I feel a bit awkward writing this post. Not being in coffee as a profession leaves me feel like I’m standing with one foot in and one foot out half the time. I feel it is important to say that this is not the fault of anyone within coffee, but just a personal hangup, the result of still not knowing a lot of people outside of my local crowd and only knowing more through blogs and twitter. But I feel that as I was there and as I participated (I even wore the t-shirt) that I should at least give some sort of broad feedback on what I thought about the first year of the competition.
Another clarification (I fear this post may be riddled with them) is that many of the opinions expressed here (certainly only my own etc…) were all formulated before I even took part in the Irish heat, here I refer specifically to the structure of the competition as a whole. The only recent opinions are those which relate specifically to problems that arose over the weekend. Also if I sound like I am stepping on people’s toes, I apologise, that is certainly not the purpose of this post. I did as a whole enjoy the experience over the weekend and I do understand the difficulties and surprises that are thrown at people over the course of an event. We can only learn and move on from these problems, regretting them is somewhat pointless.
I am a bit fearful that the opinions here will be unpopular, especially after hearing people’s thoughts on the competition over the past but they are mine. But having participated in the event and invested a lot of work and time to preparation over the past two months, I feel it is my right to do so. I have also directed events (not quite so large, but of 700-800 people) so have some idea of the issues that can arise and potential ways of solving them. So anyway, page break here so you can get out while you still can.
First off, I keep hearing this mentioned, suggested and thrown out for discussion in many places, so I am looking at no one person here, but I think the idea that in a few years the Brewer’s Cup will become part of the WBC instead of the sig drink section is ill thought out. I would use stronger words but I fear they may offend rather than stir discussion. Placing a brewed coffee segment into a predominantly espresso based event, would in my opinion devalue the efforts that have gone into promoting brewed coffee. Bringing together the espresso and brewed components may work, but not without a major structural adjustment to the WBC which goes further than switching out the sig drink for something else. It’s an issue of balance and as people who love great coffee, balance should mean an awful lot to us. This is an opinion I have had since before I took part in the Irish competition lest people think I am simply trying to defend my turf here.
A second point on this, despite changing trends in the speciality coffee shop market, not all baristas make brewed coffee, many still focus on espresso. Why would we make a competition whereby we would possibly unnecessary or unwanted skills on a barista? I want to promote brewed coffee as much as the next guy, and I would love to see more in shops, but is pushing it in from the competition necessarily the way to go about it. Moving away from the discussion on the WBC though (and when I say WBC I am referring to the regionals as well) as I have little involvement in this side of things, all I will say is that it would be great to see the events come together temporally, rather than being separated as with this year, but that is a minor point really.
Second, I think that the first round of the Brewer’s Cup should remain as is. Is it a lottery? It can be. Is it a test of skill? It can be. Is it interesting? It can be. This year was the first year that the competition ran so of course there were going to be hiccups with the formula. Competitions were organised at the last minute and I really have to take my hat off to the organisers of the national competitions for doing such a great job in such a short time. It is hard to evaluate the effectiveness of a rule when that rule has been hampered by problems and issues that directly affected the rule. Time for bullet points
- First Round Coffee – I feel that this was something that the Irish competition did exceptionally well and where the World competition fell down. The first round coffee, in my opinion, should be forgiving. It should be a coffee that requires little work to get a good cup of. We have all had brews like this, coffees that were incredibly hard to get wrong. I say this because in my experience, coffees like this are also exceptionally hard to nail. Anyone can make a good cup because they are so balanced and easy to brew. Exceptional brewing of the coffee though takes skill, time and effort. This year’s first round coffee for the world competition (or the second coffee that we were given) was not this kind of coffee. Is was dark and incredibly far away from the taste experience that the competitor’s were used to. Was it a challenge to brew? Certainly. Was this necessarily good though? I am less convinced, especially when all the finalists got through with scores of 73. It was a tough one to dial in and a tough one to taste and left many people feeling disappointed. It was even hard to learn something from the brewing of this coffee, primarily due to the fact that the competitors rarely if never use this kind of cup profile.
- First Round Coffee (2) – This was a nasty one as I believe we had to return the original first round coffee due to a shortage so there was not enough to run the practice round and the competition round. Shit happens, and it wouldn’t be the first time that something bad happened in an event, even long running events have hiccups like this from time to time. It doesn’t take much, taking the numbers at 500g per competitor for the practice and the first round we only need 9kg of coffee (17 competitors this year I believe), not a ridiculous amount, especially considering that each competitor was asked to bring 2kg of coffee in the rules.
- Practice Time – 30 minutes of practice time is too short. Especially with the pressure to produce an amazing cup and the fact that people are probably using grinders that they are relatively inexperienced with. I was lucky to have had access to one of the competition grinders back in Ireland before the competition so I started knowing a rough setting. Others weren’t so lucky in this respect. Also having the practice time on the brew bar really complicated things. There was plenty of space available, there was so much empty space around it would not have been hard to set up 17 competitor tables. Have a table with two of the exact grinders to be used in the competition (we ended up using different ones on the brew bar for practice for the final) and 2 water towers. Give competitors a 250g bag of coffee and 2-3 hours to practice, stagger then half and half to make things easier even. Then move the grinders to the competition area and start the first round. 250g is more than enough to dial in a coffee I feel and 2-3 hours lets you come back and forth, let cup profiles sink in, palettes rest and generally not feel rushed. It is not our coffee so we do need time to work with it.
- Practice Stations – Each competitor should have his/her own table. Sharing stations was a bit awkward and I had nightmares about knocking over other people’s gear while brewing.
- A small touch that would be nice might be a comparison chart between different grinders that people might have experience with. So when it comes to getting on the competition grinder people would have a vague reference point.
- Competitor coffee – Asking people to bring 2kg of coffee seemed excessive, especially considering how much was used in the batch brews during the finals. I brewed from the bag used for my batch brew all of the following day and still had enough left to send how to a friend. Never mind the kilo I passed along to Gwilym for the lever machine. This was a scary investment for me considering I didn’t have a potential sponsor for the coffee when I ordered it.
Overall, we cannot forget that the Brewer’s Cup is a competition and that people are going to be disappointed. Sometimes the first round might seem like a lottery but there are things that can be done, both on the organisers side and the competitors side that can ameliorate this problem. The Brewer’s Cup overall does not cost an awful lot of money, an investment of time preparing and getting better at brewing should be a reward in itself not a chore. Not making the finals is always disappointing, especially when you invest in your coffee and presentation, but does that mean we should change the first round to make people happy? This might sound harsh, but it is a competition. I have trained months for sports only to be knocked out in the first round of a competition, it is disappointing but a part of competition.
Honestly I would be reluctant to change the first round of the competition when we still do not know how it would run if it were to go smoothly. This year competitors had such a small amount of time to prepare for the first round blind. There are little annoying issues this year that I feel if we worked at fixing them our problems with round one may disappear. When brewing coffee and we are not satisfied we change a single variable or as close to a single variable as we can. I have never gone after an awkward first brew that wiped the slate clean and completely change everything, I troubleshoot and try again. Isn’t that the essence of the science we all seem to love so much nowadays.
Thirdly, the finals. There is not much that I would change about the finals to be completely honest. One issue I did have, was that competitors had to share grinders, water towers and stations for practice. This was a necessary evil because the brew bar did have to function, but it was also a little irksome, especially with the pressure of dialling in for the final. Next year I would like to see a separate practice area for this, just as in the first round. Whatever about brewing a good cup in the first round, you have to get your cup profile spot on for the second or you end up looking like an idiot.
I would like to see a clarification on rule 24.1 of the Brewer’s Cup guidelines. For those of you that don’t know this deals with the issue of giving judges aromatics alongside the coffee. Due to ambiguous wording I was allowed to present the judges with beans and grinds of the coffee I used as I felt this was a necessary part of the coffee experience. Other competitors may not have known this. Beans and grinds are a very different thing than giving the judges a spoon of honey and then saying there are honey notes in the coffee. The beans and grinds are the coffee and using them can allow you to breakdown the cup profile for the judges and help them to better understand the coffee and in turn to enjoy that coffee more. I would like to see a clarification either way. Also serious respect to James and Luca (the only two performances I actually had time to see) for doing nothing but talk over a cup of coffee and making it sound incredibly interesting.
I also believe that there was an issue with timing and when competitors time was started. For me this should be from the moment they start talking to the judges, but I believe that everyone was timed from their brew time rather than their presentation. Once again a clarification would be great. It is the first year and sometimes rules are hard to see until they are put into practice, so not a complaint, merely a suggestion.
Other than that, I believe that the people on hand running the event (be that responsibility expected or not) did an amazing job. There were hiccups, but that is to be expected with any event, especially one in its first year. I had a fantastic time and thoroughly enjoyed every minute. If I have offended anyone is this post I do once again apologise, that was not my intent. In my experience, the event does not make the event, the people do. Last week was one of the most amazing experiences of my life and it was due to the quality of the people there.
Tags: Brewer's Cup, Coffee
