Last weekend in Portland, Oregon baristas from around the country gathered to battle for the title of United States Barista Champion. Among them were PT’s own Robin Seitz and Chris Weber. Chris had to start in the preliminary round, which consisted of 51 baristas vying for one of 15 spots. He had a great run and advanced to the semifinal round, where he joined the 10 regional champs including Robin. The level of the competition this year was fierce and amazing.

Several people were scoring higher than anything ever recorded. Among them were our guys, earning 74 and a whopping 75 points out of the possible 77 in the technical category. Chris Weber has the highest technical score in the history of the competition, even accounting for changes in the scoring system. We are extremely proud of Chris (and Robin as always!) for showing working hard to be the most consistent barista he can be.

Technical scores are based on the barista’s command over their coffee and their equipment. The judges are looking for them to consistently be performing actions that not only achieve the tasting coffees, but also show care and attention to the equipment as well. These concepts are not hard to integrate into daily work in a café. They just take training and an understanding of how each action impacts the end result. At PT’s, our training program is geared to help each trainee understand the details and produce a great tasting product. If you are interested in more training, please call 888-678-5282 or email at holly@ptscoffee.com

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 10:03 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.