It’s Official.

How fitting that I finally received a confirmation email in regards to the Barista competition as I sat down to write this.

To re-state the obvious - it is official now. I will be competing on August 13th, and I’m pumped. Since I’ve last updated I’ve made quite a bit of progress in regards to the competition. A few weeks ago I met with Spencer at Main Street JJ and we roasted 4 different coffee’s that, at the time, I wanted to try out for a custom blend. And by “we roasted” I mean Spencer roasted and I asked questions and poured the beans into the roaster. Even Grady gave a go on one of the roasts. They all looked and turned out great, by the way.

3 days after the roasting I met up with Spencer once again, but this time at the JJ “lab” over at Powell. Johnny and Navid also joined and the idea was to taste the 4 coffee’s as a single origin, then start combining them and make a blend. All in the same go. Ambitious? Yes. Crazy? Perhaps. But guess what?

We did it.

The coffee’s were roasted to perfection.

The color and amount of crema was pretty incredible. (These are coming from double baskets too, I might add.)

After we had tasted each coffee on it’s own, Spencer started mixing coffees at random and made us cup them blind. It turned out to be a fantastic idea, because in the blindness of it all, he sneakily mixed in a coffee that was not one on the list - and it worked. It worked great, actually. We ended up choosing a simple 2 coffee blend, spilt down the middle at fifty-fifty.

It’s light, nutty, and fruity. It’s really more light hearted and fun than anything else. Experimenting with it has been fun, and I know it’s going to be different, to say the least. I plan to load it up in the hopper soon at crema and play with it for a few days in the real environment and see how it does. That is all I will say about it for now.

In the meanwhile I’ve been listening to hundreds of songs (or at least the beginnings of them, until I harshly decide they are unworthy) in order to find the proper music to accompany me.  I’m looking for that group of songs that punches you in the face but at the same time sits in the background and watches.  It’s tough, I know.

I also nailed down the signature drink this week (taste/looks wise that is). I met earlier this week with Liza again and we worked on the proper ratios and technique - so just like everything else, it’s practice practice practice now.