Preparing for Barista Competition

Since it’s only about 5 months until the US has their first regional competition for next season, we at TampTamp think it’s time to start thinking about competition again. I thought I’d start by talking about what I did to prepare for my first time last year.

As I’ve mentioned before, I competed in my first barista competition this year. I’ve been to many competitions before, as a spectator, as a volunteer and as a judge, and I thought it time to do it myself. But I wanted to do well, so I made a schedule to make sure I wouldn’t make a fool of myself.

So In October, I started planning my routine and working on my techs, grinding coffee and practicing dosing with little or no waste. Many people get around this by using a timed grinder, but as it was my first time I wanted to do it manually, so I used a Mazzer Major with an Elvinator to help guide the dose. While tech scores don’t add up to a ton of points, they are easy to get and make the difference between a finalist and an also-ran. When I practiced for my techs, I used old coffee and ground up tons of it. Maybe 100 pounds. With every shot, I timed the grind in my head, worked out a dosing technique (count to 8, turn off the grinder, tap twice, dose the rest into the portafilter, finger swipe to fill in the gaps), and made sure that not only was I doing the same movement every time, but that I was dosing the same amount of coffee (about 19g) every time. I found that if my movements stayed the same, it was easier to change the dose consistently. If I needed another gram, count to 9. If I needed less, count to 7. I practiced this until I dosed the same every time and left no visible waste. I wouldn’t let myself end the day without dosing 5 espressos while leaving nothing on the counter. In addition to my dose, I practiced my tamp. It doesn’t matter how cleanly you dose if your tamp causes coffee to fly in every direction. Dosing practice probably had the greatest influence on my barista technique as even now I use the same technique on bar and waste very little. I am proud to say that I earned 5.5′s on almost all my techs at the Northeast.

By December I had chosen my espresso (thanks Dallis!) and a rough sketch of what I was going to do and say. My espresso came to me at a cafe. I went to RBC Coffee in Tribeca and had a single origin shot of Dallis’ Brazil Obata, and while it was very bright, it was also deep, full of herby complexity and had great potential. So I contacted Dallis and asked if they’d be interested in letting me use it in competition and they were happy to oblige. Having Dallis sponsor my espresso helped tons. I had free-rein of their espresso lab and full use of Mark Howell, their roaster. Together we worked on a roast profile that brought out all the potential I found in that first shot – but without all the mouth-puckering acidity. Still, I wanted a little brightness so we added back a bit of the original production roast. Once I had my coffee, I started pulling shots. I think we used about 50 pounds of espresso all told, but I felt pretty good about it in the end.

I had also figured out my signature beverage. One of the biggest problems with 1st time competitors is the signature beverage. It’s glamourous, it’s what everybody usually talks about at the end of the competition, and it’s not worth many points. My signature beverage was brilliant (and delicious). It was a difficult to prepare and complex mix of pear, chocolate and hazelnuts. I cored the pear, lined it with chocolate, put espresso in the bottom, cooked pear puree on top of that, and homemade hazelnut whipped cream on that. People I meet still ask me about it. But my signature beverage had one problem: my espresso didn’t taste like hazelnuts, pears, or chocolate. My espresso tasted like citrus, thyme, and cinnamon.  If I had made an adjustment I would have scored higher on the beverage and on overall impression. Unfortunately, I had fixated on the drink and didn’t consider how it would tie in. What did I learn? Choose something good, something seemingly difficult to prepare but that can be done quickly and easily onstage, and something that absolutely tastes like, or at least complements, the espresso.

By the time I got to February, I felt I was pretty close to being ready to go, but I wanted a little more practice so I competed out of region at the mid-Atlantic. It was a mess. I forgot to bring my milk when I went onstage and had to run back to get it. I forgot my knockbox on the cart and was luckily allowed to grab it after my prep time had elapsed. I hadn’t practiced the actual routine enough so I was caught cursing into the mic on several occasions, and stumbled over my words throughout. I ended up going over time by :45 seconds. I still scored a 420, which is respectable for a first timer and was due mostly to the strength of my techs and my cappuccinos.

When I competed again 2 weeks later, I scored a 540.

How did I do it? It’s because I planned.  Well of course part of it is because I finished on time, saving 45 points off the top. But even that is due to planning.  When I went to the mid-Atlantic, I didn’t have a plan. I figured that I had seen so many of these, from set up to break down, that I could just do it and it wouldn’t be a problem. I was wrong.

So after my performance, Anne and her competition training routine took over the planning portion of my competition. She made checklists of everything I’d need and made sure I had it all at every stage of the prep.  She also helped me fix my signature drink and develop a script for the performance. At the mid-Atlantic, my signature beverage was a mess and didn’t look terribly good. But we refined it to make it easy to drink and very presentable.

But the biggest improvement was in timing. Because I had the lists, and had practiced both my set up and break down, including loading and unloading my cart, I was much less flustered throughout the competition, and finished with 45 seconds to spare. My drinks tasted better because I wasn’t rushing through them (though I did end up with a cappuccino set with espressos that were 11 seconds longer than the other. Oops.), and my signature beverage was more presentable because I had the time to pay attention.

When we went back to the lab to practice more, we didn’t spend much time on the actual performance. We spent our time on the stuff. I wrote lists of everything I would use and planned out my cart. A competition cart has three levels, and a competition area has three tables. So I used one level for each table, and arranged it so that everything would be easy to reach when I got to it. I made sure to have redundancies: I brought two knockboxes and put them both out so I wouldn’t forget one this time. I also made sure that I talked enough at the beginning by not setting my plates out first. As I introduced myself and my routine, I put the plates out and therefore had a tool to make sure that I spent the right amount of time (58 seconds, if you want to know). I also put out all the plates at once so I wouldn’t forget to set them out in the middle of the performance.

Anne and I also worked on my speech. Before, it didn’t make much sense and I hadn’t memorized it very well, but using Anne’s mantra of “who cares, what does it taste like,” we pared my speech down to just what needed to be said. Every word I said added in some way to the flavor of the beverage and didn’t focus on useless stories. The espresso had a great story and I wanted to share it, but it didn’t taste like anything, so I wrote it down and gave it to the judges to read later. Having a speech like this made sure I had ever word memorized and I wouldn’t get tripped up throughout the presentation.

All of that added up to 120 points. How could I have improved more?

A few things, but the biggest thing I could have done was remember what my espresso tasted like. I was so focused on staying on task and on script that when it came time to describe my espresso, I couldn’t come up with the descriptors. The judges all said, “tasted great, but nothing like what you said it should taste like.”

In the end, I scored a 540, came in 8th place out of a field of 37, and was just 40 points from finals. I am extremely happy with how I placed and look forward to doing it again very soon.