With double the number of participants, the Become a Barista competition was off to a good start in its second year. Seems the teachers and students acknowledge the enormous value in the mentoring and feedback from coffee industry professionals and the opportunity this competition gives students to showcase their skills.
Firstly, we thank our sponsors for coming back again to support the competition – Paul and Tanya Licina at Blue Sky Coffee for hosting the event and providing the beans, Alex Milosevic and the other dedicated staff at Blue Sky for all their help, Andrew Dickson and Jean-Paul Sutton from Veneziano Coffee and Paul Holiday from Coffee Education Network for being awesome judges, Geoff Michelmore from Espresso Mechanics for bringing in the machinery and Dairy Farmers for the milk. Prizes were once more donated by Brent Deller from BaristaTools and us at Coffee Education Network.
NOTE: Everything else went well, but we had a ‘camera fail’ on the day, so the photos are a bit blurry this year. Better these than none, we decided!
We also thank the teachers for the myriad of things they do to get their students to the competition day. And we thank the students who performed various tasks to ensure the competition ran smoothly and on time – runners, timekeepers, score keepers, work station managers etc.
The schools participating were …
- AB Patterson College
- Browns Plains State High School
- Calamvale Community College
- Grace Lutheran College
- Northside Christian College
- Runcorn State High School
- Varsity College
- White’s Hill State College.
With interest from a few Gold Coast schools, there’s already talk of having additional competitions for Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast schools next year.
Lastly, a big thank you to the students who gave it a go! Many were clearly nervous but did well nonetheless. As well as the overall winner and runner up, we decided this year to also give recognition to the highest technical and sensory scores.
The winners were …
- Milli Ross (Grace Lutheran College) – overall winner
- Micah Gibson (Northside Christian College) – runner up
- Brittany Harris (Browns Plains SHS) – highest technical score
- Caleb Reis (Grace Lutheran College) – best espresso (sensory)
- Caleb Reis (Grace Lutheran College) – best cappuccino (sensory)
- Milli Ross (Grace Lutheran College) – best signature beverage (sensory).
It was obvious the judges feedback from the previous competition had been taken quite seriously with students now using heavier hand tamps rather than light-weight plastic ones or the tamp on the grinder. They were also purging and cleaning more routinely and there was more emphasis on getting the right texture through swirling the milk and foam in the jug.
It was also lovely to see quite a few students had prepared menus with descriptions of their beverages. And some were engaging a little more with the judges. It was also noted that more attention had been made to preparation and organisation of everything beforehand, with considerable thought going into their overall presentation.
Once again the Become A Barista competition was a fun-filled learning experience for all – especially so this year when heavy rain hit suddenly, extractions started to drip and some quick adjustments had to be made to the grind. As every good teacher knows, some of the best learning experiences are when something unexpected happens at the worst possible time.