Event: Latte Throwdown October 21st at Urban Beans

Urban Beans will be hosting a Latte Throwdown on Friday, October 21st at 7 pm. The cost to compete is $3 for early registration (email info@petitepour.com) or $5 at the door. Competitors can start to arrive starting at 6 pm to try out the competition machine (Nuova Simonelli Aurelia).

There will also be coffee education with free coffee tastings at the event. Urban Beans will also offer special beer and wine specials. The event is open to the public and everyone is encouraged to attend!

For the competing baristas here are some important details:

Judging:

• In order to keep judging consistent, we will be using the same judges when possible and at least one of the judges will also have significant barista experience. The judges for this event will be Ron Cortez, Chris Tingom, and Brian Clemens. Also, judges will also undergo judge calibration before the event.
• Latte art is judged on 3 criteria: Definition, Color Infusion, Aesthetics on a 1-5 scale. Each criteria is weighted evenly but two out of the 3 categories focus on execution.
• Scores will be available after the event and judges will be available to discuss scores.
• In general, degree of difficulty of design is taken in consideration, but only scores positively when executed well. In other words, a well executed design will always score higher than just a difficult design.

Rules:

• No etching. You can only create latte art using a milk pitcher (free-pour). You may bring your own pitchers.
• Only espresso and milk may be used and will be provided. Espresso and milk should be properly prepared for consumption since we will be serving the lattes to the public.
• You must pour lattes in ceramic cups (12 oz) that are provided
• You have ~3 mins (approx. time for 1 song to play) in Round 1 to pour. You may do as many drinks within that time limit.
• If you run out of time during preparation, you may finish the drink you are currently working on ONLY if you started steaming AND you started pulling the shot (basically you can only turn things off when your music ends)
• If you made multiple drinks, you must pick which drink you want to submit for judging, otherwise the judges will only judge your FIRST drink
• Second round will be head-to-head playoff between the 4 highest scoring competitors. 1st will compete against 4th and 2nd will compete against 3rd. The winners and losers will be paired off again to determine 1st, 2nd, and 3rd overall.
• Second round will ONLY be one pour and only the first drink will be accepted. A pour is considered live once you start steaming your milk.

Thanks to Daniel Suh for organizing this event, and putting the above details together.

Urban Beans
3508 N. 7th Street
Suite 100
Phoenix, AZ 85014
Phone: (602) 595-2244
Twitter: @urbanbeans