long hours and stress that come with serious practice and rehearsals – Anette’s ability to cope with me during these times still amazes me. However the stress clearly starts to get to us and the absurd latte art comeptition is born the night before we head to Tokyo.

Our absurd latte art pour

August

WBC time – I compete in the heats first up on the second day. Things go wrong – I have to repull my first set of capp shots, my burners blow a fuse and I don’t realise they haven’t worked until the very end. I smile, forget to call a technical and finish – I am offered another run but turn it down. I assume I’ve messed up – I’ve seen so many great baristas compete I think I haven’t a chance. Little do I know I’ve qualified in second and when I realise I’ve made it into the finals I aim to go out and have some fun. Which I do, and it turns out the judges had fun as well. Becoming World Barista Champion was the most amazing surprise and an indescribable feeling. It still hasn’t sunk in completely. People say lots and lots of nice things! I am very grateful to everyone who worked so hard helping me and asked for so little in return.
I am also delighted the cups I had signed get auctioned off for $500 – Poul and Steve are both incredible and generous people.
At this point I realise that the plans we’ve been making may get a little delayed with likely WBC duties.

About to begin my finals routine

September

The travel begins! We head off to Toronto to judge the CBC and pour latte art in Arthur’s ear for the now hotting up Absurd Latte art challenge. My first time judging and I love it though I get very nervous. From there it is straight into the Nordic Barista Cup which is in Gothenburg and is great. We mostly hang out with the lovely Chris and M’lissa and laugh at a cafe roasting in a domestic oven. The absurd latte art competition comes to a close and is rightly won by the intelli.la guys.

October

The UK go and get our asses kicked by the Russians on home turf in the European Team Coffee Challenge. Moscow doesn’t endear itself to me – mostly due to endless traffic jams. Outside of barista-ing but still coffee related is my doing the photography for the Espresso Warehouse catalogue which was a great challenge and I think turned out pretty well. A trip to Milan for HOST is a welcome chance to remind myself exactly what Italian espresso is all about and to catch up with some of the guys from Ritual who are over working a booth. Robusta makes us pull faces.

The Russian teams wins the ETCC

November

Anette and I go to Colombia – to Armenia for coffee farms and Bogota to judge their barista competition. I love the place and wish we could stay longer and see beyond the exhibition centre. Anyone who travels a lot for work to the inside of boring exhibition centres in interesting places probably feels the same quite often. It was, however, great to hang out with Salvador (the Mexican Barista champion) and some of his family. On returning home I get my GS3 from La Marzocco – part of my WBC prize to go with my Compak Grinder and Mahlkoenig K30 from the UK comp (I am spoiled, I know…..)

Me with Salvador and Fabian (Colombian champ 2007)

December

A quieter month but a highlight was definitely a trip to Probat with Anette, Klaus and Casper. The museum itself is reason enough to go – so many amazing machines. Not long after that I sneak off to Costa Rica for a week to talk about all things barista related and to see Herbazu and meet the farmers to whom I am so grateful. It is all a bit hectic but it is good to sneak away to Norway for Christmas to think about the next year and wonder what will happen. I promise updates and explanation with regards to Square Mile Coffee Roasters and the UKBC gets into full swing too – but no reports this year as I’m judging, only photos of ones I attend as a spectator.

It has been an amazing year and I am really looking forward to 2008. Hope it is a happy and prosperous year for you too!

Tags: anette, Barista, blog, Coffee, competition, cupping, Espresso, Green Coffee, Latte Art, roadtrip, roaster, ukbc, wbc
Posted in Coffee | 2 Comments »

The Roadtrip – Los Angeles

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007

Missing the 101 down the coast, and taking the I-5 may turn out to be one of the few regrets of this trip but the thought that 2 weeks wasn’t enough was hardly new to our journey.

The route down is quite boring with occaisonal pockets of beauty. It must be a road full of accidents though because it is so straight and dull, there is no real driving to be done. Anyway, from time to time you see something quite photographable. I quite liked this alien water tower:

Ah but the coffee, what of the coffee? Well we arrived into LA without much in the way of caffeine urges and we just hung out at the (now) legendary Intelli bungalow with the crew (Kyle, Ryan, Nick, Devon, Colin and Tony was around too) before having a quick look at the cafe in progress, getting some drinks, some damn fine tacos (I could get very addicted to them) and then hanging out and talking rubbish til late into the night.

The next day we went down to the roasting works which are absolutely stunning, the roaster looks so damn good it is criminal and the training room and cupping room both are great. I was delighted to cup there and there were some great coffees on the table, especially their Idido Valley Natural that was a crazy cup of coffee – when it was hot it had this incredible pineapple (to me anyway!). The Panama and Kenyan on the table were pretty damn good too.

I was relieved there was no latte art smackdown to be had, as my one pour there was so bad is was funny. A highlight of the day was a little Gelato at a great place working with Intelli to do single origin ice-cream – a Bolivian and a Kenyan, and it was weird how much the characteristics of the coffees came through.

Our final day was spent with Tony as the rest of the crew had to head to the Roasting Works for training. It was nice for Anette and I to just hang out with him, he’s so great and I loved chatting to him about all things coffee and all things not coffee. He tooks us down to Venice beach so we could dip our toes in the Pacific. It is not my place to comment on Tony leaving Intelli, but I do think that whatever he does next will be amazing and I hope to keep in good contact with him. He’s truly awesome.

From there we were pretty close to Caffe Luxxe so we went in for our first coffee of the day. They have a couple of three group Synessos on the bar (under a great skylight) and I had a great macchiato (which was a proper macchiato with just a little marking of milk not the new macchiato that seems to be everywhere where you pour essentially a mini capp, popularised no doubt by it being an opportunity to pour difficult latte art). Tony’s capp had some nice latte art and we chatted to Mark about coffee and some incredible bars of chocolate he was stocking.

From there it was to the airport and spending 11 hours in a tiny seat pretending to be luggage.

Thanks to everyone in LA, it was a shame I didn’t get to say goodbye to Kyle (who I’d love to chat to more as well) and we lose Stephen to Intelli for a month or so til he comes back to help me in the final stages for WBC prep.

So now I am back in the UK, I have one more post on the roadtrip to come (which is kind of a best of) so if anyone has any questions then go for the contact form or leave them in the comments.

Flickr Set

Tags: caffe-luxxe, Coffee, cupping, Espresso, intelli, intelligentsia, la, los-angeles, roadtrip, tonx
Posted in Coffee, Espresso, News, Opinion | 4 Comments »

The Roadtrip – San Francisco

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

Being on the road like this is far more draining than I expected. Dragging ourselves out of bed the next morning was difficult and we rolled into Ritual mid morning. They knew we were coming but we still ended up spending 5 minutes casting furtive glances across the room at Chris Baca who eventually made the first move and came over to introduce himself.

Gabe was at the roaster, somewhat nervous because it was his first day or production roasting on his own. Their roaster is insane. I am sure most of you reading know it is a 5 kilo Probat from 1919 (Quite possibly the oldest working Probat outisde of the Probat museum in Germany). It belongs to Duane from Stumptown who found it down in South California somewhere.

The most unusual thing about it is the cooling – they dump into a rotating tray and for the initial cooling then the entire tray is transfered to another base that has a big fan to speed the cooling up. Very cool.

We had a few coffees and then Chris organised a little cupping for us. Their two Kenyans really stood out, nothing against their Gio Gio but I am a sucker for their Gethumbwini – complex, sweet, amazing fruit and delightful mouthfeel. I love it.

It is definitely worth mentioning that Ritual have a very cool Steampunk styled Robur working away there – it looks so cool:

Having hung out long enough we got out of their way and ventured down to the Blue Bottle Kiosk. Their espresso was great, perhaps because I had no idea what to expect from it. Stephen had a little chat to them and they were really friendly and gave us a couple of cups of a Colombian they had on the Melitta drips. (Their porcelain drippers are so pretty I had buy one!). Stephen even managed to blag a bag of an African blend which I am looking forward to trying. Stephen and I were chatting and we thought it only fair to do a Steve Ford tribute shot:

And that was about as much coffee as we wanted that day. Having upgraded out of an evil Best Western into the lovely Phoenix Hotel we decided to maybe spend some downtime in San Francisco and try and catch up on feeling human.

That evening we met up with Chris and Ryan from Ritual and wandered down to get some food. The table wasn’t ready yet so we nipped over to a bar called The Knock-Out. It turned out to be an odd memorable experience and I have never played highspeed bingo in a bar full of people yelling back the numbers called with such force. I could have stayed another couple of rounds…..

The meal at the Blue Plate was absolutely delicious. We were also joined by Lindsay who works for Zoka and had been hanging out at Ritual earlier in the evening. The food was great and Baca and Ryan make me laugh my ass off.

We drank no coffee then next day, as if to prove to ourselves we weren’t addicted. We did spend a little tourist time round the city and spent enough time snoozing to feel ready for the last leg down to LA.

Before we left we had to head to Ritual again. I love that place, and every one of us loves it. If I lived in San Francisco I would spend a great deal of my life in there. Eileen and Gabe once again made us feel welcome and thanks to Matt and everyone behind the bar for looking after us and for yelling goodbye to us so loudly on our way out. I look forward to going back.

Tags: blue-bottle, Coffee, Espresso, Latte Art, ritual, roadtrip, san-francisco
Posted in Cafe Review, Coffee, Espresso, News, Opinion | 3 Comments »

The Roadtrip – From Portland to San Francisco

Friday, June 15th, 2007

Halfway through the 640 mile drive the answer to the question of why we didn’t fly this leg instead of driving it was finally answered. The view had been pretty as we headed south through Oregon but it took crossing a truly beautiful lake to finally put doubts to rest.

We’d left Portland mid morning, instead of at the crack of dawn, mostly because we are all a bit lazy and fond of our beds. Having grabbed a breakfast sandwich I snuck off down to Voodoo Donuts. Now, I do not profess to be an expert on donuts, but in many ways I’ve dealt with enough of them to feel vaguely authoritative… The dozen they choose (which is actually 13 donuts) may well be the best possible way to spend $8….

The weather was good in Portland but as soon as you crossed the border it was like someone turned the sun up to 11. Certainly through Northern California it was nothing much but a lot of space and a lot of heat.

Still – sunshine makes for good photographes:

Not sure how snow exists there though?

We came into San Francisco as the sun was setting and it was perfect, so beautiful and the sky really took its time shifting through the colours. We were all utterly fatigued but pretty happy to have done it. Next stop Ritual……

Tags: california, portland, roadtrip, san-francisco
Posted in News, Opinion | 2 Comments »