More on the USBC in this post from Coffee Geek, which has a number of posts from this year's Specialty Coffee Association of America conference in Charlotte and the 2006 United States Barista Championships.
Left to right: Billy Wilson, Albina Press, 2nd Place (Portland, OR); Matt Riddle, Intelligentsia, 1st Place (Chicago); Amber Sather, Intelligentsia, 3rd Place (Chicago).
If you'd like a run down of what was popular at the show/conference, Coffee Geek pretty much covered it. As for us... we're getting too old to get to all the parties. Looks like we made a mistake missing the one at Counter Culture's training facility.
P.S. We're still confused on what the judges look for. Our region's representative, David George, of Crescent Moon Coffee in Mullica Hill, NJ, gave an awesome performance in the semis but didn't get selected for the finals. Not sure if that's because he's only been a barista for four months or because he's from Joisey. Either way, we were rooting for him and Jay Caragay... someone, anyone from our Mid-Atlantic region.
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