Barista Magazine

DEC 2014 - JAN 2015

Barista Magazine is your home for the worldwide community of coffee and the people who make it.

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THESE ARE A FEW OF OF Nora Šmahelová's favorite things: her brass Hario Buono kettle, her spray-paints and stencil kit; and her bicycle, her beloved bicycle. Of course, she could fill a shipping contain- er with all the items which are dear to her heart: the phone and social media to which she madly and constantly uploads photos of her art, friends, and coffee shop, Chapter One in Berlin; her unbelievably large collection of manual brew devices; bags upon bags of coffee roasted by friends and co–Barista Competition and Brewers Cup judges she has around the world; her shoes and her many dresses; and of course, Micín, her much-loved tabby cat. Nora is Czech by birth, but has lived in Berlin since age 18. She loves the sun, basks in it on benches outside of Chapter One on the precious warm days in the bustling German city; lounges in it on trips to visit her Greek friends at Taf in Athens, from whom she buys coffee to brew at the shop; soaks it in on trips to Paris and Barcelona and Rimini, Italy, where she is invited to lend her skills as a certified World Coffee Events head judge to national and international competitions. If there is a break in the day, and the sun is shining, no matter the city, that's where you'll find Nora, Ray-bans and smile in place. You likely recognize her, but few know her extremely well. Though she is social and almost always laughing, she is shy and introverted to an extent. She holds her dear friends close and has a wariness regard- ing newcomers. She wants to know them, but her bashfulness keeps her from making the first move. Artist that she is, however, Nora immerses herself in the world, lights, and commotion around her, sailing down streets on her bike and snapping photos in her head. She returns to the café to make coffee and think; she ends up at her Berlin apartment making art about the things she's seen and heard, often through the wee hours of the morning. Coffee then art then coffee again—this is how Nora has filled and will likely always fill her days. As a young university student learning languages (she speaks seven) and studying art, Nora took a barista job in Berlin, at an old café where many famous coffee peo- ple got their start—including Nora's old coworker, Christian Klatt, now a mastermind engineer for the celebrated German grinder manufacturer Mahlkönig. With business partner and friend, Björn Köpke, Nora broke down and rebuilt the space that is now Chapter One in the cold, closing months of 2011. They stained, rubbed, stripped, painted, and assem- bled the café that stands today, which is known as perhaps the best place in the city for filter coffee, and a damned good choice for espres- so, as well. Nora wouldn't tell you unless you dragged it from her, but she was the first German Barista Champion, way back in 2002. There's a faded photo somewhere in which she stands shyly shoulder to shoulder with her fellow national champs at the World Barista Championship held then in Oslo, Norway—among them Dismas Smith of the United States; Emma Markland-Webster of New Zealand; and Denmark's Fritz Storm, who won top honors that year, when only a few hundred people on the planet really knew what a barista contest was. "I felt so lonely there," Nora remembers of the experience in Oslo. "I was traveling there on my own, no support from anyone, and I was shocked when I saw the other competitors with big teams of people around them. I wished to just disappear from this point. But then everything turned out well. I gathered all my courage together and just tried to socialize with the others, and I really enjoyed it. It was my absolute first time to be in contact with so many people who were work- ing with coffee, and I saw for the first time how big this community is, though in those days it was a miniature version of what it is today. Oslo was a big challenge for me and also a big step, which I didn't realize then, but thinking about it today, I am conscious of it. I got new impuls- es and impressions, and also a lot of motivation to work with coffee and to improve. It opened a huge horizon of possibilities for me." She returned to Berlin bursting with ideas. The coffee experience she'd had in Oslo stimulated not only her growing interest in brewing, but her artistic pursuits, as well. Her longtime academic curiosity about India and East Asia was intensified by the exposure to the many peers from around the world she met at the WBC, and she was inspired by this collision of coffee and the global community to seriously pursue design at university. "The experience in Oslo showed me that there is much more going on about coffee worldwide, so I started to get more information from the Internet, and I bought books and tried a lot of experiments," she says. "I played with manual brewing at home because [people weren't doing it] in the coffee places where I was working. I also started to order coffees from different roasteries for home use to try to develop my palate. I started to study more about taste in general, and changed my whole eating and drinking habits in order to build up a huge taste library. I always say that my life is a big fusion of nice coincidences, but my friends always say, 'It's not coincidences, you worked for it.' I don't know. Step by step, I got to the point where I am now." That point is this: Nora's is a life spent in constant motion ("I hate stagnation," she says). She dashes between coffee and artistic pur- suits, primarily stencils, always learning, always asking questions. She looked for answers to the uncertainty she had as a barista com- petitor by going after her judges' certification the next year. Given her propensity for manual brewing, the introduction of the Brewers Cup Championship was for Nora like discovering a coffee playground specially designed for her. "The Brewers Cup is the most interesting competition for me, because Chapter One is focusing on filter coffee," Nora continues. "I love brewed coffee, and I learned so much through brewed coffee about coffee in general. Besides, it's easier to reach a higher taste quality without the necessity of having high-tech machines. I love the aesthet- ics and the ritual of brewing filter coffee—it's like a ceremony. Also, the consumption is very relaxing; it is a slowing down during busy days. "The Brewers Cup competition focuses totally on coffee on itself— this is maybe also the reason why I like it so much. Just coffee, no bullshit," she says. "And it's amazing to judge the compulsory service— then you can taste minimal nuances or sometimes bigger differences between the cups all brewed out of the same coffee, but with different waters, methods, techniques, doses, brew times, etc. It's just amazing. And in the open service, it is just one coffee presented by each com- petitor. The competition is more slow in total, so the competitors have the chance to talk about their philosophies and points of view. In my opinion, this competition will be very big in the future, because it is only about coffee and taste, no additives, just pure taste. "Brewing coffee for a normal customer looks so easy, but on the other hand it depends on so many factors, and opens so many ave- nues to travel on with minimal vehicles," she continues. "I simply love brewed coffee. I have almost more brewing equipment at home than in the shop, and always when I am making a brew for myself at home, I do set a scene to support and create a new visual drinking experience. It's like combining both of my professions, art and coffee." After working as a barista for several shops, Nora found herself yearning to create manual brews in a professional setting. While Berlin has quickly grown to a solid position among the best coffee cities in the world, in 2010, the specialty-coffee scene was still quite new. 52 barista magazine

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