The Barista League’s “Choose Your Own Adventure” 2019 champs’ trip was filled with kimchi, makgeolli, and a whole lot of coffee this month in South Korea.
BY ANGELA FERRARA
SPECIAL TO BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE
Photos courtesy of Carolyn West
The title “The Barista League’s Choose Your Own Adventure Mystery Coffee Vacation” wasn’t chosen because it was particularly easy to say. As Steve Moloney, the founder of The Barista League, and I sat down to start planning our 2019 champions’ trip, we felt we had an important task at our hands. How do we make a trip that’s rewarding for everyone who attends? It is a prize, after all. We came to the conclusion that there was no better way to plan our itinerary than to get real feedback from the folks attending—and so we started the surveys. We asked things like, “Do you want more planned activities or more free time?” and, “Are there things you’d specifically like to see or do? Are there things you don’t like to do? Are you interested in being part of The Barista League: Seoul?”
We knew a few things for sure: We wanted to plan a trip that reflected the core goals of The Barista League. We wanted it to be low-stress and fun for everyone. We wanted the attendees to leave feeling like they had exponentially more than what they came with, and we wanted to focus on building meaningful connections between our champions and the local coffee community.
So, as we sat in a buzzing traditional Korean restaurant with soju poured in our glasses after many long flights, the trip was off to a start! It was the end of the day Korean time, but our champions, Vladyslav Demonenko and Kostya Strelnykov from Ukraine, Elizaveta Vagabova and Irina Sharipova from Russia, and Stacey Lynden and Steve Cuevas from Canada and USA, respectively, were bright-eyed and ready to begin the journey.
Wednesday morning, officially day one, we woke up and got started on a Seoul Café Tour, presented by our friends at Esteem Korea. We thought that open seats on the tour bus would be a missed opportunity. Why not fill them? So friends from near and far all piled into the tour bus, including folks from Bean Brothers, Intelligentsia Coffee, and Ona Coffee, and of course Barista Magazine, to name a few. We hit seven wonderfully diverse cafés in about eight hours. Don’t worry—we stopped for some dumplings in the middle of the day to soak up that caffeine. When in Rome, right? We all took some time to explore for a few hours before gathering for some Korean fried chicken and beer for dinner. A perfectly comforting (and delicious) end to a whirlwind of a day.
On Thursday, we hopped on the subway and headed to Gangnam for a two-part Master Class hosted by Bean Brothers and presented by The Barista League team and our champions. During part one of the Master Class, each of our winning teams chose their favorite coffee brewer on which they brewed coffee from their respective roasteries for a group of local baristas. While each team brewed, they talked about their coffee, their local coffee communities, and why they think involvement in the greater specialty-coffee community is important. One particularly interesting part was comparing the average wages and working conditions from baristas from all over the world.
Part two of the Master Class was focused on a palate development experiment: Does where you live and what your palate is familiar with affect what you taste? First, all attendees cupped one coffee and filled out a survey about what they experienced in that coffee. Surprisingly, it was a very calibrated crowd of baristas! Next, each champion brought a mystery ingredient from their country to share with the group. Think cloudberries from Sweden, maple butter from Canada, and pine jam from Ukraine. We blind-cupped those ingredients, talked about what we tasted, and compared them to the closest SCA reference. Our focus was to celebrate diversity in our palates and share unique palate experiences with one another.
On Friday, our first stop was a makgeolli brewing class at The Sool Company. Makgeolli is a traditional Korean alcohol fermented from rice. Cloudy, bright, and a bit fizzy, makgeolli was unlike anything I’d ever tried before. The champions learned how to make the drink from start to finish in a combo hands-on and lecture-style course, perfect for any coffee expert to nerd out to. After tasting some examples of the homemade goodness, we were off once again and headed toward a Korean street food market!
Our friend and current U.S. Cup Tasters Champion Jen Apodaca joined us at Gwangjang Market for an endless number of delicious foods to try. Tteokbokki (rice cakes in a spicy red sauce), a variety of dumplings, mung bean pancakes, and octopus so fresh it’s still squirming on the plate were all must-tries for our group of adventurous eaters. An explosion of colors and flavors surrounded us as we cheers-ed another shot of soju with the group.
Saturday, our final day in Seoul as a group, was event day. We were thrilled to be able to celebrate the launch of our first-ever The Barista League stop in Asia with all of our champions. Typically, someone can’t register for our competition individually, but in Seoul we tried something a little different. We allowed three local individuals to sign up as “Wild Card” competitors to be matched up with three of our champions. As team training started, our champs were introduced to their partners for the evening. Through language barriers, all different types of experience, and competition jitters, the teams immediately hit it off. Thank you, Google Translate! The way each Wild Card team came together was the epitome of what we were looking for when we said we wanted to connect coffee communities near and far.
We ended the trip with hours of screaming karaoke. Really, nothing else would have done this whirlwind of a trip justice. As we all filtered out of the karaoke bar with hoarse voices, we said some “see you laters” to all of The Barista League 2019 champions. On the walk back to our Airbnb, Steve and I already started to discuss plans for next year’s Mystery Coffee Vacation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Angela Ferrara is the director of communications and social media at The Barista League. She’s based in Baltimore.
