About the Crusade
Author Archives: Kalle Freese
Scoresheets, pt. 2
So. I came fourth. I wasn’t really how I performed with the coffee (there was nothing wrong with the coffee itself – the winner used the same!) but I had lots of fun competing. I know that preparing for competition is a great opportunity to learn1 but I never imagined to learn so much. Huge [...]
Semifinals and mistakes
I made it to the national finals in the Finnish Barista Cup. To be honest I wasn’t really surprised – quite the opposite actually. When you have 10 competitors in the semifinals and six of them are going through to the finals a somewhat okay routine and decent espresso (I used Nekisse from Ethiopia) should [...]
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A quick catch-up
Training for the barista competition can be very time-consuming, frustrating and exhausting. Nevertheless, I’ve learned a lot and am starting to understand the idea behind the competition. More about that later. Last week I went on a coffee trip to southern Sweden and Denmark with this guy. It is interesting how much you can learn [...]
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Learning from scoresheets
Last night I found myself printing a pile of various WBC scoresheets with some scribbles on them. Doesn’t sound very interesting first, does it? Nonetheless, reading these WBC finals scoresheets from amazing baristas including Colin Harmon (he deserves all the respect for releasing his sheets first), Michael Phillips, James Hoffman and Gwilym Davies has already [...]
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A Yoda wanted
Some people have the ability to help and make other people achieve their goals – whether it’s winning the Olympics or succeceeding in an exam. These people are often dubbed as coaches, trainers or leaders but basically, whatever the title, they help others to do better than they would’ve done on their own. Coaches can [...]
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Customer as a judge
Morning shifts at a coffee bar are great. It’s still quiet, everything is cleaned up and ready for the next morning. The machine is still shining and there’s no need to prepare food whatsoever. Pretty much the only thing left to do is calibrating the espresso grinders and possibly filter one, too. The best thing with [...]
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A New Tone
Sävy-bike for shopping milk as well as transporting their kids. This is what you get when a couple who happen to be coffee enthusiasts set up a cafe – or actually a coffee bar, as they’d like to call it. Luckily, there’s a reason for it – the coffee. Unlike in so many cafes in [...]
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Synesso Hydra, part 2
At last! The big and heavy package from Seattle we had been waiting for so long. First of all, the Hydra is one pretty damn cool espresso machine. It’s great to work with and it looks great. Besides that here’s a few very subjective and unscientific observations and thoughts after a few weeks: - The [...]
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the Big Bean