World Barista Championship

What's actually happening on the milk beverage world, and how can you maybe have a play with it in your cafe?

And we luckily dragged in the World Barista Champion and owner of Homebody Union, Anthony Douglas, to join us because even though Ben's drunk a lot of these coffees, he hasn't made a lot of these coffees.

Ah, yeah.

And so we thought it was better to bring in the pro.

And I think, too, regarding the powderiness, it's, it's, it's marginal.

Um, it does have-

You're talking about a World Barista Champion here [laughs]

[laughs]

It's understandable Liam's excited because, uh, we today are joined by the owner of Homebody Union, Mr. Anthony Douglas, a returning guest.

He's the 2022 World Barista Champion, and he's about to omen- open his first venue-

Hell yeah

... a 40-seat coffee experience in hometown Melbourne here.

[laughs] Yeah, exactly.

But man, this is so exciting.

It isn't often that you walk into a cafe and actually see a World Barista Champion behind the bar serving-

Yeah

And I think we're gonna unpack it, 'cause it'd be great to hear your take on like what you're trying to achieve with balance and temperature and kind of texture, uh, and then what we are tasting from a coffee perspective.

'Cause as we said in the full episode, coffee in cocktails tends to just get swamped by all the other ingredients, and it just becomes like a generic ingredient.

I don't know how it works out there, but is it kind of like the World Barista Championships? Like do they, are they giving us a routine? Are we gonna throw to Therman now and he gets like-

Yeah

... three minutes of like, to chat to us through what he's doing?

imagine this is like a stylistic, like an aesthetic or like, I don't know, even a philosophy.

philosophical kind of approach maybe not philosophical but it's an aesthetic approach of like in wbc with the world barista championships people take their signature beverages and they either add ingredients that amplify the existing profiles or they add something that contrasts them and kind of changes it in a in a different way shows it up differently

i think i like the Is it contrasting personally? Sorry, go on.

No, I think it depends, right? So it's like if you want the coffee to be the star of the show, then you need to find something that really amplifies those flavors.

For

everyone else who hasn't heard, Jason Liu took fourth at the World Barista Championship in Milan last year using Malaysian Liberica.

It's the best result a Malaysian has ever had.

So yes, so we know now what Liberica can be.

Yes, saw that.

He represented NZ in the World Barista Championships.

And for the very first time in their history then, they were actually in Melbourne.

So they brought it to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time ever back then.

It's... just coffee the podcast

for people who know it's never just coffee and joining us today is a three-time italian barista champion who washed cups before he even touched a machine and he's built an eight cafe group across florence and milan that deliberately doesn't look like a chain at all francesco sanapo founder of ditta artigianale welcome to the show Artigianale.

I need to get the Italian pronunciation better.

Artigianale.

And I was the last.

Yeah.

Well, I was going to say, you and I have known each other now for a number of years through the World Barista Championships because this guy's been Italian barista champion for three years and has done some incredible performances on the world stage.

But as you're mentioning your first one, you, well, you came last.

Yeah.

Maybe you don't market it as, like, the nerdy, like, World Barista Champion competition coffee, doing whatever, but at a base level when you break it down, you've got a really crazily fermented, uh, processed coffee, sorry-

Yeah

... that has got these wild flavors that are coming through.

Do you want to hear something weird you can do to a cappuccino? Yes.

Yes, because as a former barista and also someone who also really enjoys checking out the World Barista Championships and all the really cool, actually kind of chemistry stuff that happens that people do, absolutely, that sounds really fun.

Okay, so you know latte art? Yes.

I do.

Um, I first had the thoughts about it with, uh, Matt Perger.

So Matt Perger is, uh, a friend of mine, so someone many in the coffee industry would know well, founder of Barista Hustle, runner-up in the World Barista Championship.

Um, the guy just, uh, you know, he changed the game in coffee in 2013.

Um, anyway, so he, he, he's a, he's a close friend of mine and we've been speaking about it for years.