{"id":1130,"date":"2014-04-05T14:44:29","date_gmt":"2014-04-05T21:44:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/test.synecoretech.com\/?p=1130"},"modified":"2014-09-29T14:31:12","modified_gmt":"2014-09-29T21:31:12","slug":"prepping-for-barista-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freshcup.com\/prepping-for-barista-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"Prepping for Barista Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US Barista Championship<\/a> is an annual glimpse at the serious side of coffee. During competition season, baristas stash their well-worn aprons, don professional attire, leave behind their customers, and step into a realm of interactive expertise where executing a stand-out signature drink and forming the perfect rosetta makes them stars.<\/em><\/p>\n

Intelligentsia\u2019s Eden-Marie Abramowicz has been heading to coffee competition since 2010 as both a competitor and a judge. The twenty-three-year-old placed second in this year\u2019s Big Western southwest regional (she won that competition last year) landing her at USBC, the country\u2019s most prestigious coffee showdown. As a manager at Intelligentsia\u2019s Silver Lake branch in Los Angeles, Abramowicz trains year-round for competition and is continually seeking flavors and ideas that will translate into a memorable, fifteen-minute performance. More than prestige, she seeks inspiration at the highest level of coffee craft. Here she offers her reasons for taking the stage, and runs us through the beverage that earned her shot at a national title. \u2014Regan Crisp<\/em><\/p>\n

[T]he hardest thing about competition is deciding what you\u2019re going to talk to the judges about. A lot of my topics come from interesting conversations I have with my staff and customers. They ask questions that make me want to know more about a particular subject, and I turn that subject into a routine. It comes down to deciding how you\u2019re going to serve tasty drinks that will support the topic you\u2019ve chosen; the signature drink has to be an enjoyable recipe and one that is a further explanation of the question you proposed.<\/p>\n

My topic this year was flavor descriptors. I became interested in how they influence expectation and the overall experience customers are going to have with the coffee. When we go in and cup coffees blind, we\u2019re pushed to taste different things and come up with vocabulary we don\u2019t always use. But if someone tells you you\u2019re going to taste these three things, you\u2019re very influenced. You\u2019ll find it easy to pick out those flavors in the cup.<\/p>\n

\"UC5A3051\"To illustrate this concept at the Big Western<\/a>, I used Takesi from Bolivia, believed to be the highest-grown coffee in the world. I started by offering a lot of information about the beans. Coffee professionals can hear specs and stats and come up with expectations from there. For example, if someone says Kenya, we\u2019re automatically expecting it to taste a certain way\u2014high in acidity, blood orange, currant. The question I wanted to address was: What if it defies our expectations? Does that disappoint us? Or could it be cool and great to experience the unexpected?<\/p>\n

I laid out a tray of sixteen different ingredients embodying flavors that I felt a coffee professional would expect in a coffee from Bolivia. Before I served the judges anything, I said, \u201cI gave you a lot of information on this farm. What do you expect?\u201d And they were able to choose one flavor. I knew their decisions would influence how they tasted and what they perceived in the cup. I then took whatever ingredients they chose and used their expectations to create the final signature drink.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m seeking ideas for competition year-round. We have competition season, but the rest of the time is when I\u2019m developing my palate. I go to the farmers\u2019 market every week, to try new produce and find new flavors and ingredients like fresh dates. We all know dates as these caramelized, mushy, sugary things. But before that, fresh dates are full of tannins and are crispy and have a lot of similarities to coffee. Or finger limes, which are tiny limes that have almost caviar-like bubbles inside. They\u2019re sweet and delicious and have a really interesting texture. I look for weird things like that, and from them I pull inspiration.<\/p>\n

We have competition season, but the rest of the time is when I\u2019m developing my palate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Competing requires a lot of time and hard work. But it excites me to bring new ideas back to my staff and customers at my shop, whether it\u2019s my routine that I\u2019ve been working on\u2014which changes how I communicate with customers and how I train my baristas to communicate\u2014or inspiration I find watching other competitors\u2014the flavor descriptors they\u2019re using, their coffees, their ideas about hospitality.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s nice to be in the top six, because you get to do your routine that much more. But truthfully, if I did all this work and no one got to see it, it would still influence how I am at work, how I interact with the staff, how I interact with customers. Competing helps me think about what we do day in and day out from a different perspective. Competition makes me step back and look at our work on a deeper level.<\/p>\n

\u2014Barista champion Eden-Marie Abramowicz is also an educator and manager at Intelligentsia Coffee in Los Angeles.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In conversation with Intelligentsia’s Eden-Marie Abramowicz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":1569,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"beyondwords_generate_audio":"","beyondwords_project_id":"","beyondwords_content_id":"","beyondwords_player_style":"","beyondwords_language_id":"","beyondwords_title_voice_id":"","beyondwords_body_voice_id":"","beyondwords_summary_voice_id":"","beyondwords_error_message":"","beyondwords_disabled":"","beyondwords_podcast_id":"","beyondwords_hash":"","publish_post_to_speechkit":"","speechkit_hash":"","speechkit_generate_audio":"","speechkit_project_id":"","speechkit_podcast_id":"","speechkit_error_message":"","speechkit_disabled":"","speechkit_access_key":"","speechkit_error":"","speechkit_info":"","speechkit_response":"","speechkit_retries":"","speechkit_updated_at":"","_speechkit_link":"","_speechkit_text":""},"categories":[26,18],"tags":[264,42,59,82],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPrepping for Barista Competition - 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