just spitty

I just wanted to introduce a new project by an old friend. At the risk of making trish rothgeb nauseous, I present the first of many from spitcup.

February TNT

Its here! We’re all slowly recovering from regional craziness, and what better way to do so than with a friendly latte art competition?

Let the word be heard…

One thousand apologies for the unacceptable tardiness of this post. My chinese new year’s resolution is stay on top of these reporting responsibilities. So, better late than never, here we go…

The d.c. coffee community again converged on counter culture’s training center a few thursdays ago. Juliet made some chocolate covered strawberries, open city again brought some booze, and the people came in droves. Ok, maybe dozens is more accurate, but i like the drama that droves implies.

Because it was dramatic! Competitors all came harboring hope that they could take advantage of jeremy’s absence and win some money. And guess who had something to say about all that… certainly not a fellow competitor, but the judges! in a word, HARSH, or maybe unimpressed is a better way to say that. So unimpressed were they, that no pour garnered more than 50 points.

We had 19 competitors, and a nice slew of on-lookers. allie turner poured at the beginning of the evening, and her pour stuck around for quite some time. in fact she finished second with 49 points.

Katie Duris poured somewhere in the middle. This was her pour, and it just barely overtook the leader board, nudging past allie’s pour by half a point. Her score of 49.5 sat pretty for awhile.

Shortly thereafter, David (n) Flynn, stepped up to the machine with monies on his mind. He banged out a standard Flynn great, and stirred up a little bit of controversy. Here is his pour from this month. I don’t remember the score, somewhere in the 45-ish range. some people thought it should have earned a higher score. here’s his beautiful pour, you can decide for yourself…

For what its worth, david’s pour earned a barista’s barista award, an especially tasty drink from gibson once all this regional competition craziness settles down.
Liz Fedden was our penultimate pour, and being a great latte artist, she made a great go at the pot.

i’ve decided to post everyone’s pictures. here they are, in no particular order.

thank you everyone for your patience and continued support. and check back for pittsburgh updates! word on the street is there’s a bit of a latte art competition in conjunction with the NERBC/MARBC. I’m anticipating a great show from the ONC (our nation’s capital).

Happy New Year everyone! TNT is fast upon us again, oh how fast the time flies…

tnt january

If your new year’s resolution was to beat jeremy sterner in latte art competition, I have has some troubling news.  Mr. Sterner will not be in attendance this month, as his responsibilities as all-star barista behind the bar at peregrine is pulling him out of town as he prepares for the Mid-Atlantic Barista Competition.  For most people this will be good news, as everyone else’s odds of winning just increased tremendously.

And for those of you wondering what is this “Counter Culture Training Center”?  The address is 1836 Columbia Road, suite 202, just above the Design Out of Reach store in adams morgan.  There is a call box off to the right.  Dial Counter Culture and your in.  

See you all very soon!

WDC TNT 3

I know you all have been on the edge of your seats awaiting the report on last week’s TNT. I’m sorry, I have no excuses, I just plain stink at this blogging stuff! (in my defense, murky did have its in-house barista competition the evening after TNT) and you know holidays…

I’m not going to gush too much, let me just say TNT 3 was awesome. Its so great to see from one month to the next how TNT grows just a bit and outdoes the months past. I love it! This month was certainly no exception. We had such a great turnout! 26 competitors! a great crowd snacking on plenty of holiday cookies and great beer! all of the tryst and open city folks came! fritzler was tipsy (and score keeping?)! and plenty of new people joined us for the night. I feel great about what the new year has in store for us dc coffee kids.

Before we get to the knitty gritty pour by pour, I’d like to just recognize the contributions of our sponsors, who play such a big role in the making of these bigger and better TNTs. This month our regular sponsors outdid themselves, while new sponsors joined the fold. First, peregrine espresso brought new and old t-shirts, and one of my all time favorite chocolate bars, askinosie’s san jose del tambo. Biagio fine chocolate added even more great chocolates, a grand cru collection from domori and a beautiful bean to bar from amedei. Liberty tavern joined our sponsors this month with a nice gift certificate (for all you michael pollan freaks, i spotted a special polyface farm pig belly on the menu a few months back…)

One of the most awesome additions to be handed over to the champeen, was a great idea from the warped mind of Mr. Nick Cho – an engraved bracelet, (you know, millrock style…) In theory it could change hands every month.

This month we were also lucky enough to be joined by one Michaele Weissman, Michaele is a journalist who has written a number of coffee related stories for the nytimes and the washington post. She’s also the author of god in a cup. Teaming up with Michaele at the judging table was Ryan Jensen and Trish Rothgeb. These folks did a great job, like i said 26 competitors!

Ok so as you all know, the eternal question burning in the minds of the WDC TNT crowd is simply this,
CAN ANYONE UPSET JEREMY STERNER AS LATTE ART CHAMPION?? CAN ANYONE COME CLOSE??
I will forgo any sort of suspense building and say another TNT has come and gone, and the question still stands.

But lets do the run through just for fun. As I’m so late getting this recap to you, I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t remember the order folks competed in, rather, I guarantee this is out of order.

David (N) Flynn of peregrine pours a great DNF styled pour, and takes (you guessed it) second place for the third month in a row!!

Iron Will Shields does murky coffee proud finishing third with this quite nice rosetta.

Bob Chapman, a barista from open city poured this nice heart, which put him on the leaders board for a bit.

when it comes down to it, we all agree, jeremy’s definition is insane. its so tough to top his work with colors so sharp. it definitely helps that no one else has really challenged him with a great tulip. here’s his pour from this month. I don’t think its the best one his shown us, but it was again, the best of the night. way to go jeremy, you remain the guy to beat.

further congratulations are in order for jeremy as this month he also took first place at peregrine’s first ever in-house competition, he will represent peregrine at the Mid Atlantic Regional in early February. Congrats Jeremy and Good Luck!

also a special thank you to david holloway for taking photos for us, they look great, and i’m especially grateful for the gifts of his talents.

Holiday Cookie Contest

The only rules for the holiday cookie contest are

1.) please bring twelve, so we don’t have to worry about running out mid-sampling.

2.) please bring a list of ingredients to put next to your cookie presentation, just in case anyone has any allergies.

How the voting will go down

Everyone in attendance will be given three cookie votes, to be deposited in some kind of cookie jar or bank throughout the course of the evening. The three cookies garnering the most votes will then face off in a new vote to crown the holiday cookie contest champ.

WDC TNT 3: the holly days

hello friends!

It’s that time again! I’m happy to announce that this month’s throwdown doubles as a local coffee community holiday party. In addition to the regularly scheduled program, people are encouraged to take part in our first ever cookie contest. Like a barista competition, cookies will be evaluated on both looks/presentation, and taste. And sort of like a barista competition, contestants will be judged by a jury of their peers (i.e. everyone in attendance will be given a score sheet).

In addition to plenty of sweet treats, juliet has offered one of her specialties — pigs in a blanket. Plenty of reasons to pencil it in, as if seeing if Jeremy could 3peat wasn’t enough…

See You There!!

. . . .two timing. . . .

sorry this has taken me awhile to post the results and pictures. our second installment of WDC TNT was so great its taken me a couple of days to recover. phew! what a night!

if you remember my last post, i set a couple goals. first was to bring some new coffee folks into the fold, and second was to see some female baristas bring it. beyond that, WDC TNT showed a bit of growth — 14 competitors and a crowd of 30.

first off we all made some new friends, chris, and his cheerleaders vince and alex. formerly of brew mountain, (sadly R.I.P.), were actually the first to arrive. with luck they’ll come back next month and maybe stop by murky to cup from time to time.

secondly, its no joke that I was feeling a little sore of the absence of women baristas. but I put the call out, and boy it was answered. of the 14 competitors this week 5 were women.

one was our lead off hitter, juliet. and again, the night starts out with a bang. juliet’s pour scored a 37.

following juliet, the night moved along with some great pours followed by more great pours. for a moment it looked like it was shaping up to look a lot like last month’s, maybe with a little rearranging.

will shields (keeper of our coffee hearts) poured third and came through with a nice and solid pour. 40 points
david “don’t call him nigel” flynn followed with one of his reliably great pours — great infusion and balance wit long leaves. 47. he would sit pretty comfortable on top of the leader board for a couple pours.

travis stepped up with a nice heart topped rosetta, reminiscent of his pour from last month. while he came up short to top D(n)F, he snuck past will with a 41.5. (this was the moment we crowned will owner of a coffee hearts, much to mike’s chagrin.)

so there we were, about half way through the night’s competition, when the wdc tnt world was turned on its head. one of our new friends liz, a barista at tryst, poured this amazing, “foucking fred perry shit” (cinca, shelby)

people’s mouths dropped. part of the fun of it was most people had just met liz. awesome. liz took over the board with that pour, a quite nice 49. Her score needed to withstand just a few more pours, but one of them was last month’s winner jeremy sterner. he poured out this fine piece of work

and when the scores came back we had a tie for first! at 49!

TNT rules state that in the event of a tie, it shall be broken by taking the highest total in the overall impression category. That being said, there was so much excitement in the room, and so, with the consent of liz and jeremy, I proposed an amendment to the rules — winner decided by a head to head pour off between the top two. Let the record state there were no nays and a roomful of ays.

so we had a pour off. flipped a coin, jeremy went first and out of his gifted pitcher came this work of art

liz poured second, and challenged with this pour.

both pours were great. and I must say that liz pours one of the most balanced triple rosettas I’ve seen. Her pour scored a 42.5 with the judges, which wasn’t enough to claim the title from Jeremy. His effort was scored a 55. Jeremy’s just got some really great skills. His pours have such great definition… super white whites and rich browns.
So the competition was fierce and exciting, but most importantly people walked away from the training center that night, having enjoyed themselves and the coffee crowd. I can’t wait until next month to see what people bring to steal the title out of jeremy sterner’s hands.
for those feeling unsatisfied with the photos in the post, i’ve uploaded a slew of them to flickr. See You Next Month!

its that time again…

hi everyone,
one week to go to throwdown number two! mike and david have been super helpful in getting things in order and spreading the word. i think its going to be great…

see you there!

TNT in NYC??

A little fodder for the gossip mill… In my trip up to NYC last weekend, I came into some exciting news where TNTs are concerned. Looks like New York is in! Thursday Night Throwdowns are sprouting up all over the place! Like weeds! I must admit I love the idea of these throwdowns being a party like ceremony, where coffee folks all up and down the east coast stop, step away from their respective bars and day to day business, and come together for some good times, and a friendly competition. I’m getting excited for our next TNT, the planning committee is hard at work to make it bigger and better than before…

jc hayden, competitor one in murky's blind barista competition back in august

with all the talent up there i’m sure the competition will be tight, but i can’t help but wonder if they can pour with their eyes closed…

and speaking of the next WDC TNT, i heart this…