Kansas City Blog

How did you get involved in barista competitions?
One of the owners, Jeff Taylor, has been judging barista coffee competitions around the world for several years now. He brought Tim Wendelboe out to our roasting facility in Topeka. Tim was the reigning world barista champion at the time.

So when you first saw Wendelboe, did you immediately think, this is what I want to do?
I was a little intimidated by this guy from another country with an accent. Tim's a suave guy and all the girls like him. I respected him. At the time I had a mohawk and was wearing all grungy crappy clothes and really didn't care about how I looked. I really had a low self image. I see this guy and he's dressed in really nice clothes, standing up straight. He knows who he is and what he's doing and has all this confidence. That made me aspire to be something more.

How long did it take to get good?
My third year of competing is when I started to be what I consider good. Being good is based on understanding and knowing the coffee that you're using, why you're using it, and the flavors that are involved. It comes down to the beans that are used, the roasting going on and to the skill of the actual person whose making it.

What was your signature beverage drink?
At the Nationals this year I made an espresso “wine” and cheese pairing. It's not a wine and has no alcohol, but it's espresso and juices all together in a wine decanter, prepared with a truffle cheese from Better Cheddar. It was a great flavor pairing because it was really bright -- sweet acidic on the wine, and the truffles were really earthy and kind of musky, and a heavy flavor with the cheese and the cream.

Is there a lot of doing something no one's seen before? A lot of extremes?
Guys had big tubs and they'd dump all their espresso out and go through it with their hands to find anything that didn't look quite right – if the bean looked a little off, they tossed it because that will create an inconsistency with your flavor. That's an extreme that's probably justified. Different teammates I've worked with have gone to different extremes. A guy named Aaron Duckworth, who used to compete with me, got to the point where he knew Mr. Shatto of Shatto Dairy and he actually got his own custom blend of milk-fat percentage. Nerdy extremes, where a guy in the National reproduced an Ethiopian coffee ritual in front of the judges. There's one fellow who made a beer out of espresso one year -- ground up the beans, made a wort onstage. He couldn’t ferment it, but he put it in a nitrogen charger and charged it.

Sounds like you've made a lot of friends doing this.
I know people all over the country and all over the world, just because of competing in coffee.