more than 60 points is the margin by which “sexyfoam” three-peated as champion. still as humble and aw-shucks as ever. cracked up the judges with his banter, poured milk into his cappuccinos from both hands simultaneously, dropped his extra coffee on anyone who would take some, took a detour to greet old friends, walked out with another trophy. that’s lem — a fusion of both crowd-friendly pure smoothness and judge-friendly pure skill. and he used established, no-nonsense coffee — counter culture’s la forza espresso blend, and the ethiopia shakisso. the latter, carted home to the blogbar this evening and pulled in tiny quantities on the old-school lever machine, reminded us of malted rose hips.

this blog was so busy minding the mastery and watching his utterly worry-stricken lady that we failed to take copious notes. here, in photographs, is your champeen and your duly proceeding finalists. corrections/elaborations welcome in the comments.

lemuel's way with a grinder is, more or less, to tell it what to do with powerful forehead mind-vibes, deity-like.

lem: “in the hole, i say. the spro goes IN THA HOLE.” lem’s girlfriend: “argh.”

lem concocts a drinkable thing. lem’s girlfriend thinks, “argh.”

lem pours his drinkable thing. has plenty of time to think idly, “hope the girlfriend isn’t too ‘argh.’”

2nd place: atlanta’s chandler rentz blew through his routine with a gruff assurance and elevated his shop (aurora coffee) and coffee company (batdorf & bronson) in a hurry. notable: flash-lit orange peels over his signature beverage. major piece of flair for chandler.

3rd place: octane coffee’s dale donchey was demonstrably disappointed with third place. he expected to win. notable: a signature beverage that not only included tobacco-smoked blood orange, it also took something like 11 minutes to make in round one. and he still finished within the 15-minute limit. gratuitous, this blog says.

4th place: greenville’s shannon hudgens might have easily tiptoed into third place if he had told the judges to stir his signature beverage — a drink, as it happens, that kept drawing raves. a sipping chocolate without a bit of chocolate in it, only espresso and mascarpone cheese. at what point, this blog wonders, is shannon no longer the darkhorse wunderkind of the southeast, but rather a thoroughbred heavyweight? to, ah, mix some metaphors.

5th place: a crowd favorite, that dustin mattson. all snappy fingers and redneck-hipster-geek and “let me just caress this mixer while i’m waiting.” also of octane, but recently of greenville. also with a fiancee full o’ nerves who is TRYING TO LOOK CALM.

6th place: dave delchamps, of 1000 faces coffee, had more niceness than kipper the dog. without question a classy, independent barista who happened to roast his own coffee. a two-time finalist with a trail of admirers.

the southeast’s motley posse, circa 2010. this was before anyone had won yet and knew whom to hate/love/glare at.

noted: this image does not denote cause and effect! the blogson, having rooted for his blogfather to pour winning latte art, ultimately resigned himself to the reality that doing so means we may. never. leave. and thus deposited himself on a table, next to some random empty.