Tempering: World Champion Wu Zelin's Coffee Life (II)

Professional barista communication, please pay attention to coffee workshop (Weixin Official Accounts cafe_style)

Self-training that never stops.

When I returned to Taiwan in 2009, I worked as an engineer in a patent office, and Chee became an interpreter for the office. We still love coffee, on weekends when we don't have to go to work, occasionally we will pick up some garden fair cases, ride tricycles, start our weekend stall life, selling coffee of course. That year, we bought a single-ended home-style coffee machine BUTTERFLY, if the scene needs to make cappuccino or latte, we have to put it on the booth, in fact, also increased the performance of the ingredients, more effective gathering guests.

So when I was ready to compete, of course I practiced on this "spring" machine at home. In the first year, I always cooked it for my family to drink on weekdays, and occasionally took it to the stall to cook it for guests to drink. Whether family or guests, always give me positive affirmation, so at that time I, full of blood, wholeheartedly want to participate in the game to prove that they have a lot of skills, but for the game too little understanding, naturally not afraid.

Preparing for the game was nothing more than cooking a cup or two at home during my off-duty hours, with my parents, brother, and Chee as my sensory judges. At that time, naive me, and did not think about what kind of process arrangement to do, only know that the competition commercial coffee machine is two-headed, so I grind a handful of espresso coffee, imagine grinding another handful, and then lock the real handle on the brewing head, also play imagination, pretend to extract once in my mind. Even now, I find it interesting that I can make a noise like "hmm" and pretend that the machine is extracting coffee. This memory is the beginning of my preparation for the game, and it is also a very good time in my life. In addition to the actual operation, I most often do is "meditation practice", that is, the actual competition of daze fantasy, but the biggest blind spot of such meditation practice is that it is only imaginary, when it happens in reality, it will make people feel helpless, and they do not know how to face it. This painful lesson happened in my first match, and as for how it went, of course you have to watch on.

In order to improve my nervous situation and give me more opportunities to practice, Chee called some friends who usually drink coffee to help me practice at home one weekend before the competition. Their mock judges sat in front of me, watching me brew coffee and talk, and everyone treated this pre-game practice as an afternoon tea party, greatly reducing my nervousness and my last "mass" practice before the competition of the year.

Idol of the time.

That year, the WBC (World Barista Championship) was held in Atlanta, and the world champion was Gwilym Davies, who represented Britain. His victory gave me a lot of confidence, because he was not from a traditional cafe, but like me in the form of a cart stall selling coffee in a London market, I watched his game live, deeply fascinated by his calm and concentration, have to admit that because of the cart coffee hand, naturally regard him as idolized. But at that time, I also silently thought: "He can, I must be able to."」

Gwilym Davies (born 1967) is an English barista.（Liz Clayton/Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0）

When watching the live broadcast of the game, I saw that whenever he was extracting espresso, he would lock the handle smoothly, press the brew button, then take a step back, then hold his hands over his chest again, silently watching the whole process of espresso extraction. The entire process was smooth to the extreme. There was no unnecessary movement. Even his focused eyes were so bright. It was really handsome! I learned it myself subconsciously, but I became a kaka. If you look for my 2009 competition video on YouTube, you will see me deliberately and arrogantly looking at the coffee in the extraction with my hands folded over my chest, but my eyes are dull, which is far from Gwilym's eyes.

There is no escaping the reality of the game.

Why do I say my eyes are dull? Because I have already panic, simply do not know why they want to arms chest, do not know what they are looking at. From the beginning of the game there was chaos. I filled the filter cup with powder. After filling it, I sprayed the coffee out of the brewing head, which was completely different from my usual practice. In fact, I know that the grinding scale is too coarse, so I adjusted the scale of the bean grinder, but my reason only ends here, I am flustered, I do not know how much to adjust, corresponding to the espresso "appearance" will be right, limited to the stage only ten minutes of time pressure, I feel that my heart is about to jump out.

Under such great time pressure, my mind was almost blank, and the time for pre-homework was over when I finished packing in a hurry. When I officially went on stage to make espresso coffee, I said what lines to say when, but it was just hard to carry the script, coupled with hard movements, not lively at all, let alone how handsome it could be.

The only thing I remember is probably having to hold my chest with both hands. I don't remember anything else about flow patterns, what flow rates, what extractions. Frankly, I don't remember. But these can still be used as the first time on the stage as an excuse to pass, really let me fall big with the fight, is in the production of cappuccino, I put the steam stick into the steel cup filled with fresh milk, the scene unexpectedly "big out of control", half of the steel cup is very rough texture, full of large bubbles of milk bubbles. Instead of my confident love, it looked like a cup of frothy laundry water, and although it was a business machine with much stronger steam than the home machine I often used, the result was completely different from when I practiced at home, not to mention the beautiful images of meditation practice, which I ruined. After the competition announced the position of the moment, although I know that the day's condition is not good, but also secretly fantasize that I can "deceive" to a rematch, of course, did not as I hoped.

Looking back now, I didn't fully understand the process of the competition back then. I didn't even take the time to read the rules of the competition. I just relied on my own enthusiasm and tried randomly under meditation. Of course, I couldn't stand out in such a difficult competition. Also because I haven't read the rules and regulations, I don't even know how to listen to the evaluation table (Debriefing) for the contestants who didn't enter the semi-finals after the competition. In the end, I don't even know what scores I got. Of course, I don't know how to improve my weaknesses.

But what I do know for sure is that I'm too rusty at making espresso or cappuccino to brew twice a day for my family. And I also lack the ability to adapt to different machines. Even if I didn't listen to the evaluation sheet, I knew that the questions were comprehensive. Those questions that even I felt ridiculous were the focus of practice for the next year. The focus of self-training should be on the competition process and operation skills. This was also very certain.

(To be continued)

── (excerpt from "Tempering: The Coffee Life of World Champion Wu Zelin"/Crown Culture)