World Latte Art Championships

So i was kind of waiting to broadcast this information too loudly, but now that it's official, i'm happy to say i'll be representing the US of A in the World Latte Art Championships at the end of this month. I'm very excited, but VERY terrified. Thankfully, two of the best dudes ever, Stephen Morrissey and Michael Phillips, are letting me come up to Chicago this weekend and do a bit of training. Morrissey's WLAC experience will be very invaluable to me as i've only read about the details of this competition a week or so ago. I have yet to do a ful run-through.

The WLAC is quite different from latte art competitions here in the States. There's taste involved and etching... it's nuts.

In any case, I just want to promise you all i will do my best not to embarass myself, Octane, or America.

But really this is all just an excuse for me to have a beer with Colin.

I'm about 6 months to a year behind the rest of the coffee world

So yesterday i posted about Tim Wendelboe's deliciously awesome French Press technique that i saw on CoffeeGeek. Still excited about my "new" discovery today, i was talking online to Chris Owens and he informed me or, should i say "busted my balls", by telling me James Hoffmann had done a video tutorial a while ago too, and Coffee Collective before that! So needless to say, i had to go back and watch James's tutorial as well, just to see what i had missed. I guess i have some more playing around to do...

My fatal flaw is that in an effort to better my coffee knowledge i subscribe to an obscene amount of RSS feeds, but because for many months i had literally over 1000 unread posts in my reader, i missed a lot of good stuff. (On a side note, i've switched from Bloglines to Google Reader (with Helvetireader) and am now completely caught up!) My days of being 6 months behind are (hopefully) over!

The moral of the story is have a good RSS reader. It helps your coffee skills and keeps you super informed.

CoffeeGeek spreads delicious knowledge!

Like most coffee nerds, i love hearing about new techniques for anything related to coffee. I've been watching more video tutorials online recently, just so i can see what's out there. Most recently i watched the above video from CoffeeGeek, and i have to tell you, it's rocking my world.

My love for the French press has waned over the past year or so, but i'm happy to say it's been reinvigorated. This French press technique (apparently invented by 2006 WBC champ Tim Wendelboe) involves using 20% more coffee and a clearing technique used in cupping. I'll let you watch the video for details.

Danielle and I decided to test out this method to see if we could really tell much of a difference. We made a French press the "old-fashioned" way and one with the new technique, using Counter Cultures La Golandrina for both. We were a bit skeptical at first, but the proof was in the cup(s). The new technique was much cleaner. The best thing i can compare it to is if you combined the clean cup of a Chemex with the fuller body of a French press. Definitely the best of both worlds.

I tried the technique again this morning on the Ndaroini (Kenya) Microlot we have and it's was one of the best cups of a Kenya i've had in a long time. Mike (one of our new guys) said it was straight up maybe one of the best cups of coffee he'd ever had. Needless to say, I'm pretty sure i'll not be able to go back to the "old-fashioned" way for a long while.