"Welcome to Five Senses Coffee"

This year there was a host of fresh competitors and judges at the Victorian Barista Championships and some stella performances. From our roasting team Ron Ngo delivered a brilliant performance to take 2nd place in the Barista category. In the cupping Ben Bicknell took out 3rd and Ron took 4th place. It was disappointing to not take a title, but big congratulations to Craig Simon from Veneziano coffee who won both the cupping and barista categories and Jen Marks, also from Veneziano coffee who took out the latte category.

Ron featured a Panama Geisha 50% and Kenyan Karatina 50% and themed his performance around the changes in taste as the coffee cooled. For the espresso the Panama was upfront on the initial sips and the Kenyan came though on cooling. These coffees complimented each other in different ways at different temperatures. Ron was clear, had great connection with the judges, showed heaps of passion and you couldn’t help but love the guy when he was on stage! We were all proud to have him there and look forward to seeing him compete at the nationals. Maybe his just loves being the wild card!

The cupping was host to 16 competitors and Five Senses was going hard to take the prize. We had seasoned cupper and previous champion Ben Bicknell, our new support guru from Seattle Jacob Ibarra, previous barista champion Caleb Podhaczky and previous barista nationals finalist Ron Ngo! What a line up! But it wasn’t quite enough to beat Craig Simon who took 7 out of 8 cups in the final. The final cupping table was host to only Guatemalan and El Salvador coffees. The differences were only in roasting or by farm location. It was a fun competition and the ole cupping cliché still stands — take the time and get the 8 cups, you’ll win.

Melbourne is host to the National 2012 championships in May next year. Be sure to keep up to date with the other state competitions coming up by visiting www.aasca.com. Thanks to all the Vic team for their efforts in keeping the Five Senses as a strong name in competition.