The champions of the World Coffee draw Competition share the benefit method!

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The South Korean drama "Coffee Prince No.1 Shop" makes the rich son's entrepreneurial dream romantic and passionate, which is only a fictional story. on the contrary, we have many "Coffee Prince" in Hong Kong. For example, A Kim Yang Yaohui, who won the world flower competition in New York last year, went to New York with only a pair of skillful hands and enthusiasm, and went to New York to compete with 63 international experts. But he said that anyone could do that world-class coffee, and if he wanted to be the next "coffee prince", he had to listen to his mind.

Who would have thought that A Kim, who had just dyed his blond hair and was humbly making coffee in one less coffee shop, would have thought that he was the world flower champion who had defeated a number of international masters? In fact, A Kim only began to learn coffee three years ago. Starting with a blank piece of paper, he has become the champion of the Hong Kong pull flower contest a year later, because of his enthusiasm and dedication. He said, "in fact, you don't need a genius to be a coffee maker. As long as you think more skillfully, anyone can be an expert." "

The difference between inverted flowers and painting flowers

A Kim means that there are two kinds of coffee flowers, one is called "drawing", and the other is called "pouring". The latter is called free pouring, which just pours milk directly into the coffee. He said, "there are a lot of patterns of coffee flowers outside, which seem to be super varied, but in fact, many of them are painted, that is, they are picked out after pouring milk into the bubble, which is a bit like painting, except that the paint has changed into milk. I chose to pour it directly because it is more professional, and it is also my personal choice to focus. "painting flowers is not A Kim's cup of tea, he even thinks that pulling flowers is just to add icing on the cake, in the coffee world, pulling flowers is only a very small part, what really matters is that good cup of coffee!

The trip of the international champion of drawing flowers.

In the 2012 International New York Coffee Fest World Latte Art Champion Competition in New York, A Kim confronted each other in the form of one-on-one. Each of them used the machine given by the conference to pull out the most satisfactory coffee within 3 minutes, and then gave the judges a verdict that the judges only looked at the pattern, not the taste, thus eliminating the remaining 32 of the 64 international experts, and then the top 16, top 8, top 4, top 2, and A Kim passed the five passes. In the end, he won the world championship and became the first Chinese to win this award.

However, there are many different forms and different rules of the WLAC competition, he said: "for example, in the WLAC competition, I need to make six cups of coffee within eight minutes, divided into three pairs, imitating three different patterns, in which coffee blending skills will also be counted, accounting for a certain technical score, but throughout most of the flower competition, most of them will focus on the pattern. The scoring criteria include: difficulty, evenness, contrast and so on. "

Neatness, contrast, balance and difficulty

As for how to win the admiration of the judges, he said: "in fact, many people do not know the difference between the quality of the pattern, which actually includes: tidiness, contrast, left-right balance and difficulty. The contrast of the flower pattern is strong, the color of curry (coffee) and white (milk) should be black and white, it will look more beautiful. Sometimes the white part of the flower will be too close to the edge of the cup, the lack of brown outer ring, the pattern will become blurred. In addition, it is balance, that is, whether the left and right sides of the pattern are symmetrical, then test whether your shaking technique is average and the angle is the same. The third is the difficulty. With the development of coffee culture, the pattern of flower drawing will only become more and more complex, and it is difficult to have a consistent standard, because the judges have already seen a lot of patterns, and those that were once novel will soon become obsolete, and from my personal point of view, more lines will make people feel more difficult. The thinner the cup, the more difficult it is to pull flowers, because there is less room to move. "

Coffee-based flower drawing is the second.

A Kim believes, "Coffee is first of all used to drink. Flower drawing is just to add value to coffee. Different patterns can be added to the same coffee, but first of all, the cup of coffee must taste good. If you just want to make a beautiful design and ignore the taste of coffee, it is an incorrect attitude. Although the taste of coffee is not taken into account in many pull-out competitions, it does not mean that the taste of your coffee is not important. That is a matter of attitude." "it seems that if A Kim makes a flower judgment (he actually has fewer invitations from Taiwan and Taiwan), he can't help but taste it and compare the score.

Although every barista has his own standard, for Kim, "my first standard is to make the guests feel comfortable. If the guests feel more comfortable without the flower pattern, I don't have to make it." But of course, I also have my own bottom line, for example, I can't add too much polysaccharides, because too much polysaccharides will affect the taste buds, and in the end, any coffee makes no difference! "

However, A Yim said that he would not teach people casually, because he wanted serious students and did not want to play with his mindset. "now many people have coffee makers at home, and the goal of my class teaching is to make them really brew out a cup of tender and beautiful coffee at home and learn the correct milking skills and flower pulling movements. "

As a matter of fact, A Kim not only works in Hong Kong, but also opens a spacious, quiet coffee bar in Taipei with five Hong Kong young baristas, Artista Perfetto, which is full of cultural look and works of art. It is impossible to do so in Hong Kong, but the cultural flavor of Taiwan can accommodate these six coffee teenagers from Hong Kong.