UK Barista Championships

Hello and Welcome to our coverage of the UK Barista Championships 2012.

Whether you enjoy great coffee at home, or enjoy pulling shots of espresso as part of your day job, we are celebrating outstanding coffee crafted by the finest baristas as sponsors of the 2012 Championships.
We believe that you should never need to suffer a poor cup of coffee these days, and our aim is to raise coffee standards however or wherever you drink your coffee.

Great tasting coffee is a combination of nature, nurture, intuition and skill.
Our expertise in sourcing coffee from talented farmers, combined with our skill in craft roasting by hand creates coffees worthy of the most talented baristas.

The Barista Championships showcase the skills and understanding of the best baristas: attention to detail, technical precision and creative flair are all under scrutiny by the judges.

We bring our coffee expertise to the competition to help raise the quality standards of the coffee industry.

The competition is a nationwide search to find the most talented and passionate barista scoring them across a total of 12 drinks to be served in 15 minutes.

Four espressos, four cappuccinos, and four signature drinks - which can involve coffee brewed by any method, combined with any other Ingredient (apart from alcohol) - are the requirements for competitors.

Coffees are chosen by the competitors to use in the competition and they will be looking for interesting natural flavours within the coffee on which to create a theme around or explain to the judges as part of their 15 minute presentation.   

We will be actively involved in the events seeing us install a Brew Bar [#unionbrewbar] at each event, along with creating a brand new Prize Category for 'Best Newcomer'.

We want to encourage everyone to get involved and celebrate the energy, creativity and skills of the barista with us all at these events this year.

If you don't enter but think you might next year, come down and see what it's all about.

Keep up to date, look out for competitors tips, spectators tips and tell us what you think! 

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The UKBC 2012 event dates are:

London &South East heat
When:Fri 27 and Sat 28 January 2012
Where: Londonewcastle Project Space, 28 Redchurch Street, London, E2 7DP

RESULTS

1st Sang Ho Park of 'Tapped and Packed'
Plus Best Espresso, Best Cappuccino and Best Signature Drink

2nd Matthew Robley-Siemonsma, also of 'Tapped and Packed'

3rd Rummy Keshet, a barista trainer for Darlington’s

South West heat
When: Westcountry Catering Exhibition - 8th and 9th February 2012
Where: Westpoint Centre, Exeter, Clyst St Mary, Exeter EX5 1DJ

RESULTS

1st Dale Harris, HasBean coffee
Plus Best Espresso, Best Cappuccino and Best Signature Drink

2nd Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, co-owner of Colonna and Smalls coffee shop, Bath

3rd Dave Jones, Origin Coffee

Northern heat
When: 17 February 2012
Where: Life Science Centre, Times Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne & Wear

Midlands heat
When: Saturday 03 March 2012
Where: The Space, Roundtree Way, Norwich NR7 8SQ

Scotland heat
When: Friday 16 March 2012
Where: Glasgow Caledonian University

Northern Ireland heat
When: 20 March 2012
Where: Hillsborough Courthouse, The Square, Hillsborough, Co Down.

Semi & Finals UKBC 2012
When: April 27-29 2012
Where: The London Coffee Festival, Old Truman Brewery, London