Last Thursday we held the qualifiers for the city-to-city TNT, and boy did we have a lot of competitors this month! We had 20 competitors in all, and while only the top 10 made it through to next month’s finals, I was really impressed with the level of all the competitors, and am positive that anyone who competed had a pretty good shot at winning.

I think the highest scored pour of the night – by Amanda V.

Anne and I managed to both simultaneously photograph and post every latte to flickr, stream the event, and project the stream onto the ceiling (?!?) for everyone to be able to see, so we had as many as 75 viewers online in addition to our 45 or so at Everyman Espresso. But what that meant was we were using our camera to take pictures of lattes, not people. So not much for pictures. Among the prizes this month? Some 8oz bags of coffee from Ritual Roasters (thanks Eileen!), the prize pool of $100, and an 8oz bag of Hacienda Esmeralda courtesy of Counter Culture Coffee. And a pumpkin (it’s October!).

Here’s how it worked this time: The pictures were posted to flickr, where we had 3 celebrity judges (Scott Lucey, Ben Wilkinson, and Andrea Piccolo). They each judged the lattes on a 10 point scale and we combined the scores into one 30 point scale. The top 16 made it through to the second round. After the first round, it was bracketed, with scores carrying over to the next round, and the largest overall score went on from each set of competitors.

In the end, it came down to 2 competitors, but the scores were ridiculously close. Here are all the competitors, in ascending order of rank:

16-20 (Since I’m in this group, I don’t want to show scores):
Neil Oney (TampTamp Inc)
Humberto Ricardo (3rd Rail Coffee)
Eddie Cedeno (Oslo Coffee)
Sarah Harlan (Everyman Espresso)
16: Tae (Dames Coffee) 12
15: Summer (Everyman Espresso) 14
14: Sam Penix (Everyman Espresso) 18
12: Anne Nylander (TampTamp Inc) 19
12: Johnny Kemnitz (Gimme Coffee) 19
11: Alie Camp (Cafe Grumpy) 20
10: Erin Meister (Counter Culture Coffee) 21
9: Danielle Glasky (Stumptown Coffee) 22
8: Farah Kawadja (Dean & Deluca) 34
7: Sasha King (Cafe Pedlar) 37
6: Katie Carguilo (Counter Culture Coffee) 38
5: JJB! (3rd Rail Coffee) 41
4: Jordan Barber (Cafe Grumpy) 70
3: Amanda Ventresca (Cafe Grumpy) 73
2: Tommy (?) (Counter Culture Coffee) 94
1: Dan Griffin (3rd Rail Coffee) 102

So Congrats Dan! And with you and all the rest of the top 10, we’re sure you’re going to beat those filthy, no-talent hacks down in D.C. (Them’s fightin’ words)

Dan’s winning pour