Competitive coffee – How I became a barista competition judge

Day 2 - Judgement Day

Brrriiiiingg! Brrriiiiingg! Brrriiiiingg!

My eyes popped open and I looked around, trying to figure out where I was. The room was still dark. What the hell? Will someone shut that bell off please?—I thought, half-dazed. Then I remembered—the bell was my 5:15 alarm going off. It was Thursday, January 26, and I was supposed to go to Tacoma for the 2012 Northwest Regional Barista Championships (NWRBC). Yawning, I rolled slowly out of bed, grabbed a quick breakfast and made my way to the bus stop by 5:50am.

The bus took me to meet Brandon Arends, who was driving us up to Tacoma. The NWRBC didn’t start until Friday, but we were going up a day early to get certified as judges for the competition. Over the last year, ever since we volunteered together at the 2011 NWRBC, Brandon has been trying to get me to try judging. For a long time, I was reluctant because I didn’t think I had enough relevant coffee experience. It’s one thing to regularly drink and write about coffee, and quite another to be working with it all the time. He finally convinced me though, which is why I found myself rolling up I-5 towards Tacoma at 6:15am.

I was a little nervous about the day ahead. I didn’t know what to expect at the training because I had waited until the last minute to register and never got the email with the day’s schedule and instructions. Brandon, who registered on time, had given me a little advice on Wednesday night, when we discussed our travel plans.

“Make sure you check out the rules and the score sheet,” he told me.

“I’ll do it,” I replied, not really intending to do much studying.

I should have heeded his warning a little more closely.

Tacoma – center of haute café (for a few days, at least)

The barista competition was once again being held at the Tacoma Convention Center in downtown Tacoma, where bail bonds shops outnumber specialty cafés. Since Tacoma is not the hotbed of coffee in the Northwest, you might wonder why the SCAA decided to hold its convention here two years in a row. I know I did.

Brandon suggested two reasons. First, Tacoma’s proximity to SEA-TAC airport makes it easy to travel there. Second, it would have been Portland’s turn to host, except that the city is hosting the United States Barista Championship in April. My theory is that if the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) held both competitions in Portland, it would be too openly admitting that Portland is the center of the universe when it comes to specialty coffee. Portlanders already know this to be true, but we wouldn’t want to hurt Seattle’s feelings.

Whatever the reason, the Tacoma Convention Center makes a good spot for the competition. It has lots of space, there’s free parking just a couple blocks away, and hotel rates in Tacoma are reasonable (late January is the low season for tourists in Tacoma).

Ready or not…

We scooted in through front doors at 9am and took our places at the only available seats in the room (the training was kind of like going to church—if you arrive late, you sit up front). The head judges welcomed everyone and introduced themselves before going over the protocol for becoming a judge. Each of the head judges had worked in the coffee industry and had years of experience judging competitions all over the world.

But what about the rest of us? What type of people are judges for barista competitions? Most of the people in the room worked full time in the coffee industry, as trainers, café managers, baristas, marketers—all types of roles.

However, not everyone had years of experience in the industry, so I didn’t feel as out of place as I thought I might. One woman was a writer from Seattle who was trying to learn more about coffee. Another woman had only worked in coffee for a year. She had never been to a competition before, but her manager encouraged her to come to judge.

After introductions, our teacher said it was time to take the certification test, and that we “have to get an 80% on the exams to get your certification to judge.”

Test?! Already? Eighty percent? I felt a whoosh of air around me as the test takers gasped in unison.  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t get the memo about knowing the rules beforehand.  Could they really expect us to know how to judge before we got there?

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I recalled Brandon’s advice from the night before. At least I had read through the rules in the car on the ride up to Tacoma.

How much do you know?

I started down through the exam, which consisted of multiple-choice questions and fill-in-the-blank questions about both technical and sensory elements. The test took me nearly an hour to complete and covered the USBC rules and the official competition score sheet. It had questions like, “How do you judge the integrity of an espresso’s crema?” and “How thick does the foam on a cappuccino have to be for the drink to be eligible to receive a “Very Good” score?”

As I worked my way through the exam, I pictured myself back in college, sweating my way through an English literature exam I hadn’t prepared for. I employed every trick in the book I could think of, eliminating obviously incorrect answers and leafing through the different sections of the test for clues.

When everyone had finished the exam, we took a short break before resuming our training. Multiple people I talked to during the break were pessimistic about their results on the test.

It’s not getting easier

After we had been tested for our knowledge of the rules, we moved on to actually figuring out what made a good drink and what didn’t. One of the most difficult things about judging is to get all the judges to grade consistently between competitors. This process is known as calibration. The head judges showed us slides of what to look for when we looked at a good espresso crema (and a bad one). The crema is the foamy layer that sits on top of an espresso. It is formed when the steam is forced through the coffee grounds, emulsifying the oils inside. 

In each slide, the crema looked a little different. We discussed how they differed and which deserved good scores and which did not. The session helped us better understand the official standards of the competition.  We then took a quiz, looking at several photos of espressos of varying quality.

Just before the lunch break, we did a triangulation test to check our palates. I propose another name for it: the Sesame Street test (“one of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong…”). A triangulation test is an exercise where three coffees are set out on a table together. Two of them are the same and the other one is different.  The testers sip each one and mark down which of the three is different.

If I felt fairly confident about the capabilities of my palate before Thursday, I finished the triangulation test wondering if I had ever tasted coffee before in my life. We did six groups of three, and I was confident about only two of the groups. The rest of them were similar enough that I ended up guessing. I figured I had failed the test and would end up washing dishes instead of judging.

Everyone seemed relieved when lunch was served. As we gathered around the buffet table, I overheard several people in shock at the difficulty of the triangulation test. I don’t know if it really helps to know you aren’t the only one struggling, but I know I felt a whole lot better after eating.

After lunch, the head judges gave us our test results. By some miracle, I had passed! I was relieved (the judges also passed around a new exam for those who needed to re-take it. It turns out the first test was not our only opportunity to become a judge—but we didn’t know that at the time).

The real calibration – testing drinks

When everyone had their tests done, the group finally got down to calibrating with real drinks. We went to the main hall where the three espresso machines had been set up for the competition. Technical judges grouped up at one machine, and the sensory judges divided into two groups and gathered around the other machines. Each machine was staffed by a barista who made us a variety of drinks. Our barista tried to vary the quality of the shots he made, attempting to make the calibration more like the competition.

We began by evaluating espressos. Espresso is the main focus of the Barista Championships. Espresso is the most difficult type of coffee to make well and make consistently. If a barista wants to score well, he or she needs to make great espresso, not only in the espresso course, but also in the cappuccino and signature beverage course. As the baristas pumped out the espressos, the trainers let us write down our impressions, helping us keep to the regulations in the rulebook.

The calibration was fun, but challenging. All of the judges who were new to the certification process were reluctant to make a definitive score for each of the drinks we tried. We would taste a drink then look to our trainer for guidance, instead of writing down the score we thought it deserved. After a while, when we had evaluated shot after shot and cappuccino after cappuccino, we began to get a pretty good sense of what was good according to standard and what was not.

Each drink gets the following scores. Unacceptable=0, Acceptable=1, Average=2, Good=3, Very Good=4, Excellent=5 or Extraordinary=6. You can give scores with half-point increments, but no scores of 0.5 are allowed, and the head judge must approve any scores of Extraordinary. As we practiced judging, we were encouraged to use the words instead of the numbers in order to accustom ourselves to the official scoring language. The language helped us score the drinks more accurately.

We finally finished up the calibration about quarter to six. The head judges sent us home and told us to be back at 11am the next morning. We were well-caffeinated and ready to go find some dinner. My fears about being judged unworthy to be a judge had not been realized. When we got the schedule for Friday, I was assigned to the first, third and fifth competitors. I knew I would be nervous, but thanks to our trainers, I felt confident that I would do a good job.

Searching for the right word at Courier

You know how hard it is to come up with the right word sometimes, either in conversation or in writing? When I read great writers’ work, I am amazed at how well they are able to describe the scenes in their stories.  They make it easy to imagine whatever they are writing about. Settings are as crisp as the sharp crack of breaking glass, and the psychology of the characters burrows into the readers’ consciousness like an earthworm tunneling through soil. The best writers give you just enough description to trigger the images in your mind, without overburdening you with details.

As someone who writes a lot, I read often and try to emulate my favorite writers – Murakami, Asensi, and Hemmingway, for example (if you’re going to do something, you ought to try to do it well, don’t you think?).  I figure that if I aim for the stars, I might at least hit the moon.

One of the challenges of writing is trying to keep the writing fresh. You want to come up with new ways of saying the same thing. Think about it – how many ways has the ‘boy-chases-girl-girl-rejects-boy-boy-doesn’t-quit-until-he-wins-her-heart’ story been told? Thousands? Yes, but each time in a slightly different way.

If you use the same descriptors all the time, you start to be boring and you don’t grow your creativity muscles they way you could. My goal is to write about coffee without saying the same thing every time. In other words, keep it fresh, like good coffee (no apologies for bad puns, though. I like to hear the audience groan once in a while). Here is today’s snippet:

Coffee Cake

Courier Coffee was my destination this morning. They had several coffees available as pourovers, and one single-origin espresso. When I asked about being overpowered by the single-origin’s acidity, the barista assured me that even though it was a washed Ethiopian coffee, it was well-balanced and not overwhelmingly bright (no lemons). He didn’t have to work hard to persuade me to order the espresso.

The first sip entered my mouth and swelled like the ocean before a storm. The tangy flavors began in the center of my mouth but grew until they filled the entire space. In some cases, the syrupy nature of an espresso comes through in the crema, but in this case, the coffee itself was heavy. The espresso’s texture stood out the most. The coffee bathed my entire tongue with a thick, viscous syrup. If it were a piece of clothing, it would have been flannel or denim, not silk or polyester.

The texture and the taste lingered – they coated my mouth as if I had just eaten the richest piece of chocolate cake from the finest bakery, with nothing to wash it down. I thought I could call it cakey, but according to the Urban Dictionary, that’s might not be the best word to use. I guess  I’ll just have to keep searching for the right word…

Espresso or Pourover? (answer: both!)

Saturday morning, after an hour spent chasing kids around OMSI, we stopped by Coava coffee. Writing a blog about coffee, I feel it is my duty to stop by Portland’s best cafés as often as possible (it’s a tough gig). My wife had not been to Coava’s industrial-styled shop before, so it was also an opportunity for her to share my world for a few minutes. We used the stop to further our coffee knowledge.

The café was full of people, and there were two recognizable faces behind the bar—Devin Chapman, 2010 Northwest Regional Brewer’s Cup champion, and Sam Purvis, 2010 Northwest Regional Barista champion (I do not personally know either of them—but they are celebrities in this small part of the coffee world). It was somewhat ironic that Chapman was running the espresso machine and Purvis was in charge of the pourovers, since each had earned their titles on the other method. Both are highly-skilled professionals, though, so I wasn’t worried about getting a quality cup of coffee.

Shayna ordered a pourover of the Costa Rica Finca Zarcero, and I ordered the espresso version of the same coffee. While I tried to keep the kids corralled, she listened attentively as Purvis described the mechanics of a good pourover.

My espresso came up quickly, and I drank it while it was still fresh. As an espresso, the Zarcero brought a burst of citrus. The acidity walloped my mouth, and the silkiness of the syrupy crema lingered, long after the drink was gone.

After a little pleading, Shayna let me try her coffee so that I could compare it to the espresso. It would have been wise to start with the pourover or to eat something to “reset” my taste buds after their encounter with the bold flavors of the espresso, but it was still possible to compare the two.

As you can imagine, the two versions came out very different. As a brewed coffee, the flavors were much more subtle. It had a very light mouth feel, and although it was still citrusy, the flavors packed less of a punch. Shayna described the coffee as “different from any other coffee” she had ever tried (in a good way, I think).

Trying the same coffee prepared in two different ways is a fun way to learn more about coffee and expand your own tastes. Doing it at Coava makes it even better, though you have to be careful. If you stop there too often, you might get spoiled by the quality of the coffee and the baristas (I think it’s a risk worth taking). Then again, if you are in Portland, can you really justify not being spoiled by the city’s coffee scene?

Flying high and keeping your costs down

When you go to Coffeehouse Northwest (on West Burnside) and look at the menu board, you might choke a little bit when you see that an espresso costs $3. I know I did the first time I saw it. Even with the run up in coffee prices over the last year, most cafés still charge between $2.00-$2.50 for an espresso, so $3 seemed spendy. However, there is a way to get around the lofty price, by ordering a “flight,” something you won’t find on the menu. A flight is a pair of espressos, one of each of the two types of coffee on grind (my guess is that calling it a “flight” has something to do with how you feel if you drink them too fast). CHNW keeps two different espressos available, usually from Sterling and often both single-origin coffees. Today’s offerings were from Ethiopia and El Salvador, respectively.

If you order the flight, they only charge you $4.00 total for both of them. If you plan to spend more than an hour there, this is a good deal. Coffeehouse’s baristas know what they are doing, and they pull good shots. They will also let you spread out your espressos so that you don’t get buzzed too quickly.

That’s your bargain-hunting tip for the day.

On a side note, while I was sitting in the café today, I overheard an interesting conversation about stripping (I just report what I hear, okay?). Three women at the next table were having a very open conversation about how to make good money working at a strip club. It sounded like the most important rule is that you sell the customers without letting them know they are being sold. According to the most experienced of the three, between “acts” you get down off the stage and work the crowd—talk to the customers, shake their hands, ask how they are doing, etc. The more social you are, the better, because creating a connection with the customers pays dividends.

I’m sure there’s a business lesson in there somewhere…

Slamming espressos, Seattle style

I was passing through Seattle yesterday and had a couple hours to kill, so over a span of two hours, I did my own mini coffee crawl, hitting three different cafés.

For the record, I really like Seattle. It seems quite a bit larger than Portland, in a good way. The city is so hilly that from lots of the intersections downtown you can see out across Puget Sound and over to the Olympic Peninsula. These views make Seattle seem more open than it otherwise might be.

The first stop of my coffee junket was at Cherry Street Coffee House. Cherry Street has several different cafes in Seattle, but the one I visited was actually on Cherry Street (the original, perhaps?).

Cherry Street Coffee House

One of the reasons that I went to Cherry Street was that I had read that the café’s coffee was roasted by Dillano’s, Roast Magazine’s 2010 Roaster of the Year.  I ordered an espresso and went to sit down.

The café itself has two levels. The coffee bar is at street level, and the seating is down a set of stairs, where the café spreads out under the store next door. It reminded me of an old speakeasy, one of those secret places where people could gather discretely to buck the rules of Prohibition during the 1920s and 1930s.

On one wall, rather, in one wall, a walk-in safe serves as the café’s office, and toward the back of the seating area, a faux fireplace is painted onto the wall. Two old, bright red stuffed chairs sit in front of the fire, welcoming you to sit down. With no windows in the seating area, the café is a bit dark, but it suffices as a place to work and drink coffee.

The espresso was made from the Cherry Street House Blend, and is unique to Cherry Street cafés. The barista told me that it was a medium roast, but if that’s the case, I have to question my understanding of what a medium roast is. The coffee in my cup had a nice thick crema that stuck to the sides of the cup, and the first sip or two, I tasted some strong almond flavors and fittingly enough, cherries. After the nice beginning though, all hints of sweetness and subtleties disappeared off and what was left was very smoky. Perhaps I’m just being oversensitive, but I was disappointed how it finished.

After finishing the espresso, I headed up the street toward Pike Place Market and my favorite store in Seattle, DeLaurenti. DeLaurenti is an Italian food import shop, and it seems like anytime I visit the city, I am drawn to the shelves full of Italian tomatoes, meats, cheeses, olives, pastas and wines. I can spend hours in that store, concocting recipes in my mind and dreaming about getting on a plane to fly to the Mediterranean. If I was going to get some more coffee, though, there was no time to linger, so I grabbed a sandwich and left quickly, to avoid falling prey to the temptations residing deeper within the store.

A must-visit

Originally, I had hoped to go to Stella Caffè for some espresso (I had been thinking about it since my trip to Coffee Fest last October), but to my chagrin, the café that was rumored to have the best Robusta-based espresso in the city is no longer a café. I don’t know the story, but when I called to see what time they closed down the espresso bar, the woman on the other end informed me that they were now a bar and not a café. Foiled again. If anyone knows where I can get some of Stella’s stellar espresso, please let me know.

Instead of going to Stella, I walked up Pike Street to Seattle Coffee Works. Seattle Coffee Works is a small roastery/café located right across the street from the first Starbucks store. The café has a slow coffee bar on one side, with pourovers and vacuum pots, and on the other side it has an espresso bar. I chose the espresso side (surprise, surprise). The barista told me that although they usually had a single-origin espresso available, they had just run out of the Panama and were down to the Space blend, the café’s signature espresso. My impression was that it was just a bit on the tart side, but overall, much better than the espresso I had drunk a few minutes before.

Seattle Coffee Works

After downing the Space blend, I was feeling up for one more stop. Someone told me that Fonté was a nearby place that was doing good things, and since it was located between Seattle Coffee Works and the train station, it would be  a great place to stop for the third leg of my trifecta.

About five minutes later, I was seated at a table at Fonté, waiting for my cappuccino.

Fonté Coffee and Wine Bar

Fonté has a pretty hip feel to it (like most places I regularly frequent*). In addition to being a coffee shop, it also doubles as a wine bar. It looked like  a great place to spend a happy hour, so I was looking forward to my cappuccino.

Chic

The foam on the cappuccino had a nice texture, but the espresso was roasted so dark that it completely overpowered the milk. A cappuccino should be balanced—both the milk and the coffee flavors should come through. In this cappuccino, though, you could not taste any of the natural sweetness of the steamed milk. The coffee dominated. It was too much for me.

Visiting two cafés (out of three) that had super dark roast espressos left me disappointed but wondering, is this type of roast just the traditional “Seattle style?” Perhaps this is due to the influence of Starbucks in the city? Starbucks has a reputation for serving dark-roasted espresso, but its espresso doesn’t have as much of the smokiness as the espressos at Cherry Street, Fonté or Caffè d’Arte (another Seattle-based roaster whose espresso I have had in the past).

Do I have the wrong expectations for what espresso ought to taste like? After all, I live in Portland, where lighter roasts are the norm. Should I learn to appreciate this dark roast for what it is, instead of thinking it should taste like something else, or are the beans being treated without the care they deserve? After yesterday, these questions linger in my mind. . . I would be very interested to hear what someone from Seattle has to say about this.

Here are a couple more pictures of things I saw during my visit:

Century Link Field just won't sound the same

One of the stops I made was at Qwest (soon to be Century Link) Field, which is right next to the Amtrak station in South Seattle. It’s a nice looking stadium and it was humbling to walk right up next to the behemoth and look down on the field inside. I don’t know what it is about being up next to huge objects, but they make you feel small, especially when you’re not in a crowd of people. A stadium like that is a testament to human ingenuity. It doesn’t compare to standing next to Mt. Rainier, but I was still impressed.

A closer look

The city skyline, seen from the steps of the stadium.

The Starbucks mother ship (corporate headquarters). I like the sirens rising out of the tower on top.

This statue was outside the Seattle Art Museum. One of these times I’m going to make it inside to see what treasures reside there.

Overall, I enjoyed my trip to the Emerald City, and would have been content to stay for a little longer (there are several more cafés I want to check out). The train wouldn’t wait for me, though, so at 5:30 sharp, we pulled out of the station and headed south. Until next time, Seattle.

*sarcasm alert