Seven bright and breezy students from schools across Brisbane’s southside participated in the first 2019 Become A Barista. The best performance of the day was by Ella-Louise Merrigan from Calamvale Community College. That’s her with the big smile in the centre of the image above. Staged at Tim Adams Specialty Coffee in Salisbury, we thank Jon Laker and Jace Victor for setting up the space to ensure the day flowed well with no malfunctions or mishaps.
Judges were Jane Barry from Tim Adams Specialty Coffee, Taylor Heslop, Brisbane’s roving coffee consultant and Paul Holiday from Coffee Education Network. Here they are hard at work with the scoresheets.
Highlight of the day was that all signature beverages were finally free of milk, cream and sugar – a goal we’d been working towards to bring them in line with industry trends for barista competition. The students had clearly put more thought into the flavour of the Tim Adams beans and selected complementary flavours to create seven distinctive signature beverages. Well done everyone!
The students and their teachers from the four schools were …
Calamvale Community College
- Ella-Louise Merrigan
- Ella Nolan
- Saige Amos
- Leah Cremen (teacher)
- Tom Bishop (teacher)
Emmaus College
- Patrick Turner
- Andrew Carter (teacher)
St Francis College
- Michael Cunningham
- Nicholas Brown
- Jodie Brown (teacher)
- Sam Webb (teacher)
Sunnybank State High School
- Navvab Schaaf
- Erin Garbutt (teacher)
Here they all are – along with a couple of proud Mums …
Participants are assessed on the technical and sensory aspects of making three beverages – an espresso, a milk coffee beverage and a signature beverage. Here’s a snapshot of each performance.
Saige Amos
Navvab Schaaf
Patrick Turner
Ella-Louise Merrigan
Michael Cunningham
Ella Nolan
Nicholas Brown
Prizes for the winners and books for all participants were donated by Coffee Education Network. And the winners for the first of the two 2019 competitions were …
- Best performance – Ella-Louise Merrigan
- Highest technical score – Ella Nolan and Michael Cunningham (a tie)
- Highest sensory score – Nicholas Brown
- Best espresso – Ella-Louise Merrigan
- Best milk beverage – Ella Nolan
- Best signature beverage – Saige Amos
Thank you to the teachers who prepared the students for the competition and for the jobs they did on the day with cleaning the workstations, timing of shots and performances – as well as calming a few nerves!
We also thank the industry professionals who conducted the training day on the competition format and helped raise the bar for milk skills and signature beverages this year – Dale Pollard from Grinders Coffee, Woolloongabba, Filip Leon from Blackboard Coffee on the Gold Coast, Lucas Marciniak from Common Coffee and Taylor Heslop, freelance coffee consultant. Also to head judge Paul Holiday for the fine job he did this year with organising the competition and with calibrating the judging, collating the scores and getting reports and prizes out to the participants.