First Published - June 1, 2012
Whether a professional barista, a buyer, or just someone who’s mad about good coffee, you’ve probably been keeping up with news from the UKBC 2012 championships. As sponsors, we travelled the length and breadth of this island, and over to Belfast too, running our #unionbrewbar.
As well as being a great opportunity to meet old and new friends in the trade, we also got to follow the progress of all the competitors – as ever, it was an unpredictable contest right until the end.
Keeping up with all of the commentary over social media was almost as busy as the event itself, and we’ve got some round-ups of the heats over on our Storify page as well as our account of the final.
We were keeping an eye on those talented new folks in particular, and not just to see what’s in store for the industry (answer: good things) but wondering who would win the inaugural ‘Best Newcomer’ award.
We’re delighted to say that James Bailey, currently working at Prufrock in London, took the honours, and we had to wait until the very last minute to find out because he also bagged 2nd in the competition overall, twelve points behind winner Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood.
James took home the award for Best Espresso and Best Signature Drink too, and then went on to win the Brewers’ Cup on Sunday at the London Coffee Festival!
We’re looking forward to following the progress of both these rising stars – we’ll be at the World of Coffee in Vienna in June to support Maxwell in the Word Barista Championships and James at the World Brewers Cup!
Photo of James Bailey by Rob Sharp – rsharpphoto.com
