A little over a month ago, I competed in the World Barista Championship in Athens.
My experience there was extraordinary. We finished 19th, and I'm really proud of our accomplishments as a team despite the many challenges we faced. But that's all part of a story that I'll share another day.
For now, I'm looking forward to competing again in the national Barista Championships. It's tempting to utilise the same theme that we did, or some version of it, given that I'm comfortable with it, and it seemed to sit fairly well with the judges at WBC.
But really, from my perspective, competition is all about pushing oneself to be better, round by round, year by year.
For example, at the UKBC heats earlier this year, I scored exceptionally well on my espressos, but quite poorly on milk drinks. I still think that the milk drinks didn't land quite on recipe given an error I made with the scales, but it still pushed us to go beyond simply accepting that my milk drink is the worst of my 3 courses, and search for a way to make a "modern milk drink" - one that completely defies the judges expectations.
So, I think I have a theme for UKBC 2024. And I think it's better than last year, but we'll see.