"Welcome to Five Senses Coffee"

Five Senses’ own Ben Bicknell has been on an epic adventure from the cafes of Montreal, to the rigorous challenges of a week’s training at Coffee Lab International and the exhilaration of judging at the World Barista Championships in Atlanta. Here’s a peek at his adventures, couched in an inimitable Ben-style …

Packing for this trip, I ended up kneeling on the top of my suitcase, vainly straining to tug the zip that last couple of centimetres to get it closed. Heading from snow in Canada to the sunny tropics of the Guatemalan dry season meant that I could pack both the Hawaiian shirts and the stylish, fluffy earmuffs.

Weather aside, my travels were focused around the World Barista Championship (WBC) in Atlanta, my second WBC. The first was in Bern, Switzerland, back in 2006. So on this, my second foray to the US, I was tripping over myself with excitement; not only had I been given the honour of judging for the first time at the WBC, but I was also going to catch up with my good friend, trainer extraordinaire and third place getter in the 2008 Australian Barista Championship, Jennifer Murray, who has been luxuriating in Toronto, Canada for the past nine months.

As often seems to happen in the dynamic and exciting world of coffee, this trip grew in bursts, like some caffeine fuelled mutant, from one ‘Hey, why don’t you come visit!’ to another. It has developed into a truly epic, mind-expanding undertaking. Jen and I have spent the previous several weeks traversing the ultimate in end-user cafés and the world’s finest baristas, through to the intricate, raw reality of the coffee farms; a true seed to cup journey.

Arriving in Montreal, Canada, Jen picked me up from the airport. A delay leaving Melbourne meant that all my connecting flights went their own merry way — with not enough time for me to check in, but apparently enough time for my luggage to be whisked away into the black hole of airport bureaucracy. Arriving in Montreal without any luggage, I huddled through the following four chilly days, in desperate need of reinvigorating coffee.

Stop one was Myriad Café, Scott Rao and Anthony Bender’s new project, in downtown Montreal. We’ve been offering Scott’s book, ‘The Professional Barista Handbook’, for sale for some time on our website, so I was really keen to check out the embodiment of his techniques. Myriad is quite small, but equipped with a plethora of brewing equipment. Serving up a combination of 49th Parallel Espresso blends and Terroir Coffee as their brewed coffee, they’re certainly working with some of the best roasters in North America. With a sweet looking Mystral machine in the centre of the service bench, the vibe was low key and coffee-focused. A Yirgacheffe Konga co-operative filled the void in my stomach and did its bit to dispel the lingering jet lag. Interestingly, Myriad are structuring their prices for brewed coffees on the amount of time needed to prepare them — the Hario halogen light Syphons cost around AUD$10 each — which means that the baristas can then afford to spend some serious time talking with the customer about their coffee. Overall, they did a great job on the coffee front. Scott wasn’t there at the time, but co-owner Anthony and barista Chris were both happy to chat and recommend their favourite cup of the moment — Myriad is definitely a café to add to the worldwide list of drop ins on your next world tour!

After much huddling into the hoodie, and a strangely enjoyable meal of Poutine (a Quebecois favourite of chunky chips, gravy and curds) our second stop in Montreal was Veritas Café. Owned and run by Sam, Veritas is positioned smack bang in the centre of the tourist district of old Montreal. This works well in the summer, but means that during the winter he becomes heavily reliant on local regulars. Luckily for Sam, his genuine, friendly attitude, the wide open spaces inside the café and a great, fresh food menu keeps all manner of locals coming back. One of the first things you notice entering Veritas is the sleek curve of the Synesso Cyncra. The 49th Parallel espresso pulled out of this machine notched up another one on the charts for Montreal’s specialty coffee scene, and Jen and I spent an enjoyable few hours talking with Sam about his plans for the café and the differences in technique between Australia and Canada (and tasting the results — of course!).

Between stops for caffeine, Jen took me up to Mount Royal to see the Saint Joseph’s Oratory. The highest point in Montreal, the Oratory is a spectacular building perched on Mount Royal, overlooking the city. Climbing the 283 steps to the highest point on Easter Weekend seemed fitting, the taste of Europe was in the air, as around me I heard the first language of Quebec, French. The beautiful architecture nestled amongst grey piles of snow, lingering from the recent winter. added a slightly surreal feeling. Montreal is truly a beautiful city to visit, and I just wish I had had more time to explore the terraced houses and awesome graffiti.

After this quick visit to Montreal, Jen and I requisitioned Jen’s mum’s car and headed south towards the border of Canada. In the ridiculously short time of two hours, we traversed the snowy hills and headed down to Waterbury in Vermont, and a week-long course at Coffee Lab International.

Waterbury-Stowe is an achingly beautiful small town nestled among the mountains of the northern US. Piles of snow and a brisk wind were signs that winter was still lingering. Jen and I were at Coffee Lab to attend the SCAA Cupping Judge Course, which would stretch over an entire week and take us through a plethora of coffee and sensory analysis exercises and assessments.

Under the tutelage of Mané Alves, we worked our way through the entire spectrum of coffee assessment, from green bean defect grading, cupping triangulations, organic acids, and regional cuppings to olfactory identification exercises. It was an intense week as we were required to focus on minute differences occurring on our palate and identify and grade them. At times the cupping lab was blacked out, with only dim red lights for illumination, to make sure that we couldn’t detect any visual difference in our triangulations or cuppings.

The week long programme really increased our understanding of the connection between the green coffee and the distinct characters we were tasting, and how to categorise and communicate those characters in an international language. Between our focused coffee tastings, we made frequent stops at the Alchemy Brewery in town for some fine IPAs and classic American wings.

A couple of days into the course, I restrained my childlike delight behind a very, very thin mask of coolness as some light flurries (see, I know the tech speak!) of my first falling snow settled over Waterbury — they were actually, like, snowflakes, you know! I had another surreal ‘travelling moment’ during the week as I floated on my back in the heated indoor swimming pool, watching the snow drift down outside the glass walls. Crazy!

Coffee is truly amazing. Following the bean has led to some amazing places and people. The week in Waterbury was a technicolour sensory experience with new flavours, great coffees, terrible coffees, alpine mountains and crazy American meal sizes.

After a brief collapse from sensory overload at the end of the week, next up was our flight to Atlanta and the World Barista Championship. Landing in warm, green Atlanta, Jen and I spent a day taking in the sights, and sampling some of the local espresso at Octane. Here we were reminded of the comforting, incestuous, energetic and, above all, small cadre, of the specialty coffee world, as more and more industry faces from around the globe appeared for a quick shot of espresso or some delicious French press. In rolled Emily Oak, Brent Fortune, the Russian barista champion, the Canadian barista champ, the Australian barista champ and also the Guatemalan barista champ, Raul Rodas, who hung out with us a fair bit, discussing our trip down to Guatemala following the comp.

The café staff were all super friendly and understanding about the barrage of coffee orders, geekiness and big names and egos walking into the café. It was one of those great moments where everyone is invigorated and buzzing with anticipation. The world title is anyone’s game and everyone’s just pumped to be there and involved in this little family, who make you feel like your obsession isn’t so weird after all. After imbibing many of Octane’s fine shots, along with a couple of their equally fine beers on tap (great beer, great coffee…..brilliant!) we made our exit to prepare for the WBC judge calibration the following day.

It really was an honour to be chosen to judge at the WBC. Where else in the world do you get coffee served from over 50 countries around the world? Nowhere except the WBC. And I got to taste some! Needless to say, I was pumped to see which countries I was judging, and to meet my co-judges. Some of these guys we’ve met and watched on WBC videos for the past several years, and getting their perspective was like a rapid ‘data dump’ of judging snap shots — varied, personal and driven by an underlying passion for the industry.

The calibration day prior to the competition was a refresher of the information, techniques and attitudes that we’d been assessed on in the various world regional judge accreditation sessions. It was great to be part of this whole process, as my own involvement with developing the judging pool and support for judges in Australia has been rapidly expanding, so this was confirmation that we’re on the right track.

I finally got my judging schedule. First up was Italy, followed by India, Thailand, Spain and Croatia — a pretty broad range, including two producing countries (yes, Thailand, as I found out during their presentation, grows some unique coffee). I won’t go into detail about every performance (I’m sure there are many accounts, photos and videos out there already), but the baristas’ attitude was amazing. They all had dignity, style and a real passion to do their best, without any arrogance or awkwardness.

I really feel that the recent change in the rules for the WBC and the adjusted approach for the judges — in that it’s not an ‘us against them’ thing, but more of a joint journey, with the judges helping the baristas to present as well as they possibly can — has meant that the whole vibe of the competitions has changed. From a rigid, structured (almost robotic) presentation style, we now see much more personality, and genuine, exciting coffee-driven presentations.

The next few days were a blur for Jen and I, as we dashed from judging, watching the competitors, trawling the trade show floor, and catching up with old friends to attending courses and lectures. Some of the most informative discussions were at some of the various after parties, over a beer and a pizza, or during a hectic meeting in the hallway of the convention centre. These international coffee meetings act as a crucible and catalyst for growth.

After securing some sweet seats for the finals of the WBC, we, along with several hundred others, watched the presentations of the top six scoring baristas from over 50 countries — the UK, Ireland, USA, Hungary, Korea and Canada. Having been involved in barista competitions for the past several years, I’ve stopped forming expectations of who may or may not place. There are so many variables to a performance and, in the end, the only people ever able to judge the quality of those variables are the judges. Yes, the shot may look like liquid gold to us in the crowd, but to the judges it could taste astringent and flat. Yes, to us in the crowd, the barista waxing lyrical about their signature drink sounded incredible, but they were also looking at the crowd while they spoke, not at the judges who were assessing them.

There was a great variety of personalities and presentations in the top six, from the intense showmanship and energy of Lee Jong Hoon of Korea, to the measured, calmly analytical presentation of Michael Phillips of USA. The sincere presentations from Sammy Piccolo of Canada and Attila Molnar of Hungary, oozed with passion. For me in the crowd, the newly—crowned World Barista Champion, Gwilym Davies from the UK, was incredibly dynamic. His message came from a place many of us know well — he was impassioned, frustrated and determined. With his time rapidly running out, Gwilym checked the clock and then calmly continued at the same pace, connecting with the judges, and hammering home his message about the fleeting existence of a great espresso and his frustration with an assessment criteria which is based upon a patchwork history. Sound cryptic? That’s why I’m not up there speaking his words! I’m sure video replays of Gwilym’s performance will allow the light of reason to reach my explanation…hopefully….

With the festivities carrying on through the night, the crowd gathered for one last after party — the feeling very reminiscent of the time hanging out in Octane prior to the comp. Once again, the industry had come back together in a no-holds-barred celebration of coffee, the new world champion and spokesperson for our community, and the opportunity to mingle, learn and challenge ourselves. With a tornado warning for downtown Atlanta driving many out of the bar/bowling alley hired for the official after party, Jen and I beat an early retreat in preparation for our flight down to Guatemala City and the next leg of our journey!

Dawn came around far too early, and we groggily piled ourselves and our luggage into the taxi waiting to take us to the airport. After working out the convoluted American Airlines check in system, we assisted a number of non-English speaking coffee representatives from Nicaragua in working their way through the automatic check in process. Looking back, this was an interesting ‘shoe on the other foot’ scenario for what was about to come. With many a ‘gracias’ we oozed onto our early morning flight and took off on the flight to Guatemala.

… Don’t miss part II of the story, as Jen picks up where Ben left off, in Guatemala.