Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Steamed-milk throwdown
Judges pick winning latte art during the tulip round.
On October 23, 48 baristas gathered at the newly opened Bird Rock Little Italy to compete for bragging rights and an $840 cash prize in the latest installment of a monthly latte-art competition organized by the San Diego Coffee Network.
The network has been staging Thursday-Night Throwdowns over the past year in efforts to foment community within the San Diego coffee scene. The organization grew out of a local coffee blog started by Jessica Percifield in 2010. Last year she teamed up with Caffé Calabria roaster Mike Helms, barista Matt Barahura, and artist Jared Armijo-Wardle, who shared her interest in evangelizing local artisan coffee. The group works with sponsors from around the industry to promote events bringing coffee professionals and aficionados together.
In the process, they aim to expose casual coffee drinkers to the elevated standards of third-wave purveyors. The hope to elicit what Barahura calls the “Aha! moment,” when a drinker realizes coffee can taste significantly better than the commodified brews served by corporate franchises. While the throwdown events are nominally competitive, the feeling is mostly celebratory.
Barahura says that whenever you get a bunch of baristas around an espresso machine, “a throwdown just happens,” as they try to outdo each other drawing shapes by pouring steamed milk over espresso. He says visiting similar events around California showed him the sense of community that could exist around a city’s coffee culture, and he hopes SDCN’s efforts can bring some of that here.
Previous throwdowns have been hosted by Coffee & Tea Collective and Young Hickory, among others. Local roasters also participate by providing coffee — Café Virtuoso and James Coffee were on hand Thursday, brewing cups at a pour-over station while the contest waged around a pair of espresso machines at the other end of the counter.
To celebrate the opening of his new shop, Bird Rock owner Chuck Patton broke out an expensive and tough to get Haraaz Red Maraqah from Yemen. Patton says he is one of only three roasters in the U.S. to serve the bean.
While onlookers sipped free coffee, baristas competed one-on-one through a tournament-style single-elimination bracket. Round one featured heart-shaped latte art, round two focused on rosetta designs, and round three went with tulips.
As the bracket was whittled down, two finalists emerged: Bird Rock’s own Jacob White and previous winner Joshua Bonner, representing Ladies & Gentlemen, a roasting shop he recently launched along with his wife Hannah. In one of the closest calls of the night, the three-judge panel gave the cash prize to Bonner.
The evening concluded with a season finale: a mini bracket that saw the past four months’ top competitors vying to be named barista champion. This time, White emerged victorious. Glad to have the win in a shop he helped get up and running, White says he’s happy to be working in a business that values quality above all. He added that getting into coffee in the first place felt almost lazy, “But it’s wound up being the least lazy I have ever been.”
Here's something you might be interested in.
Steamed-milk throwdown
Steamed-milk throwdown
Judges pick winning latte art during the tulip round.
On October 23, 48 baristas gathered at the newly opened Bird Rock Little Italy to compete for bragging rights and an $840 cash prize in the latest installment of a monthly latte-art competition organized by the San Diego Coffee Network.
The network has been staging Thursday-Night Throwdowns over the past year in efforts to foment community within the San Diego coffee scene. The organization grew out of a local coffee blog started by Jessica Percifield in 2010. Last year she teamed up with Caffé Calabria roaster Mike Helms, barista Matt Barahura, and artist Jared Armijo-Wardle, who shared her interest in evangelizing local artisan coffee. The group works with sponsors from around the industry to promote events bringing coffee professionals and aficionados together.
In the process, they aim to expose casual coffee drinkers to the elevated standards of third-wave purveyors. The hope to elicit what Barahura calls the “Aha! moment,” when a drinker realizes coffee can taste significantly better than the commodified brews served by corporate franchises. While the throwdown events are nominally competitive, the feeling is mostly celebratory.
Barahura says that whenever you get a bunch of baristas around an espresso machine, “a throwdown just happens,” as they try to outdo each other drawing shapes by pouring steamed milk over espresso. He says visiting similar events around California showed him the sense of community that could exist around a city’s coffee culture, and he hopes SDCN’s efforts can bring some of that here.
Previous throwdowns have been hosted by Coffee & Tea Collective and Young Hickory, among others. Local roasters also participate by providing coffee — Café Virtuoso and James Coffee were on hand Thursday, brewing cups at a pour-over station while the contest waged around a pair of espresso machines at the other end of the counter.
To celebrate the opening of his new shop, Bird Rock owner Chuck Patton broke out an expensive and tough to get Haraaz Red Maraqah from Yemen. Patton says he is one of only three roasters in the U.S. to serve the bean.
While onlookers sipped free coffee, baristas competed one-on-one through a tournament-style single-elimination bracket. Round one featured heart-shaped latte art, round two focused on rosetta designs, and round three went with tulips.
As the bracket was whittled down, two finalists emerged: Bird Rock’s own Jacob White and previous winner Joshua Bonner, representing Ladies & Gentlemen, a roasting shop he recently launched along with his wife Hannah. In one of the closest calls of the night, the three-judge panel gave the cash prize to Bonner.
The evening concluded with a season finale: a mini bracket that saw the past four months’ top competitors vying to be named barista champion. This time, White emerged victorious. Glad to have the win in a shop he helped get up and running, White says he’s happy to be working in a business that values quality above all. He added that getting into coffee in the first place felt almost lazy, “But it’s wound up being the least lazy I have ever been.”
Comments