Interview: coffee pro Charles Babinski (Intelligentsia)

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Why was it important for you to compete in barista competitions, and would you do it again?

I’m doing it this year. The reason that I did it the first year is because it terrified me, and I could see no reason why I wouldn’t do it. It’s sort of like, well, because it scared me so much, I kind of had to do it. I learned a lot the first time I did it, and the second time I did it, I learned an incredible amount again. There’s just something about having to have such a singular intense focus on something that pushes you to find new ways to share coffee. The first time I did it, I just had to focus on being able to pull a consistent shot of espresso, just having to care about how much coffee I wasted, and how much coffee ended up in the portafilter and how quickly it came out. It was something that I never paid attention to before. The second time I competed, I had to focus on how I was sharing the information I wanted to get across. As I’m sure you noticed, I can ramble, I can go off on tangents, and I can do a lot of things to – I can assume a certain background of information in the person I’m talking to – which is not a very good thing when you’re trying to teach people. It was all of those things that I had to confront to be able to do well in the barista competition, or to do as well as I wanted. This year, I have more confidence.


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What will it take for you to consider this year’s competition season a success?

I’ve done a decent amount of competitions, and I’ve done the latte art thing, and I shake like a leaf at every single one, the second I get up there, without fail. I’d like to get to the point where I’m not nervous, though I doubt that will happen. My goal, besides that, this next competition season, is to bring all the things that I’ve experienced and sort of learned working at Venice, and working specifically at the slow bar, and things I think are important are how coffee can be served, or should be served, or it would be a good idea if we played around with serving it this way, to bring all those things into the competition, because those are the things I care about right now.

You didn’t really talk about Barista Champion or Regional Champion.

Well, I mean, that would be nice, but if you’re – I feel like if I do all the things I really want to do – that will be – whether or not I win will be secondary. I don’t think I’m necessarily wired like that.

What do you think it will take to make the L.A. coffee scene great, if it isn’t already?

It’s happening. I think the biggest thing is just the more baristas at a higher skill level, and the more places you can get good coffee, and the more educated the consumers are, the better off it’s going to be. I think it’s an awesome scene right now, and I think there’s some great places to get coffee. There’s the Intelligentsias, there’s Proof/Cognoscenti, there’s Coffeebar and Spring downtown, there’s Tiago in Hollywood, which doesn’t get enough love as it should, because I’ve never had anything other than an incredibly awesome cappuccino or espresso there. To have that many good coffee bars – and surely a few I haven’t mentioned – in one city, is pretty awesome, and it seems like a new one’s opening up every couple months.

What is it that makes the L.A. coffee scene unique?

That I don’t know…The coffee scene is so new in every major city that it all sort of feels to be part of one big movement. In L.A., it just feels about to explode, so whatever it is today, it won’t be in a couple of years, that’s for sure.

What’s a typical coffee consumption day like for you from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed?

Well, one thing is that I love coffee, but I also love tea. I talk about loving coffee and being in the coffee world and coffee community, but I very much wish tea was involved in that too, you know. There’s room for that, so I usually start my day drinking a couple infusions of oolong. We’ve got an awesome Taiwanese oolong right now, Bai Hao, delicious. So I’ll start with tea and sometimes I’ll brew a cup of coffee or a pot, at the house, but by the time I get here, it’s usually, order an espresso or two, taste something from what the front bar is doing, and taste something from whoever’s on the slow bar. I’ll usually do trainings, and a lot of that involves tasting. I just recently – after three years of full-time training – I just recently started drinking coffee at home, and I’ve never had problems staying caffeinated. It’s just part of the job to be constantly tasting.

What’s your preferred brewing method at home, and how come?

I like the Kalita wave right now. I’ve just gotten nice, balanced cups of coffee from it. My relationship with coffee brewers is, I like coffee brewers until it tastes like the brewer. So the Chemex is great until it just starts to taste like a Chemex brew, and then I move on to Café Solo. When every Café Solo brew starts to taste like a Café Solo brew, I’ll move on to something else. I bounce around a little bit. Once I start focusing on the brew method, more than the coffee, I’ll usually try something else.

If you could travel to any city in the world right now, primarily to drink coffee, what would it be and why?

There are too many. Cities that I’ve been to that I’ve had awesome coffee in, like London and all the Square Mile folks and the coffee shops that have sprung up there in the last couple of years, that’s – I would love to do a coffee tour of London. Oslo. London and Oslo, those are the two big European cities for it all. Part of me would love to go to San Salvador, or El Salvador, and see Alejandro [Mendez] and Federico [Bolanos] and all of those folks and drink coffee with them. There are so many places to go with coffee, and one of the most exciting things about the large specialty coffee community is that it’s so spread out, but it’s still relatively tightly knit. We have friends all over the globe.

If you could only have one more shot of espresso, who would you let pull it for you?

Would I get to drink brewed coffee for the rest of my life?

Yeah.

Somebody nice. I’d be happy with brewed coffee…Alright, one more shot of espresso. I’ll take it seriously. Right now, there’s a barista here at Venice named Marcelino [Martinez], who – I’ve got to say – I’ve seen him in the past year and a half go from being a skateboarding dishwasher kid to being one of the best baristas I’ve seen. I’d give him the opportunity to pull the shot. I know it would be absolutely delicious.

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Joshua Lurie

Joshua Lurie founded FoodGPS in 2005. Read about him here.

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