Post-90s barista Liang Fan represented China in Brazil's WLAC today.

The World Barista Series kicks off today in Brazil with the World Brewers Cup (WBrC), World Latte Art Championship (WLAC), World Coffee in Good Spirits Championship (WCIGS) and World Cup Tasters Championship (WCTC) taking place at the Brazilian Coffee Show from November 7 to 9.

Speaking of coffee flowers, this should be the first reason why many coffee lovers and even baristas fall in love with coffee. Perhaps accidentally saw a flower show, on an irrepressible love flower, and then love coffee. But 90% of people don't understand the rules of the flower art contest. Maybe you just watch a flower show, watch the result of the competition, not really watch a flower contest. What is the focus of a competition? Do you understand? Today, let's learn together.

The World Latte Art Championship is a professional coffee competition based on the promotion of fine coffee and fine coffee initiated by World Coffee Events (WCE), the pioneer of coffee and activities. It is the second largest event in the world and the highest level professional event of coffee flower art.

The event will be introduced to China for the first time in 2013 and will be held at the Shanghai International Hotel Supplies Expo. The champion selected by China will represent China in the World Series. It will be the second wave of coffee competition after WBC in China!

Coffee flower contest competition process:

Coffee making and foaming are also prohibited after the contestant takes the stage. But it can test steam size and machine key switches.

The work must be completed within 3 minutes of at least one cup, if exceeded, it will be disqualified according to international standards.

32 into the top 16 rules: At the beginning of the competition, the host will operate the timer and the two players will complete the operation within 3 minutes at the same time. During the competition time, the players can make a multi-cup work, but within 3 minutes, the finished product will be placed in the designated area. Three judges count down to five seconds. The contestant who wins the favor of more than two judges moves on to the next round, and the other is eliminated.

16 into the top 8 and top 8 into the championship rules: At the beginning of the competition, the host will operate the timer and the two contestants will complete the operation within 3 minutes at the same time. During the competition time, the contestants can make a multi-cup work, but within 3 minutes, the finished product will be placed in the designated area. The three judges scored and commented according to the scoring system.

The top eight of the 16 contestants have scored and are moving on to the next round

Eight contestants scored in the top four to compete for the championship and sub-season

This time representing China in WLAC is the champion of the 2018 World Flower Art Competition China Finals, barista fan, a young barista born in the 1990s. Friends who pay attention to the world-class flower pulling competition should know that Liang Fan is the champion of the 17 and 18 years of the World Flower Art Competition in China. He has also been in the industry for 8 years. He can be said to be an old driver in the industry.

Photo Credit: CTI Coffee Magazine

Coffee flower not only pays attention to aesthetic feeling in visual appreciation, but also constantly improves the way and skill of blending the dense taste of milk foam with coffee, and then expresses the taste presentation in the whole work, and finally achieves the artistic effect of "color, fragrance, taste, shape and art".

In the 18-year flower pulling competition, Liang Fan designed a set of cute little animals that female customers and children prefer, applying the composition concept in photography to flower pulling.

Participants will first provide pre-made pictures of their entries to the judges, who will use them as a reference for scoring.

Score on five criteria:

Scoring standard: 5 points for each item, minimum 1 point. 25 points total.

color contrast

pattern difficulty

pattern finish

pattern symmetry

Creative design

Photo Credit: CTI Coffee Magazine

Speaking of Liang Fan's barista experience, it was also quite inspiring.

I remember Liang Fan said in an interview with Coffee Big Wet that all the competition patterns have been determined since October 2017, and the competition process training and training plan will be tried in December.

Photo credit: barista_fan

From February 1, 2018, I entered into crazy training for 8 hours every day, and took a day off for the New Year... the process of flower pulling training was lonely and painful, and calluses appeared on the fingers. One day, he even practiced 200-300 cups, because his wrist joint had been damaged by holding the flower cylinder for a long time.

Photo credit: barista_fan

Liang Fan was exposed to coffee in 2011. At that time, I learned the basics of coffee product making in a coffee vocational training school, and then went to work in a coffee shop, starting from waiters, washing cups, learning to make drinks, cutting fruit plates... At that time, the first month's salary was 1200 yuan, slowly to the bar management. From 2011 to 2012, he became a bar leader from an ordinary barista and began to participate in large and small flower pulling competitions to accumulate competition experience.

Pre-game practice is essential for every game

It was very easy to pull flowers of the same pattern, but it was almost impossible to do exactly the same. In the practice before the game, in order to find problems that he did not find in the process of pulling flowers, he would then solve them.

The basic movements are often ignored by the players. In fact, from the beginning of making espresso, the success or failure of a cup of flowers is determined, so we have to understand each small movement in order to compare our own movements with the target (pattern).

Practice the composition of the pattern. When the milk foam turns into a line, we must know which part of the line will become the flower, because the height, position, shaking, inclination angle and injection amount of the box flower jar are related.

Even if he was an old driver, training was actually a high-intensity exercise for every contestant, which required a step-by-step analysis of the coffee making process.

Every little thing on the field will affect the player's development. The usual flower pulling practice is to train ourselves into muscle memory. Even if we don't deliberately think about it, we can also complete the movements of making coffee and pulling flowers smoothly. If we don't rest well before the game or get nervous on the field, we can finish the game smoothly through muscle memory.

Every creator is a painter, and a cup of espresso and a serving of milk can add exquisite patterns to a plain cup of coffee.

May Liang Fan win! The harder you work, the luckier you get!

Thank you for the pictures and videos provided by Teacher Liang Fan