Aldo Coffee Company

Are You Ready for Some Espresso?

 Food section of today's P-G features an in-depth preview of next weekend's MidAtlantic Barista Competition, to be held next weekend at the Marriott Cranberry, Feb 6-8.

Lots going on up there.  The region's best baristas, coffee, baked goods, education.  And most of it is free.

Our competitors will be poised for their last full juried run-through on Monday night.  Michelle is pretty much ready to go now.  Lauren is editing her speech.  Rich threw out his signature drink (twice), but believes he has the coffee right.  And Frank is getting nightly training from the current MidAtlantic champion - who happens to be his wife, Belle.

It'll be fun.  More fun for us than actually competing will be visiting with barista buddies from other regions who will be making the trip here to compete in the Northeast Region, volunteer, judge or just hang out at our house.  We're happy it's local.  It should be a good show for Pittsburgh and Western PA.

Rocky Roca?  Really, there's somebody older than Rich in this thing?

Why We Compete

Jaime of Barismo pretty much says it all.

This is why we're going with four "rookies" this year at the upcoming MidAtlantic Barista Competition in Cranberry next month.  When everyone on staff gets to experience what the competitions and community are about, it's only then that they understand the bigger picture beyond a potential trophy.

Even I (Rich), after judging at four regional basrista competitions and the USBC don't fully get it from the barista's viewpoint.  Which is why this old fart is one of the four, along with Michelle, Frank and Lauren. 

Maybe one of these years we'll get Lois to do it  ;-)

It's not only about winning, although it was nice for our shop to win last year.  It's about showing up, being honest about your capabilities and knowledge, taking your best shot, being open to criticism and learning from your industry colleagues.  No pain, no gain.

Thanks Jaime for putting our thoughts into words so eloquently.

Your New WBC Champion

6. Denmark 5. Canada 4. Sweden 3. Netherlands 2. Australia 1. Ireland

TV Show hosted by UstreamCongratulations Stephen Morrissey (aka Thud) on an exceptional performance!
(if the video isn't loading, it's not our fault!)

WBC Finalists Announced

Tomorrow's World Barista Championship finals will run from 5:30am-8:00am Sunday.  Here are the six baristas out the 51 national champions who competed who will go for the gold tomorrow:

Sweden, Daniel Remheden
Canada, Mike Yung
Netherlands, Liesbeth Steijster
Denmark, Soren Stiller Markussen
Australia, David Makin
Ireland, Stephen Morrissey

Congrats to all competitors for being a credit to the trade!  You can view the finals live at worldbaristachampionship.com, approx. 5:30am-8:00am Pittsburgh time, with the world champion being announced around 8:30am.  US champ Kyle Glanville finished eighth, behind Luciano Marcolino of New Zealand.

World Barista Championship Live

The World Barista Championships are being streamed live from Copenhagen. 

The schedule for the preliminary rounds (all times EDT):
Today: 5am-11am
Friday: 4:45am-10:45am
Saturday: 4:45-9am, with the six finalists announced at 10:00am.
Sunday (finals): 5:30am-8:00am, with winner announced at 8:30am.

US Barista champ Kyle Glanville's performance is scheduled for Friday at 7:10am EDT.  The always affable Canadian champ, Mike Yung, is on today at 10:34am EDT.  The full competition schedule can be downloaded (pdf) from the WBC Live site.  There is also a live chat that you can sign up for and participate with baristas and espresso fans from around the globe (Melanie is Aldo1).

Btw, the screencap is Icelandic barista champion Thor Hlodversson using liquid nitrogen to finish his sig drink.  Pretty impressive, especially as it's apparently illegal to drive around with the stuff!

Home Again Home Again Jiggity-Jig

Just got home, picked up the dog, noticed the grass is up another six inches and while we're happy to be home, there's a bit of pining for the community we left in Minneapolis.

If there were one thing we wish we could make happen, it would be for everyone who's ever said, "What's the big deal, it's just coffee," to sit at the judges table at the USBC or at the cupping table for "Coffee of the Year" or "Roaster's Choice" competitions and experience for themselves the best our industry has to offer. 

Not to mention the increasing awareness (and thankfully, demand) for sustainable coffees as well as the worldwide community that is doing all it can to support sustainability while at the same time, working to bring even better quality to your cup.

We know the good people reading this post aren't the ones saying or thinking, "It's just coffee."  But y'all have friends and colleagues who do.  You know where to send them to change their minds.

Congrats again to new USBC champion barista Kyle Glanville of Intelligentsia, who not only impressed the judges and audience with his skills, but who is also just one of the most unassuming, friendliest baristas working the trade today.

More to come in the days ahead on what we learned.  But for now it's back to the shop to make sure everything is in one piece ;-)

USBC Semi-Final Day

Sadly, neither John nor Sonja made it through the prelims.  Both gave good performances and finished under time.  But "good" isn't enough here.  And maybe "great" isn't even enough given what we've seen the past two days.

We were surprised at some of the people who didn't make the semis.  Of the performances we watched we thought Clancy Rose from Austin and hometown favorite Peter Middlecamp were shoo-ins.  Both really understood their coffees and presented with a passion that was as good or better than anyone else on stage.  Both kept neat stations and both had what seemed like creative and well presented signature drinks. 

But you can't taste the coffee from the cheap seats.  We're guessing that in both cases it must've been an off day for the coffee that kept them out of the semis.  We hope that they're not discouraged as from our angle, both are major credits to the trade.

The semis will begin in about an hour.  Belle is going 16th out of the 25 remaining, which means somewhere between 1-1:30pm 2-2:30 Pittsburgh time we believe.  You can follow her performance (and everyone else's) on the live blog feed.

USBC/SCAA Live Blog Site Now Running

Here's the link for the live blogging from the USBC. If you'd like to follow along, Sonja will be on stage Saturday at approximately 12:19pm and John's turn goes around 2:37pm.

USBC T-minus 1: Taking One for the Community

Hi.  This is Rich writing from Minneapolis at 2:45am.  Despite my best efforts to drown out all the espresso I drank earlier today during judge's calibrations through copious amounts of wine, beer and port, I'm still wide awake.  And I'm still tasting the amazingly awful shot that Chris Owens pulled for me around 4:45 this afternoon during USBC judges' calibration exercises.

Before you criticize me for publicly calling out a specific barista for pulling a ridiculously awful shot, you should know that that was Chris's job at the time - he was instructed to be wildly inconsistent in order to help us judges recognize bad shots from good.  And it takes some major talent to be able to pull a shot on demand as bad as the one he created.  And Chris was up to the task.  If you drank what I drank this afternoon, you'd swear off espresso for the rest of your life. 

Fortunately there were some good shots being pulled as well.  But when you have a truly horrid shot, it stays with you... for much longer than you'd like.

LIVE from Aldo Coffee

We hope you caught the live feed from Aldo Coffee on KDKA's "Pittsburgh Today Live" this morning (Thursday), with our MARBC Champion Belle Battista interviewed as she (along with Sonja and John) take off for Minneapolis for this weekend's 2008 United States Barista Championship.

We'll link to the  video when it is available,but we are very proud of Lauren and Sonja, as well, who were were showing off their skills during the broadcast.