UPDATE

So I’m through to the final 8. I’m so delighted to go through to the finals, but annoyingly can’t relax yet as the challenges of retooling the performance for tomorrow become clear in my head. A number of things went wrong in my prep and in my performance; stupid things like forgetting milk and not having the grinder switched on. The result was a more nervous thud, who possibly used old milk giving me horribly bubbly milk for the capps. In addition, the bar wasn’t lighted as much as I’d have liked, so I didn’t actually see the poor quality milk till I started pouring the capps. I don’t normally use the milk provided but the sponsor this year was the milk I was going to use anyway so I didn’t really consider I may end up grabbing an old one or how the light of the last few days might mess it up.  Tomorrow I won’t make the same mistake. I regretted also not bringing my grinder of choice, the WBC spec Compak into the latte art comp yesterday as after 15 minutes practice and the shots in my prep, I didn’t feel as comfortable or in control as I did in practice last weekend.  Tomorrow I only have 15 minutes practice on the machine, (which is a daft idea seeing as today there were 27 competitors and tomorrow only 8 ) and will spend most of this time dialing in the grind, and familiarising my self with the speed of the compak as opposed to the super jolly I used for the latte art comp yesterday. I wasn’t as nervous as I feared I may be, but I did sweat a lot (samples given on request), and I perhaps didn’t smile as much as I’d have liked to. That said, I finished in time, and the sig drink turned out well. I’ll give a more detailed post on my performance tomorrow, but to give you the jist; Coffee Collective Coffee (which has honestly brought my number of great wholly tasty espressos up to around 15), and a sig drink using almond milk, chocolate malt and espresso. I’ll write how I developed the performance and some of the challenges we faced, but for the moment, I just wanna give my thanks to Jen, Tim, Karl, James, Anette, Family, son, and the good aul boys at Coffee Collective, I really am just beard and belly without you. 

update

I thought it fit to write a post relating to coffee, and one short enough some of you might actually read it. But I feel the need to update you all with what I’m up to first.

You may or may not know, that I don’t work for Bewley’s anymore, and have been keeping myself busy with travel, and doing training work for the past few months.  I’ll be moving to London in the new year to start a new job, but for the moment, I find myself with more time than I’m used to and wondering what to do with it.  You see normally, I’d be back in college right now but see now I’m all graduated; I happily no longer dread September in the same way.

So with this new time, I’ve decided to throw myself into some new things; namely learning to drive, cooking, and deciding to enter this years Irish Barista Competition.  This year seems right for me, as I doubt I’ll have the time again, and as well as that, the reason I stopped entering was always due to college demands, so I suppose its only right to give it a go now.

Going back into competition will be particularly odd for me. I entered the first two competitions held in Ireland, coming twice both times. Anyone who witnessed both performances, can testify how considerably shocking I was. In fact even seeing me through the cloud of stray grinds was an achievement in itself. I remember serving double shot capps one at a time, using coffee hours out of the roaster, and a sig drink around 7 ingredients strong. Since then, since I stepped back and started judging and helping out at competition, I’ve come to realise just how clueless I was back then. I’ve now been lucky enough to attend two WBC’s and have felt great regret each time that I wasn’t up there representing my country (which, so we’re clear, is not the UK).

I’m very nervous about putting myself under the same sort of self examination that I give others in training. I know what I expect from myself, and what I’d like to communicate, but whether I’ll pull it off under pressure, is of course a whole other kettle of fish. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to talk about it here, in case I give a poor performance and lose any good cred I had. But I reckon its the preparing for competition thats almost the most important part of the experience, and hopefully I’ll share some of that here. (wouldn’t hold your breadth though)

I’m gonna post another short post shortly, on lattes, and it will be marvelous. Expect more announcments soon, some most of you already know and some none of you!