Tempering: the Coffee Life of World Champion Wu Zelin (3)

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

(continued)

Dust settles on the practice field

Although I vowed to participate in the competition again after my first experience in 2009, the work of the patent office took up most of our time. However, this time, I had the same understanding as last time, so I decided to start preparing earlier. Moreover, no matter what kind of meditation practice I had, I hadn't actually run through the process a few times. No matter how much I meditated, it could only be called fantasy.

But running is not easy for me. I have to find a venue with a commercial espresso machine for the race and the same configuration as the race. The height of the table, the distance between the judges, all compare to the competition. There weren't many such training venues at that time. Through Ah Chang, I met Jian Jiacheng, who opened a breakfast shop outside Jingmei Night Market. I called him Brother Jian. Brother Jian had just opened a cafe in Mucha that year. Since he was going to compete in the competition himself, he had set up a practice area behind the cafe.

When I learned that I could rent a venue to practice, my blood boiled. I work in Hsintien, and after work I return to my home in Jingmei to quickly finish my dinner, load up the equipment I need for practice, and then go to Mucha to practice for an hour or two. These locations are not far away, and besides me, there are other contestants practicing there. There are people to discuss, and there is progress!

if you want to do something good

We got the field, we got the coffee machine for practice, but what about the grinder? I saw that many of the best people in the world used a bean grinder called Robur, and I wanted to buy one. I thought if I bought this expensive bean grinder, my coffee would taste good. Chee thought about it for a long time, and when he promised me to buy it, he only said,"Then this will be your birthday present this year." This sentence is not a joke, because after the store I bought every bean grinder, she was classified as a birthday gift, not a money-making appliance.

The Robur was as heavy as it cost at the time. Although every time I have to move it around, I still love it very much. When I am tired of practice, I love to hold it empty and feel full of security.

As for coffee beans, whether it was a stall before or a first time competition, I used my own baked beans to fight. But before this competition, I got to know Tan Bangyan, who had established Pei Mi Ti. He had already helped several Taiwan champions deal with the beans for the competition. I think with him to help me prepare the formula beans, this competition will definitely have better results.

However, buying cooked beans from Brother Tan means that in addition to renting venues and buying bean grinders, I have an additional expenditure for the competition. Every shot of espresso tested, every cappuccino left over from each practice, is money! It can't be wasted! So we cool it down and pack it up and take it home to the family. During that time, the family did not drink freshly brewed coffee, but drank coffee milk that we had practiced and the proportion was not quite right.

Coffee robot, it's me.

The second year of preparation, I was determined to run the process well, so I spent the most time on it. Chee would ask me to start over if there was even a slight hitch in my lines and actions. She wanted me to do exactly the right thing in the flow of the performance, and even wanted me to match every move with the music just right. A few seconds into the prelude, I'm going to start the show; the song goes into the chorus when I'm supposed to get milk... etc. But for me, if I get stuck and start again, but don't think of a way to survive, there is no experience point. Maybe it was the second time we competed, and we both had a little more heart for gain and loss; maybe we had to practice the process tightly after normal commute, so we had a lot of arguments throughout the process. He was often too tired to talk on the way back to Jingmei after practice, and he was careful not to stir up the already tense nerves of the other party.

The good thing is that with this intense practice, I quickly memorized lines and built up muscle memory. The downside is that it's easy to get tired of practicing, and every time you think about practicing, you lose interest. When running the process, it presents automatic navigation mode, which makes it easy to be distracted and absent-minded.

Apple without a chance to play

Because I am a lot smoother in the process, I think I can make espresso and cappuccino smoothly in the preliminary round, and then advance to the semi-finals. To advance to the finals, you have to present creative coffee! I carefully thought of a drink, plus Aomori apples from Japan, one will cost 100 yuan! It tastes sweet and sour. Thinking that there would be no more apples in November of the finals, he bought a box in advance and put it away. To preserve freshness, each apple is wrapped in plastic wrap before being put into a carton for refrigeration.

As expected, my performance process was much smoother than the previous year. Even from stage to backstage, I felt relaxed and comfortable. I didn't feel like I had made any mistakes. I still thought that I would finally open my apple.

In the end, twelve people were announced to enter the semi-finals. How could my name be skipped? This challenge still ended in the preliminary round. Chee and I ate the "expensive" apples that didn't make it to the stage for a week.

The night is cold and the heart is colder

It was a November evening, and we rode despondently along the familiar route, the cold and wet wind biting. Chee was wearing a full-face helmet in the back seat. At first, she endured silence. I was worried about such silence, so I turned to look at her. I saw her gritting her teeth and breathing, tears in her eyes, and a slight mist on her mask. Then, she burst into tears and said that she felt very unwilling. She had obviously worked so hard this time, but why were her results still not good?

Actually, how can I be reconciled? Although not good enough means there is room for improvement, but spent so much extra time, money, effort, two people are tired every day just want to empty. However, he did not enter the semi-finals as expected, as if everything was done for nothing.

However, after reading the rating sheet, I knew that I got low scores on all the bonus items of espresso and cappuccino. It made me realize that maybe we drink too much of our own coffee and too little of other people's coffee. Perhaps we forget to be honest with our taste when we practice our movements silently. Or maybe we don't know what a good cup of coffee is.

In this case, on the road of coffee, there are still too many deficiencies, and our footsteps cannot stop.@# (End of excerpt)

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