This past Friday our little local was touched by a horde of coffee greatness. United Kingdom and World Barista Champion, James Hoffmann stopped by. He is on an East Coast Coffee Tour and was in DC for an event over at the DC Counter Culture Training Center that night. He came by with Anette Moldvaer, a World Cup Tasting Champion, Cindy Chang, a super-sweetie from Counter Culture Coffee, Trish Skeie, ex-Director of Coffee at Zoka Coffee Roasters, Nick Cho, the owner of Murky Coffee, David Fritzler, Coffee and Beverage Operation Director at Tryst and Open City, Greg Scace, the inventor of the Scace device which measures the actual temperature of the brew head on espresso machines, Katie Duris from Murky Coffee, Ryan Jensen from Counter Culture Coffee and Aaron Ultimo from Murky Coffee. Wheww! That’s a lot of folks.
It was really nice to hang out and talk with people so involved, dedicated and passionate about coffee. I took James, Anette, Cindy and David on a little tour of our production area and fed them full of gelato. It was great to get flavor feed-back from such folks who live and breathe coffee, as sipping espresso every morning for the last four years has been so vital to the development and opening of my palate to the complex flavors and aromas in coffee. At Dolcezza, we are beginning to send all of our employees to the Counter Culture training center over in Adams Morgan to continue the development of our baristas. Coffee is one of those things that the deeper into it you go, the bigger it gets, or in other words, we never stop learning how to pull a more balanced shot of espresso, or how to froth the perfectly foamed milk. It compliments our pursuit of artisanal gelato so perfectly and continues to evolve each and every day.
So, James and Anette, it was a pleasure to meet you both and I can’t stop kicking myself for not asking James to make me a cappuccino, where I could hang over his shoulder trying to soak up the knowledge. Oh well, maybe next time. kick+kick+kick+kick…