Judging JJ.
It’s that time again.
7 people competed this week at the JJ Bean In House Competition for the right to represent their company in the upcoming regional competitions over in Victoria. It ran over the course of 2 nights at the Yaletown location, and had a respectable crowd turnout both nights.
John and I were asked to judge again this year, which we said yes to of course. We joined 4 others from around the city to make up the judging panel of 6.
Robert Csar (JJ) and I were the tech judges, along with Mike LaRoy (JJ), Arthur Wynne (Wicked), Matthew Kolehmainen (Elysian) and John (Crema), all of whom made up the sensory side. Arthur’s role doubled as the head judge, and he fit the part perfectly. Perhaps it was all that practice at the world barista championships…
Tech judging this year was a lot easier than the last, as expected. Most of the marks in the tech category now are awarded by ticking a box that says “yes” or “no” now anyway, where as the sensory judges have a lot of scores that are out of 6 and require much more thought. Really the only tricky thing about tech judging is that it all happens so fast that at some points there is almost no time to look down on the sheet in case of missing something.
The signature drinks were interesting as always. A random sampling of a few ingredients used includes pipe tobacco, sparkling water, cheesecake, and pancreas/liver. Thankfully, these were not all used in the same drink.
As for the competitors, everyone put on a good show, but none good enough to dethrone last year’s in house champ and Canada’s second ranking barista, Spencer. Chris from Granville Island came 2nd and Steve from Main St. placed 3rd. Each of these guys, in addition to earning 9.1 bars of street cred, each received a Reg Barber tamper, which I got to design. (I don’t have any good pictures of it, but it’s based on the title image.)
Congratulations to everyone who competed, and especially to Spencer for taking it all.
Congrats Spencer!
[...] that in your pipe… cleanhotdry is reporting on JJ’s in house barista championship: The signature drinks were interesting as always. A random sampling of a few ingredients used [...]
As a self-declared foodie I’m rather adventurous. But, the signature drinks are scaring me…
There should be a 1 to 6 question on ‘How shaky were they?’
Bump everyone’s score up.
Ok, I can kind of see pipe tobacco for a sig… but liver? That would be impressive to pull off.
I’m glad I wasn’t in the sensory judge’s seat this year for the pancreas/liver drink. I would have probably refused to taste it and given it a zero, just as I would for drinks containing, say, feces or blood.
There doesn’t seem to be any mention of “objectionable” ingredients besides alcohol in the WBC manual. I’m sure that would change quickly if baristas began putting ground-up internal organs in their signature drinks.