About a year ago I went to London, primarily to attend a Square Mile “Taste of …” event, but I also used it to do a tour of some of the recommended coffee shops. I left impressed and jealous in equal measure. As the interim year passed, my envy increased with the reports, the pictures, the videos, the newspaper clippings. The London map, it seemed, was becoming increasingly speckled with exciting, new, quality-driven cafes. This year, my superficial reason at least was to attend an Ultimate Bartista Fighter event, a latte art throwdown with costumes, again at the Square Mile roastery.
Musings on Coffee Culture From Ireland
Archives for category: Places and Faces
I went to London. They have strange people there, with strange customs.
Prime position plaque
I guess this isn’t going to be news to many, as it has already been tweeted, sprudged, and dublinbaristed. In case you missed it, the Irish Cup Tasting Championship took place on September 29th, and somehow, I managed to win it and take home the plaque. There are many people to thank*.
I wouldn't consider this SCAE approved.
I was really lucky to be able to attend the SCAE Brewmaster course held at Marco HQ a couple of weeks ago. The course in a nutshell gives someone the tools to effectively take control of their brewed coffee. The aim it would appear, from the SCAE point of view is to raise the quality of brewed coffee across Europe by creating a nucleus of “Brewmasters” to spread the good word. The ultimate target isn’t really the super speciality people, rather the average cafe, who is likely to be using as little as 30g of coffee in per litre water, and extracting every last morsel of coffee from that 30g. Nonetheless the material is hugely relevant to anyone who cares about brewed coffee quality. It was was more than just interesting for me, however, it has crystallised some thoughts in my mind about brewed coffee, particularly in relation to grinders for brewed coffee, which has been a bugbear of mine for some time.
I met Colin Harmon through this thread on Boards.ie. A group of us were buying some Intelligentsia coffee, combining shipping costs, and Colin offered to have it delivered to him. When I mentioned to him that Fergus and I were heading over to London for a Cafe Crawl and an espresso tasting at Square Mile, he asked to tag along. On the train from Stansted to London he told us that he was entering the Irish Barista Championships. At that point it seemed so distant, so improbable. Six months later, we have returned from the WBC in Atlanta, Colin achieving an amazing 4th place finish. It all seems slightly surreal.
Leaving for Atlanta, I actually didn’t feel we were as completely prepared as we had been for the IBC. The 6 weeks or so between the two competitions was eaten up by some delays, the most prominent of which were getting an Aurelia and finalising the beans. Getting the Aurelia was always going to be a brilliant, if very costly decision. All machines to a greater or lesser extent have their quirks, and it’s a big advantage being comfortable pulling shots and steaming on a machine. As it turned out, the steaming took some time to get used to, I still don’t think the steam tip and boiler pressure are in good balance on the WBC spec Aurelia. I suspect slightly smaller apertures on the 4-hole tip would increase the steam velocity with a small increase in steaming time.