Daniel Mendez had something of a special trainer: as he hails from the same company as 2011 WBC Champ Alejandro Mendez, Alejandro was his coach. And the expertise Alejandro used to win the WBC in 2011 certainly helped his friend, Daniel, who delivered a rock’n’roll performance of coffee excellence in today’s semifinals round.
Daniel began by hand depulping coffee cherry ”that’s right: he brought a depulper all the way from El Salvador, along with ripe coffee cherry, and depulped them on stage. His coffee, which he picked himself at Finca Santa Patrone, was said to have a dark chocolate finish. But Daniel didn’t use chocolate in his drink ”no, the sig beverage was all about the actual coffee. He used the freshly pulped cascara in a siphon to get the essence out, then measured the juice from the cascara in a VST Refractometer.
He added sugar and cascara juice to small burners in front of each judge, heated them, and that was the base of his signature drink.
Truly it was a dazzling performance.
Time: 14.48
Thanks for the post and great coverage of the 2012 WBC! I would only like to make one tiny correction on your post of Daniel’s performance: he used a refractometer engineered soecifically for measuring sugar content, very similar appearance to the VST but not the same.
Love your work…keep up the FANTASTIC support of the barista community an specialty coffee!