Behind the top-scoring performance of Michael Phillips in finals of the 2010 World Barista Championship, held on the 25th of June at London’s Olympia Exhibition Centre, was a single idea: how can the processing of coffee beans influence a barista’s calibrations?

That may at first seem a snore of a technical question unlikely to electrify the spectator stands. Indeed it was the efficiency and flair of this fluid barista from Intelligentsia Coffee in Chicago – and possibly also his white suspenders – that rocked the Olympia’s great steel and glass ceiling, not dry tales of wet processing. But with his bean-splitting challenge, Phillips was taking the most fundamental responsibility of a barista – brewing and serving a coffee to its best advantage – to a new level. And the judges, sadly the only ones in the arena who got to sample the espressos, cappuccinos and signature espresso drinks prepared in competition, were sufficiently impressed to award the USA its first World Barista Champion. [Read more...]