Home Barista Competiton

The Dublin Coffee and Tea Festival is drawing ever nearer, with the event taking place on Friday 12th September to Sunday 14th September at the RDS. Totally Dublin is proud to be the sponsor of the inaugural Home Barista Competition which takes place during the Festival, with heats and a final between the 10 best home baristas. The Home Barista Competition works on a similar format to the Irish and World Barista Championships, where contestants are asked to make an espresso and a cappuccino on a standardised machine under strict time constraints. These are tasted by a panel of judges who judge the contestant by certain criteria. The first prize for the winner is this absolutely outrageously brilliant Sage Barista Express (worth about €700) from Harvey Normans:

To enter the Home Barista Competition, the main qualification is that you are not a professional barista! Next you have to download the entry form here – and don’t worry it’s free to enter – and mail it to us at events@totallydublin.ie

Entrants to the Home Barista Competition to win some fantastic coffee-related prizes from each of our experts – training classes, cupping sessions, lovely beans.

Below you’ll find some top advice from a selection of the city’s best baristas. Now get brewing!

Check out our first full interview with the experts – Roark Cassidy from Joe’s tells us competitors all about how to pick their beans.

Everyone who enters the Home Barista Competition is in with a chance of taking part in a Cupping Session with on Thursday 28th August with Roark.

Colin Harmon, 3FE:

If you were to give one piece of advice to a Home Barista when making an espresso from an espresso machine, from a professional’s perspective, what would that be?

The three most important things with espresso are cleanliness, accuracy and taste. You need a ridiculously clean machine to start with or you’re not even at the races. Then you need to be on top of your numbers in terms of temperature, dose, beverage mass and extraction yields but none of that counts for anything unless you’re constantly tasting. Your palate is the most valuable tool you have in making espresso but its easy to lose sight of that.

Peter Sztal, Cloud Picker Coffee:

If you were to give one piece of advice to a Home Barista when gearing up for their presentation, from a judge’s perspective, what would that be?

Know and respect the coffee you’re brewing, Try to practice as much as you can, not only the drinks and execution but the way you handle yourself in front of the audience and judges. Get the basics right (correct vessels, correct equipment, station set up, etc.) so you can focus on perfect delivery. Barista competitions are a place where knowledge and passion collide! Above all try to relax and have fun, it’s important to see you being confident and enjoying yourself.

Ferg Brown, Roasted Brown:

So, Ferg’s top tip for the would-be barista on the making of a beautiful cappuccino would be…

It’s simple really: you create a nice whirlpool in the pitcher with the wand just below the surface of the milk so all you can hear is a nice soft high pitched hissing. Bring the milk up to 120ºF for optimum sweetness and carefully close the valve without disturbing the beautiful milk you just created. What you should have is a silky smooth surface that looks something like wet white paint in a can. When pouring, don’t be shy but don’t be hasty, keep the tip of the spout a good 2.5 inches from the surface of the espresso and pour at a steady, consistent rate. To get some micro foam out for art, bring the spout closer to the espresso and the white will appear on the crema, do this sooner for cappuccino and later on for lattes…and later again for flat whites!