GBCC China Latte Art Competition Nov 30th-Dec 8th 2016
My experience in China deserves more than the 2 minutes it takes to make your coffee. It was amazing. Tony and I were invited to Harbin to judge and compete respectively in the 3rd annual Global Barista Celebration Championship (GBCC). This competition features a shared focus between latte art and the flavour profile of coffee in both espressos and milk based coffee. It was a fantastic competition to be a part of and train for, as was the entire cultural experience of visiting northern China.
We stayed in Harbin, only 400km from the Russian border. It was cold! I’m talking possum socks, leg warmers, double thermals, gloves, beanie, over coat and I still wasn’t wearing enough. I guess -22 degrees Celsius will do that to you. We even resorted to testing the theory that eating ice cream “brings your body temperature down so you don’t feel the cold as much” … yeah. I don’t think that worked.
Despite the cold, we spent a fair amount of time wandering the cleanly swept streets, negotiating the chaotic traffic and taking selfies with all the locals because we were different! For example they found Mark, the barista from Uganda, fascinating due to his height and dark complexion, while I was interesting with my blue eyes. One man pulled out his massive Canon and pushed everyone else out of the frame to only photograph my face. Weird! Just weird! So was not being able to communicate with the locals. Luckily for me, who happened to be the only person there who spoke only English – even Tony with his Italian could have understood the South American boys – there was almost always someone around to translate or chat in English.
We were very well looked after in Harbin for the entirety of our trip. The hosts treated us well, with their flexible concept of time, their restriction of 4 songs repeated over 4 hour bus trips and their offerings of strange foods such as pig brains, pig ears and cow stomach. They even drink their alcohol differently to us, drinking their beer warm off the shelf and taking their local spirits’ shots by the bowl. Like I said, well looked after!
The coffee culture in China is also significantly different to how we experience it at home. Zach, an American living in Harbin working for Cafe Culture magazine, described how the coffee culture so far is all about aesthetics and price. Flavour comes tertiary even though they import some high quality green beans. The professionals in the industry are also all male. Females are struggling to find value in this industry, but with the world being so progressive and sharing traits and qualities so much, I am really interested to see a shift in this mentality.
Aside from myself, there was one other Australian who introduced himself as the Brazilian competitor, Danny, who turned out to be a fun cracker 24/7. The other competitors included talented baristas from Uganda, Taiwan, China, Malaysia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Colombia, some of whom brought their mentors along with them! Being brought together by this latte art competition reminded me once again why I love this industry. I am so very grateful for Coffee Brothers and especially for Tony for providing me with this opportunity to travel and meet some incredible people from all over the world. I have no doubt that Tony enjoyed the socialising, the judging and the touring experience just as much as I did – even if he hated the cold!
As for the competition itself, it was a pleasure to watch so many talented baristas compete on what was a wobbly and temperamental stage (we had to draw traffic lines where it was safe to walk without bumping everything over)! The skills demonstrated with the locally used funky “milk” was amazing. In this years GBCC, I didn’t advance past the first round. But hey, same thing happened in last years Danes IGLAC and then 12 months later I went on to win the thing! For the Harbin GBCC comp, I trained on a 3-group machine and was head strong in wanting double shots for the ultimate flavour profile, as that was my strategy to put myself ahead. However the comp was performed on a 2-group machine and with 15 minutes to make 18 coffees, it wasn’t a smart move. I realised this too late into my set. Unfortunately I ran out of time and in my attempt to speed up, the latte art I produced was not of the standard that I know I am capable of. I came out of this whole experience humbled by the international talent and hope I now have the ability to approach future competitions with an adaptive mentality. I seriously look forward to working hard at my skills as a barista in order to attend more events like this one, and I look forward to meeting all the new friends we made again hopefully sometime soon.
- Meg Loudon
View a few of our collected photos here at http://coffeebros.com.au/gbcc