Just doing some shameless, self promotion. This is a video I made for JOUR1112. It's on the Australian Latte Art Champion, Scott Luengen.
I realise it's a terrible piece of journalistic work BUT it explains what the competition entails and also contains some nice latte art. While Scott was not in the right place to do his award winning patterns (I may have bothered him at work!) you can check out his routine from the Australian Latte Art Championships.
Fresh from the social networking sphere, the 2013 spots for the world barista championships have been announced!
It's the first day of the 2012 World Barista Championships in Vienna, where the world's best baristas, brewers, cup tasters and roasters will be fighting out to progress through the different rounds and into finals day on Friday. The first battle, however, has already been fought with the bid to host the 2013 world competitions being announced only a few hours ago.
The most exciting news is that Melbourne, Australia, will be host to the 2013 World Barista Championship and Brewers Cup in May next year. The result, while not surprising in view of the great competition that was this year at the Melbourne International Coffee Expo, Australia did take the bid from hot contenders Puerto Rico... needless to say, I most certainly will be making an appearance there next year!
The Latte Art Championship, Coffee in Good Spirit, Cup Tasting and Roasting Championship will be hosted in France in June next year, a big difference from Seoul, Korea this year in November.
For now though, let's keep our eyes on this years competition with Aussies Craig Simon, Matt Perger and Fred Lullfitz representing their country this week.
To keep up to date with all the action, don't miss the live streaming on the WBC website!
After my
previous blog on latte art I went on the search for some fantastic latte art. The
first website I came upon was Rate My Rosetta. While not world champion
material, they do show some awesome rosettas, tulips and hearts.
Though what
I really wanted to see was how the world’s best do it. Chris Loukakis, the 2011
World Latte Art Champion, has some amazing videos on Youtube showing how he
does what he does best.
Looks easy doesn’t
it? Wrong! This stuff is extremely difficult and the World Latte Art
Championships is one of the main reasons latte art has taken off and latte
artists have progressed into doing some crazy patterns.
Let’s just
look at how far latte art has progressed in 4 years. Jack Hanna, the 2007 world
champion, was doing some truly cool patterns at the time; rosettas, fire
breathing pac-man, tulips, hearts and mixes of the basic patterns in regular
cups all quickly and at a world standard level. But comparatively to Chris’s
video before we already see a vast difference.
So what are
judges in the championships now looking for? Each competitor must do a latte, macchiato
and designer pattern which are marked (with multiplier weighting) as follows by
the visual judges:
Two patterns
and presented picture identical (0 if no picture presented) (0-6 pts) x 2
Contrast
between ingredients (0-6 pts)
Harmony,
size and position among patterns within cups (0-6 pts)
Successfully
achieved level of difficulty (0-6pts) x 2
Visual Foam
Quality (0-6pts) x 2
Overall
appealing look (0-6pts) x 4
On top of
this, baristas need to have technical excellence to substantiate their latte
art skills, which constitutes one third of their final mark!
I could
watch these latte artists for hours on end still in awe, but let me show you
one last picture.
This was
done by the 2011 and 2012 Queensland Latte Art Champion – a 13 part tulip. A Queensland
competitor, who consequently went on to be 3rd in Australia in 2011,
is already pulling out patterns which the 2007 world latte artist at the time
could not produce, let alone with the contrast, symmetry and positioning in the
cup. The world of latte art is surely looks bright, especially for the
Australian baristas!
