Barista

The Barista is the person who makes your beautiful tasting coffee, hot & cold.
A true Barista should have acquired some level of experience in the preparation of, espresso based coffee drinks. Further than that the barista’s knowledge of coffee blends, varieties, equipment, latte art and more is down to the individual to gain. The art of coffee is far more than just a cup of black liquid.

Since the year 2000 the World Barista Championships are held annually. It has been dominated by Scandinavian barista’s except for 2003 when Australian Paul Bassett took the prize.
Since then it has been won by Klaus Thomsen from, guess where…… Denmark. In 2007 it was held in Japan and won by James Hoffmann from the UK.

Last year it was held in Copenhagen Denmark, which you think that the scandinavians would have some home advantage, well what ever advantage they had didn’t help, as the closest they came was 4th.
Irishman Stephen Morrissey took first place with Australian David Makin coming second.
Australia is certainly gaining a good reputation for excellent coffee.

This year the world barista championships are being staged in Atlanta Georgia USA, from April 16th-19th. There are over 50 competitors from all around the globe. I’m not sure if the world barista championships will be streamed live over the net, but you will be sure to find some great you tube video of the event.

It can be very frustrating when it comes to drinking a good coffee. For a start the average cost of a cup of coffee is $3.50 Australian dollars and for that you could end up with a cup of black water, or a very nice crema, full bodied coffee.

There lies the problem, the art of making coffee. That’s why I participated in a barista course last year, see my post chef to barista. At least now we can sample good coffee in my chef’s kitchen.

Should there be a price increase for good coffee made by the Barista? Obviously a good coffee for me, could well be a bad coffee for you.

It can be the said of the same with food, if you learn from the best and gain knowledge in your field then you would have an understanding and a palate for good food-or we do hope so-thats why chefs that train with great chefs go on to enjoy success. Just look at the amount of chefs that have made it big time from the Marco Pierre White kitchen’s or the Roux Brothers brigade’s and more so the Gordon Ramsay empire.

Anyway, enough rambling, back to the art of coffee. I have found some good information here at this coffeegeekblog which I recently came across. Also you can find plenty of video footage from barista’s at You Tube

[edit] See also