Eindrücke (impressions) zu "Roasters and Baristi"...

Text by Nora Smahelova

Barista from 23/07/11 until 24/07/11 and chief of the barista - and championship training

[30/07/11]
Steffi asked me to write down my impressions of the time I spent in Hamburg during the Roasters&Baristi Project. Honestly, I hate writing and in addition, I decided to do so in English, in order that more people can understand it, so it`s really a challenge for me….

A really grey not ending blanket of clouds covered the ceiling of Hamburg when I arrived there, maybe it`s the real end of July weather in the north of Germany I said to me while I was waiting for my compagnon Björn at the main station in Hamburg… This weather stayed unfortunately the whole weekend, but it didn`t unhinder us to have a great time… Saturday was our first shift, we arrived quite early after a very short night, because we met some friends and baristas and spent half of the night together….

The Trific restaurant is located in the heart of Eimsbüttel, in the Eppendorferweg…. The rain caused that the street was completely empty, you could almost hear the raindrops falling down on the wet street… Pingo and Steffi opened the door to a quite small, but really nice place, dominated by light blue and white colors in combination with wood, a mixture of old things and modern inventar… On the right side we admired the huge well equipped brewbar, on the left the espressobar and on the shelves so many different espresso & filter roastings …
Hmmm, it was a great perspective for the coming days, isn`t it the dream of every coffee enthusiast to have the possibility to work with all this equipment? I felt like a small girl standing in a toy store, but here a had the possibility to play with everything and nobody was saying don`t touch it!….

The rest of the weekend we tried out all the coffees, all the brewing methods and espressos… It was a great opportunity to have the possibility to work together with baristas, who came from all over Germany, we worked together with Eric from Mannheim and Kyle from Konstanz or New Zeeland… We exchanged our experience and judged one another the coffees and played around with the mojo… And when we weren`t making coffee we freaked around and had a lot of fun! Although we didn`t have so many guests because of the weather, we could enthuse the few people, so they stayed quite long and got fascinated by the product coffee… The evenings we spent all together and joined other baristas from Hamburg, hanging around on parties, there has been a great party in Elbgold for example, because the rest of the beer (2500 bottles approx) from the german barista championships had to be finished!
The days were long, the nights also and we also had a very nice midnightroasting with Pingo, because he had to roast for his clients in the night, because he spent the whole day at Roasters&Baristi. This turned into a “Mitleidroasting”, because we all have been really tired, but happy and crazy about coffee!!

On Monday and Tuesday the real work started for Björn and me. We gave two barista trainings together and I also had a preparation meeting for the championships with very engaged and talented baristas… It`s all about rules and as long as you don`t really understand the rules as a competitor, you could needlessly lost points in your evaluation… Our barista training was concentrated on taste, because we had attendees with very different backgrounds: roasters, professional baristas, home baristas, shop owners, people working for the coffee industry… It was a great pleasure to get to know so many different people and to talk together about the common denominator coffee. For us it was really important that they learn to talk about taste, that they jump over their shadow and try to find words for the brown delicious liquid in their mouth, where they taste it, how they taste it and of which remembrance they think while tasting… It`s like to read back all different taste experience you have collected during your life in your hidden database in your head, it`s all about to make aware what you taste…We also tried to explain how you can influence the taste. It`s in the hands of each member of a long chain, we concentrated on the last chain link: the barista and his equipment….

In total it was a great event and I´m really happy that I had the possibility to be a part of it and I hope that this was just the beginning of a new phase in Germany. It was great to get to know so many new people and it was a really good platform for new contacts. It`s funny, I talked to coffee people from Berlin; I really find it strange that we didn`t have any contact here although we live and work in the same city , but now I`m sure we will exchange us in the future ;-) This project shows that it`s really necessary to cooperate with each other, all of the included persons will reach more and we are all interested in rising the coffee quality in Germany! If we work hand in hand and reach a better exchange, we will also reach a bigger consciousness for coffee at the end consumer!
I really admire the organizing team of Roasters&Baristi and the endurance and engagement of Steffi&Pingo! Chapeau!! Unfortunately I had to go back to Berlin to return into my daily routine…

Text von Stefan Bracht, Kaffeemuseum Berlin
Röster von R&B und Teilnehmer der Barista-Schulung

[24/07/11-25/07/11]

Beide Tage waren sehr interessant für mich, ich habe viele Gespräche
geführt im Trific und ausserhalb. Wir waren im Elbgold, im KopiBa, im Kaffeeraum und haben nette Leute hier und da getroffen.

Bei Beginn des Workshops hat sich schon eine leichte Koffeinvergiftung angekündigt, jedenfalls war ich froh, dass Andreas auf der Rückfahrt das Steuer übernommen hat. Ich fand es total nett und auf eine sehr sympatische Art, wie Nora den Workshop gemacht hat, sehr gut und verständlich erklärt und dabei überhaupt nicht abgehoben. Aber das wusste ich ja schon , ich wollte unbedingt am Workshop teilnehmen.

Deshalb noch einmal an dieser Stelle: Vielen herzlichen Dank an Nora und Björn, die den Workshop geleitet haben, Pingo und Steffi, die mit einem wahnsinns Engagement das Projekt auf die Beine gestellt und mit ihrer menschenfreundlichen Art allgegenwärtig und hilfreiche Ansprechpartner sind und die Teilnehmer des Workshops, die als nette und aufgeschlossene Mitschüler die Tassen mit mir geteilt haben. 

Text von Erna und Kerstin

Barista von 20/07/11 bis 21/07/11

[20/07/11]

Unser Tag startet um 6.00 Uhr in Münster...roestbar-kaffee natürlich an Bord, wir sind müde, aber zum Glück genug aufgeregt und happy auf unseren Tag in der schönsten Stadt im Norden! Wir sind pünktlich, hungrig und wissbegierig...Pingo ist zum Glück schon am Start, und hat Franzbrötchen dabei, juhu! Die Sonne scheint und wir trinken erst mal einen Cappu...es geht los...nichts passiert...dann kommt Kyle, wir überfallen ihn mit Fragen und Fragen und bekommen auch jetzt um 18.00 Uhr immer noch tolle Antworten, thanks a lot!
Erna ist der Star des Tages, als “kleine kurze Schwarze” und auch live in Farbe, so süß!!!
Kaffeefreude und Kaffeefreunde ( incl. Ernas Familie) haben uns den Tag unvergesslich gemacht, freuen uns auf morgen - Feierabend!

Text by Kyle Greenwood

Barista from 19/07/11 until 22/07/11

[19/07/11]

I really didn't know what to expect. Until Monday, I'd met precisely zero of the people involved, and had absolutely no idea about the northern German coffee scene. All I knew was that I had to get to 170 Eppendorfer Weg and find 'Pingo'.

Had a limbless midget in a wheelbarrow rolled on up, claiming to be Pingo, I wouldn't have been in a position to argue. And what, if anything, lay at 170 Eppendorfer Weg? Google Maps Street View was inconclusive. It could've been a badly-painted vegetarian restaraunt, an ice cream shop, or a staircase.

It was of course none of these. Instead, it is a small restaraunt called 'Trific', the brainchild of Oliver Trific. Very cute place. White walls, wood floors, occasional tasteful pastels... straight outta Shoreditch.
And, in place of a rather unfortunate small person, was instead a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, early 30's bloke with angelic patience (a requirement, when conversing with me in German), and a penchant for giving away beer.
We went inside, craft beers in hand. The interior is split into two, the espresso section, and 'the lab'. This is not a place for children. There's enough glassware to start a meth-lab. Three syphons, a chemex, various filters, some kind of giant cold-press contraption that looks like it belongs next to the fairy-floss stand at a fair. 11 different roasteries were represented, some of which had several varieties available. There's probably 15 coffees in total.

For those readers who have worked in a coffee shop, especially a busy one, you will no doubt have heard somebody at work- usually the most hungover- sarcastically exclaim: 'This job would be perfect if it wasn't for all the customers'.
That is exactly what happened to Philip Meyer, my co-barista, and I. It was as if we'd broken into the Barista Christmas Department Store at night, and had 8 hours to play without interruption. I think we sold about 20 coffees all day. The rest of the time was spent with us gathered round the halogen lamp; telling lies, trading war stories, and trying some genuinely stunning coffees in various forms. Rarely does one have the opportunity for direct comparison afforded by this project.
Never, in my case. I was most impressed with Backyard Coffee, of whom I've wanted to try something for a while, but unfortunately don't have access to the trust fund required. It's expensive. Really expensive. 125 euro/kg, I believe. It's not worth that much, but it is gorgeous coffee.

Try it as an espresso. Or a French press. Or a Chemex. Or a Syphon. Or all of them! I did.