Tokyo isn't normally a city one would connect with coffee drinkers, but it is the host for this year's World Barista Championships, which begin in earnest today and wrap up on Thursday.
Last year was the first time that a US champion cracked the top three (Intelligentsia's Matt Riddle). This year's US barista champion, Heather Perry, has her work cut out for her as she learned only this week that Japan has banned the little CO2 cartridges many baristi use for their whipped cream dispensers. Naturally, Heather has used these dispensers in her routine until now... there's a work around, but according to Nick Cho's notes, it's not pretty.
Current and past national champion baristi from Europe and North America have their own blogs where they discuss their anticipation and strategies for competing. But what's especially cool about the WBC this year is the blogs from other areas of the world that talk about coffees and relationships that have nothing to do with top shops in the US.
Improving the quality of coffee being consumed is a passion that is shared worldwide. As Edwin Martinez notes, the World Barista Championship is not just a competition on who can brew the best espresso, it's a community event where growers, roasters and baristi from around the globe can meetup and exchange notes and ideas to further the progression of coffee excellence.
This year's event also features same day video blogging from ZacharyZachary.
While the vid blogs are somewhat interesting, watching all 48 competitors over
two days is asking a bit much for anyone who's not a total spro
junkie... however, Zachary took some interesting notes for each vid. Sort of the WBC "Cliff Notes" if you will.
It's well worth reading the couple of paragraphs written for each country's competitor and noting the differences in cultures and how they've selected their coffees and signature drinks, then watching if you want to learn more about a specific presentation. The write ups taken as a whole present a truly global representation of the current state of specialty coffee culture.
However, of the half dozen we've viewed so far, there is one video that's, well, more than interesting... Nik Orosi of Croatia.
Getting to Tokyo wasn't in the cards for us this year, but we'll be budgeting a trip for next year's WBC in Copenhagen.
Comments