How and When did you first move into this business?

I’ve been involved in Hospitality since I was 15 working in my local hotel in the Scottish Highlands. I started to focus on coffee after moving to NZ and in 2013 became a Barista Trainer for a local chain of specialty cafes. After a few years of competing I was approached by Flight Coffee and joined the team here.

What motivated you to become a competitor as long as you’re so busy in your company?

I’m a big believer in competitions as a force for personal and professional development. I think you learn something valuable every time you compete, so it’s important to make time to grow – even when you’re busy.

Do you had any coffee mentors or you just roll on base on experience and self-learning ? and which one is better in your opinion?

I’ve competed with and without mentors before, but the times when I’ve performed the best have been with coaching. It makes any training more effective, because you have an extra set of eyes on each performance, help with setting up and cleaning up, etc. The process of improvement becomes much faster. It’s also important to have constructive criticism right through your training – When I work by myself, I tend to go so far down one path before showing anyone where I’m at. Then when they suggest improvements, I might have to change quite a lot of what I’ve already spent a lot of time working on. When you have another person or people as a sounding board, you can get yourself to those good ideas with a lot less wasted effort.

Where did you get the idea of competing in coffee ?

I entered my first competition because I had far too high an opinion of my skill set! I signed up a few weeks before the competition and had no idea what I was getting into – I didn’t know the rules, I didn’t know what I was being scored on. I came dead last, but it really opened my eyes to how little I actually knew about the product that I worked with every day.

what did you learn of the competition? why are you competing? It’s works for what? Why you wouldn’t be a judge?

I learned that I had a long way to go before I could call myself a coffee professional, and I’ve continued to compete to prove to myself that I’ve progressed on that path. I’ve avoided judging in the past because I know how much pressure there is on judges to perform well too. I’m still a little wary of considering myself an ‘expert’ after my first time competing – I’d hate for my first time judging to go the same way! But ultimately, I also enjoy the atmosphere backstage at competitions and having the time to connect with the other competitors, which you can’t do so much as a judge.

As a cup taster and roaster, you can make lots of challenges for yourself to keep the consistency stable, is it possible? how the cup taster competition helped you in this business?

As a roaster, consistency is the highest goal for me. It doesn’t matter how good one roast of a coffee is if I’m not able to repeat it. We now have three roasters on our team, so it’s more important than ever that we maintain a high degree of consistency across our roasting – We have strict protocols to ensure that the three of us are operating in the same manner and achieving the same results. Since we started more focused practice around Cup Tasters triangulations, we’ve all become more adept at spotting inconsistency between batches, which makes us work even harder towards eliminating those inconsistencies.

what did you do to find the difference in the those 3 cup at 8 session with a lot of different algorithm? What was your personal method? What did you focus more on it?how you controlling your stress on the stage?

I think the easiest way to control stress is being prepared. You should have practiced so much that you’re almost bored of doing it by the time it comes around. For Cup Tasters we started with very easy triangluations once a week. Once we were confidently getting 7 or 8 right, we made it harder. By the week before the competiton we practiced multiple times every day with incredibly difficult triangulations (tiny variations in the cups, different roasts of the same coffee etc.) When I started tasting the coffees at the national competition, I couldn’t believe how easy it was in comparison and my nerves disappeared! If you’re worried about doing it in front of a crowd, get some friends in to watch you practice.

Whole sensory process and cupping is a bit different in compare to cup taster competition , what do you think and how you can connect them? (For example maybe somebody is really good in cupping and calibration but cannot be good at cup taster competition)

There’s definitely a difference in how you need to process the sensory information that you’re receiving. When I’m cupping, with each slurp, I’m focusing on an individual attribute of the cup such as flavour, or acidity, or body and assigning it a score based on a mental database of every coffee I’ve ever tasted. I’m also trying to accurately describe the qualities of that attribute based on a personal library of sensory experiences. For Cup Tasters, with each slurp I’m taking a mental snapshot of the cup and holding it in my mind then comparing it to the next cup. You’re using the same data but in a different way. I think for some experienced cuppers it can be hard to turn off that part of the brain that’s performing that deeper analysis which makes it difficult to make a quick decision. I think there’s also something about the pressure of being timed that affects people’s peformance.

if somebody tells you that imagine you can do whatever you want like a dream to design a coffee competition, what do you design? Do you have any idea about it? Did you think about it before? What kind of competitions do you like to have?

I’ve thought about it occasionally and we’ve designed small things to run as in-house competitions for our customers. I think the ideal format for me is something that tests knowledge, service and ability on a level playing field – I love the Barista Championship format, but it definitely favours those with access to the most exclusive coffees, and who can afford the time to dedicate to training – which is not something that every barista has. I’d probably design something a little more democratic, that really tests the skill that a barista uses every day. Something like Coffee Masters is pretty close to ideal in my mind.

As a finalist explain your opinion about these words:

First competition:

Your first competiton is both the most important and the least important one you’ll ever enter. Most important because without it you’ll never compete, and least important because it’s basically just a tryout for all your future entries.

Team:

The most important thing. No one wins by themselves. You don’t need a huge team, but you need a dedicated team. A person or people you can rely on will push you further than you can go by yourself.

How many times will you read rules and regulation before competition?

as I know most of the competitors lose a lot of points because they don’t read the rules properly.I never stop reading them! I have a printed and highlighted copy of the rules on hand at all times whenever I’m training or coaching – Even for competitions I’m familiar with. They’re they key to everything! It’s like being given the questions you’re going to be asked on a test ahead of time.

I always believe in the competition process you must enjoy the journey like when you practice, chatting with the teams, passing the level to the final and even the announcement moment, how was it for you?

If you’re only competing to win, then you are going to be disappointed with anything other than 1st place. I’ve seen people get very angry with themselves or at judges when they don’t do as well as they expected, and it just seems very at odds with what is supposed to be a celebration of excellent coffee. My advice is to focus on the process more than the result, because it’s the process of preparing for the competition that makes you more knowledgable or more skilled, not a trophy. I was a little disappointed not to make the Finals for the World Cup Tasters Championship this year, but when I consider how much my palate has improved over the course of my training, I’m incredibly proud of what I was able to achieve.

After you advanced, what is your favorite part of competition?

I enjoy the buzz backstage and talking with other competitors more than the competition itself – If I’m not competing, I’ll often MC the event, so that I still get a chance to do that!

which competition is your favorite and why?

I like them all really! I like that the results for Cup Tasters are so cut-and-dried. You either get it right, or you don’t. There’s no subjectivity in the judging. But with that, there’s no room for creative expression so the other competitions have that advantage.

some Technical question:
How do you analyze and describe acidity and sourness?

In terms of analysis, I focus on the physical sensations on my tongue, and how my saliva glands are responding. For descriptions, I try to rate intensity on a high-to-low scale, as well as a qualitative descriptor (sparkling, bright, etc.). Where possible, I’ll try and identify the specific acidity (malic, citric, etc.) or at least assign a real world facsimile (gooseberry-like, , etc.)

Light roast or medium roast, which do you prefer and why?

It’s hard to say. I think often those terms mean different things to different people. What I would say is I prefer the roast that delivers the most sweetness without compromising acidity or promoting ‘roasted’ flavours. That will also depend on whether I’m roasting for espresso or filter.

Are you cup and score coffees separate by origin and process or you mix them and cup blind?

Usually we’ll cup by origin when we receive a lot of pre purchase samples, but we’ll cup blind and in a random order – So all the samples might be from Colombia, but region and process will be mixed up.

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Agronomy is the science of plant production for food, fuel, and fiber. The work of an agronomist encompasses plant genetics and physiology as well as meteorology and soil science. This very simple video from USAID agency working in Uganda will give you an impression of some of the areas that an agronomist oversees. In coffee-producing countries, agronomists operate in the field, working directly with coffee farmers and cooperatives.

They are trained to monitor the terroir of a farming area. Through careful measurements, agronomists can advise farms on practical farm management, helping them achieve the correct levels of soil drainage and teaching them how to implement preventative measures against soil erosion. They can help farmers achieve a sustainable planting density and choose the right fertilizers, and they can offer advice on how to prune and manipulate their trees. Agronomists are the interface between the body of scientific research and the local terroir. To better understand this important practice, we talk about it from other point of view :

hoping to understand more about the science of agronomy. When you are making decisions as to what to plant on your farm or you are advising others on what to plant, what measurements do it need to help more is experiment with varieties that have not been planted at the farm. They are in a kind of Coffee Garden, where we have many varieties expressing their phenotype (meaning, how the plant adapts to the environmental conditions, and how it expresses itself in the cup profile). By now, it really like the behavior and taste of Red Bourbon, Yellow Catuai, Pacamara, Geishas, Rume Sudan, and SL28. All of them are yummy, per se, and we like how cup profile is expressed As a result, it takes years before we set it. For example, you should know know Pacamara and Yellow Catuai will not need too much shade, [which is required] by Bourbon, SL28, and … the Geisha varieties we plant at the farm. the elevation, as our cupping trials have shown, has an impact on the level of acidity. also, we have seen that some of the additional flavor attributes will be more pronounced if the coffee flavor is modulated at the wet-mill. For example, Pacamara and Yellow Catuai will score 84 to 85 points if I do a traditional full-washing process.

But if I do an Orange Honey (semi washed) for Yellow Catuai, or a Natural for a Pacamara, the flavor will explode in my mouth. The Bourbons and Geishas have more versatile cherries; their expression will be great as Natural, or semi-washed or a Double Soak process that is a Full Wash variant, on which prefer is the cherries before depulping, and then give its normal dry fermentation. choosing varieties is something that comes down to microclimate, or the right variety perform well across a range of different conditions in the same terroir, but don’t forget Climate and Edaphic Factors absolutely contribute to the final flavor quality of the bean. Bourbon and Geisha will always express better in a forest environment; Its architecture is full, meaning that their leaves will dress completely the plants. Plants with no stress will always express their happiness in the cup profile J Coffee plants, any variety, will express more crispy flavor when a source of water is close to them. I think mist will help the coffee plants to maintain more fresh temperatures, together with good shade, their system is more stable and with more equilibrium; remembering that this system is found at the forests from Ethiopia where the coffee genetics comes from. Also, coffees grown at higher elevations have a higher chance to score high at the cupping table than coffees grown at lower elevations. 70 percent shade determine normal level of shade , It is very important to handle the architecture of the tree and avoid this kind of parasite.

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