SCAA/USBC: posits, bulleted
April 9, 2006 – 6:08 am
clover’s spent, wet puck
for an added twist of weirdness, check out tonx’s photo of the clover booth at the precise instant that this blog was snapping the above picture.
all you need to know about the u.s. barista championships is that it’s 5:22 a.m. and this blog — long immune to the nocturnal wiles of caffeine — is wide awake. i blame clover, the beguiling new black box that puts an uber-fresh cup of regular-strength coffee in your hands within a minute, delivering a mouthfeel and taste character so extraordinary you just want to stand around and watch the infusion piston lazily “cupping” your coffee for you and swilling entire jugs of various favorite single origins.
two hours after drinking drip coffee, one’s mouth tends to feel as if you’ve gargled rancid skillet wash. two hours after drinking clover coffee, the pointed character of whatever you last ingested is still hanging around, and the mouth feels completely coated. as far as my ladye is concerned, clover makes the leading make-out coffee available on the market today.
i could ramble on, but this device has been panted after and heavily lauded in all sorts of places, so i’ll pull up. clover: easily the scaa convention booth with the most feverish buzz.
otherwise, some general observations gleaned from my first national show:
* don’t ever, ever enter a barista competition and publicly apologize to your parents in the middle of your (frazzled) performance. don’t make a specialty drink without espresso in it. don’t amiably show the technical judge some cool uses of your espresso machine group head for which the manufacturer did not intend. i could go on…
* the ‘third wave’ groupies — particularly east-coasters — are even more clicky than i thought. there are a couple individuals, however, who seem extraordinarily humble and genial. like tonx, whom i met briefly.
* greenville has one passable coffee joint — but it totally depends on who you get to pull your shots. i learned this from moe, a former third-place finisher in the southeast regional competition who pulled some nice shots of toscano for me at counter culture’s booth. from now on, i go to the congaree road location.
* barista magazine, which has been incidental to some good-natured ribbing on this blog, is producing a better product with fewer resources than i could have fathomed. a paid staff of two. writers who are almost all volunteer. impressive.
* the la marzocco gs3: drool. enough said, except that i could seemingly fit that thing in my parka pocket.
* admission to the exhibition. insane. not worth it, in my opinion. i know $60 isn’t bad by trade-show standards, and some trades don’t even admit those not in the business. but this blog found $60 a price it was willing to pay for the one-time experience only. won’t be doing it again. to walk endless aisles of syrups and double-caffeinated coffee gimmicks and thermos variations ad nauseum, it simply isn’t worth it. there should be an amateur/visitor rate. or, there should be a separate rate to watch the competition only. but for a business that’s being pushed in many ways by home junkies, the admission was just goofy. had i not experienced clover, the mood would have been much darker on the drive home.
returning today with the bioluminescent cypriot. more later, including video.
Caught up on your reporting. You’ve stayed up far later than myself to get your updates out, good job. I was thinking about the ticketed event price and you have to think a few years ago the public wasn’t even allowed to the event. However, to mitigate cost if you would have volunteered for one class you’d have a free pass and it’s an amazing way to meet people.
If you’re on the floor today I’ll keep an eye out. Today is my day to roam.
-a
didn’t see you andy — though i did make the acquaintance of andy s, of the new pressure-sculpting gadget in the gimme! booth.
you make good points about the price of admission. i still think they could go further. volunteering hadn’t occured to me as a cost-mitigation strategy. cool.
Hmmm… I agree with a lot of stuff posted here from your visit to the SCAA, but couple of things:
1. If it were open to all HBs for free, the pros wouldn’t be able to get much of anything done. I’ve been in the show biz for 20+ years and have never seen a trade/public show truly work well for exhibitors (or trade). As it was we actually bumped into a retail customer of ours from Pittsburgh who shelled out the $60 just cause they really like coffee.
2. East Coasters “cliquey”… if by East Coasters you mean Raleigh-Durham, NC, then perhaps. Seemed that way even to some of us from PA/NJ/MA. But Counter Culture did host a great party. If there were any signs of other cliqueyness, that would prolly be cause we were openly rooting for some of our own to represent in the finals. Didn’t think any of us would win the whole thing though.
You’d have to live here to understand. Every time a customer (or potential competitor) comes in from the Pacific region, the conversation invariably starts, “Hi, I used to live in Seattle, so I know EVERYTHING about espresso.”
It doesn’t matter that the person never pulled a shot in their lives nor steamed milkfoam. It’s just always the same conversation. So excuse us for appearing somewhat insular.
For the record, we’ve always liked the Stumptown folks and wish they had a bigger presence in Charlotte. Of course they won’t ship to Pittsburgh… yet.
i appreciate all the feedback … where’ve you been?
i’m not saying HBs should get in free. i’m saying there are any number of creative ways to provide admission in a way that is obviously geared to this growing segment of the industry — instead of making them pay the fee that is clearly set up for a business owner. a discount for HBs who actually contribute to some joint booth, perhaps … a discount for HBs who just want to walk the floor … a different rate just to see the competition … a more defined volunteer system that allows folks to get in cheaper … all just random ideas. again, i think this industry is different from others, because HBs are pushing the envelope in so many ways. but as mark prince has noted in his round-up on coffeegeek, the gurus seem extremely slow to embrace any indie wave of change.
i don’t want to name names on the third wave insider thing. but some folks (and i’m not talking about you or anyone in NE that i know) seem intent on slapping one another’s backs, talking to the same people, echoing each other’s themes, telling each other how cool they are, etc. in general, these seem to be the people with seattle-like “insider” status who operate on the east coast. other well-known people — like tonx, whom i met — are uber-cool, humble and quick to share the love.
it’s not for my lack of trying. seriously, there are well-known coffee names to whom i’ve introduced myself, and the conversation pretty much consists of a blank stare and a swift attempt to move back to one’s group of buddies. not exactly spreading the gospel …
and i wonder if this love of perpetually sending shout-outs to one’s favorite people isn’t one reason that the third wave message isn’t spreading faster — because these people in prime position to do it like their insular club of like-minded groupies just the way it is. no need to get out of one’s comfort zone or risk one’s “cool” movement becoming mainstream. just a thought.
BOTH of these issues you responded to seem possible ways in which the industry as a whole and the third wave in particular shoots itself in the foot. there are, i believe, more expedient ways to make this high-end coffee thing work. instead, the movement seems to be idling along in the “adolescent” stage.
that’s just me…
Where’ve we been… heh. I’m the minority owner and honestly not a very accomplished barista – so my business partner (and wife) hates it when I open my mouth (or type as case may be) on anything ‘barista-related’. She does CoffeeGeek, but not the blogs.
It’s taken about this long to really start to accept that maybe we can add value to the conversation. It can be an intimidating industry for relative newcomers. It’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that someone could learn to do a decent rosetta in less time than it takes to fully comprehend the language and shorthand used on the barista boards and blogs.
Although we’ve only been at this under two years, we’ve been trained, taught and scolded by some savvy folks including Ellie, Amber and Doug from Intelly, Nick at murky and local hero Bill Swoope. While I may suck behind the bar, we do everything we can to develop great talents to work for us and be good citizens in both the coffee and local communities. I don’t think they would be as supportive if our hearts weren’t in the right place.
We’re just now arriving at the point where we think we have somewhat of a clue. Our kids have received a ton of encouragement and assistance in the events where they’ve competed and attended. We’ve picked a ton of brains and we think we’ve made good choices along the way. But we still have a shitload to learn compared to all y’all who’ve been living this for a few years and we’re smart enough to know we don’t really know. We’re a great shop for Pittsburgh. We’d probably be mediocre in Portland or Seattle.
You talk about Chicago being an island… From Pittsburgh it’s an 11 hour drive to Intelly, 4.5 to Murky and about 6 to Gimme! in Ithaca… nothing else of high calibre around (although we’ve heard Chris DiFerio is working with a Cincy indie). We do have Bill Swoope in town, who’s a phenonmenal guy and a huge help, but no local baristi – pro or home – like the folks we find here, on the forums and at the shows.
So we’re trying to reach out for whatever nuggets we can glean… we’d seen your blog before, but now we can start to relate to it, so we’ll be around more often. Hell, we’ll even sub the feed…
As an aside, we love the photos you, Tonx, the Blue Bottle guys and many of the other bloggers take. We were wondering if there’s a correlation between the photo quality and the years of barista work… steady hands and all that. My photos are blurry… as are my rosettas.