Coffee champions and how to brew a flavourful cup
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Speciality coffee has come a long way since the pandemic. While homebrewers polished the art of pourovers at home, cafés sought top notch bean-to-cup experiences.
The ultimate measure indicating the growth of Indian coffee is national level competitions for industry insiders. One such platform is the India International Coffee Festival (IICF) that launched this year and the preliminary rounds span north, west and south India. The final will be hosted in Bengaluru in December.
To recognise different skillsets, IICF has two distinct competitions--National Barista Championship (NBC) and National Brewers Cup (NBrC). A barista prepares and serves coffee, whereas a brewer focuses solely on brewing to hit the right flavour notes. The preliminary round for west India, comprising Mumbai, Pune, Goa, Ahmedabad and Surat, was held in Mumbai last weekend.
NBC saw participants create three drinks, one espresso, one milk-based beverage with coffee and one signature drink in 15 minutes. NBrC had participants using manual coffee brewing equipment such as the funnel-shaped V60 drip coffee and French Press with a time limit of 10 minutes each. Nahid Khan, who won the Mumbai prelims in the NBC category, works as a roaster with Blue Tokai Coffee and says the competition was fierce.
Dhriti Gandhi, who has been a barista for almost two years and currently works at Reserved Roastery in Surat, says such championships are eye-openers in more ways than one. “Apart from meeting new people and understanding how the industry works, I also saw how creative coffee mocktails can be and how professional people in the industry are," she says. Since the pandemic, awareness and knowledge about beans has shot up.
Read more on livemint.com
