The Final 6

World Barista Finalists – The top 6 are starting from 12pm on Friday the 15^th (Australia 8pm)

Don’t miss the action, live stream it! There will be some very tough competition coming up and, while you’ll miss the most important criteria of actually tasting that fabulous coffee, the video is up close and right into the coffee – you can practically see the nervous tension from each of the competitors!

Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood

Colonna and Small’s -  United Kingdom - 11.45

Miki Suzuki

Maruyama Coffee - Japan - 12.15

Raul Rodas

Paradigma Coffee Roasters – Guatemala - 12.45

Colin Harmon

3FE (Third Floor Espresso) – Ireland - 1.15

Fabrizio Sención Ramírez

Cafe Sublime – Mexico - 1.45

Stefanos Domatiotis

 Taf - Greece  - 2.15

Brewing Up the Top 6

The newest member to the World Championships is the Brewers Cup. After two days of competition, the top 6 were announced as follows:

Anthony Benda

Canada - 12:05

James Bailey

United Kindom - 12:25

Andy Sprenger

United States – 12:45

Matt Perger

Australia – 13:05

Christos Loukakis

Greece – 13:25

Robert Gruber

Austria – 13:45

The WorldBrewers Cup competition highlights the craft of filter coffee brewing by hand, promoting manual coffee brewing.

In this Championship, competitors prepare and serve three individual beverages for a panel of judges. The Championship consists of two rounds: a first round and a finals round. During the first round competitors complete two coffee services – a compulsory service and an open service. For the compulsory service, competitors prepare three beverages utilizing whole bean coffee provided to them by the competition in a 7 minute presentation time. For the open service, competitors may utilize any whole bean coffee of their choosing and must also accompany their beverage preparation with a presentation in only 10 minutes.

Tune in at 12-2 at the live stream (8pm-10pm Australian time)!

The Top Tasters

Fresh from the exciting revealing of the cups, the top 8 cup tasters have been announced, with the top 4 moving onto the finals!

Place	Competitor	Country	Cups Correct	Time
1st	Georg Branny	Austria	7	7:34
2nd	Cory Andreen	Germany	6	6:55
3rd	Kim Ossenblok	Spain	6	7:29
4th	Tassos Moschopoulos	Greece	5	3:52
5th	Donovan McLagan	South Africa	5	4:03
6th	Jose Francisco Castro Tenorio	Costa Rica	5	7:25
7th	Christophe Rubino	France	4	6:07
8th	Luis Gerardo	Guatemala	3	5:36

The CupTasting top four from the semi-finals have progressed into the final round, which starts tomorrow Friday the 15^th at 1:30 Vienna time (9:30pm Australia). Check out how the world best do it live!

Cup Tasting Top 10

After round one of the cup tasting competition, the results are as follows with the top 8 progressing through to the semi-finals:

Place	Competitor	Country	Cups Correct	Time
1st	Georg Branny	Austria	8	6:47
2nd	Tassos Moschopoulos	Greece	7	3:06
3rd	Luis Gerardo	Guatemala	7	3:50
4th	Donovan McLagan	South Africa	7	5:00
5th	Kim Ossenblok	Spain	7	5:28
6th	Christophe Rubino	France	7	5:43
7th	Cory Andreen	Germany	7	5:45
8th	Jose Francisco Castro Tenorio	Costa Rica	7	6:47
9th	Kalle Freese	Finland	7	6:51
10th	Cinzia Linardi	Italy	7	7:22

              

The WorldCup Tasters Championship is probably less promoted than it should be. The competition is set out so that it awards the professional coffee cupper who demonstrates speed, skill, and accuracy in distinguishing the taste differences in specialty coffees.

Coffees of the world have many distinct taste characteristics, and in this competition format the objective is for the cupper to discriminate between the different coffees.  Three cups are placed in a triangle, with 2 cups being identical coffees and one cup being a different coffee – There are 8 triangles in total.  Using skills of smell, taste, attention and experience, the cupper will identify the odd cup in the triangle as quickly as they can.  While it sounds easy, some coffees may be different in the sense that it is the same bean just roasted by different roasters, or even just from different altitudes at the same plantation. What makes this more difficult is the flavour saturation the coffee has on the palate, as such as the cupper tastes more coffee, the harder it is to distinguish.

While it’s probably not the most entertaining thing to watch, as people are racing against the clock, you can still live stream it from 12pm Vienna time on Thursday the 14th (8pm Australia time) – the revealing of the cups is always the most suspenseful! 

WBC Semi Finalists

Complete running order for WBC 2012 Semi-Finals, starting from Thursday at 11am local Vienna time (7pm local Australian time)

Live stream the action, or check out the archived videos if you missed it!

11:17 Raul Rodas

Paradigma Coffee Roasters - Guatemala

11:36 Coen van Sprang

Lebkov & Sons - The Netherlands

11:55 Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood

Colonna and Small’s - United Kingdom

12:14 Per Nordell

Åre Kafferoster - Sweden

12:33 Philipp Meier

Independent - Switzerland

12:52 Matija Hrkac

Good Food - Croatia

1:11 Fabrizio Sención Ramírez

Cafe Sublime - Mexico

1:30 Colin Harmon

3FE (Third Floor Espresso) - Ireland

1:49 Stefanos Domatioti

Taf - Greece

2:08 Ricardo Azofeifa

Costa Rica Coffee Institute (ICAFE) - Costa Rica

2:27 Miki Suzuki

Maruyama Coffee - Japan

2:46 Daniel Mendez

Viva Espresso - El Salvador

Day One of the WBC

Day one of the World Barista Competition is well underway. Today, competition wise, is all about the baristas. With 54 countries having their representatives competing for the glory and the title of the World Champion the schedule is tightly packed. Starting off at 8am Vienna time (Australia is 8 hours in front, so it’s started at 4pm local time for us), the competitors go back to back for two days straight, finishing at 5pm each night.

For the running list of all competitors check out the World Barista Championship website, or the Day 1 and Day 2 schedule links are right here.

Aussie Craig Simon is first up on day two (tomorrow, Wednesday the 13^th). Local time he’ll be on at 4:15pm sharp, so don’t miss him – live stream all the action!

Other Aussie competitors Fred Lullfitz and Matt Perger are also on tomorrow. Cup tasters will be from 10am-3pm, and the Brewers Cup will be from 12pm-4pm.

I’ll surely be watching all the action, so I’ll keep you all updated as the results come in.