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WORLD BARISTA CHAMPION 2012 "I would like to keep supporting producing countries and have crazy new projects and ideas. Obviously I love the idea of traveling and knowing new places and people, but I also don't want to lose track of reality.'' RR: The coffee was from La Soledad located in Acatenango, Guatemala. The owner is Enio Perez (along with) his son Raul Perez, and we had been working together for a couple of years, but mostly because we are friends. Raul has been a judge in the national (barista) competition, and he is open to trying different things with coffee (processing) to make a different and better quality cup. I remember trying a semiwashed with him that was something new because I wanted to have a coffee that was unusual for Paradigma Coffee Roasters, so he talked to me about it and we were going to try (something new) for the new harvest, and I said, if it tastes good, I'll use it for competition. Why (did I work with) him? Because I trust him and he's my friend, and also he is open to doing new things. He tasted the coffee and the espressos with me and watched the presentation. I had never tried this coffee before and yet somehow I knew I wanted to use it for competition. Also because the coffee had this amazing connection with the sig drink. I wanted it to give the (judges the) experience of tasting the whole experiment of this coffee, so using fresh cascara and mucilage was (how I demonstrated the) flavors of the processing of the coffee. And in the roast profile, you always have the yellow bean but you don't usually try that, and it has different flavors (yellow beans lose moisture content on the roast profile), and is the same as the first crack because it has a lot of sugars and clean flavors! The coffee was so versatile that it allowed me to try all these variations and different profiles of the coffee, so putting together fresh cascara, mucilage and a extraction of the coffee was going to give a (natural process) profile and the experience of what the coffee could taste like if it was done following a natural process. And, using the exact same coffee but combining fresh cascara, first crack and a different extraction was going to give me an experience of a washed profile. I believe that one coffee can have different profiles depending on the personal preferences of the customer. By doing this the judges were going to have the experience of experimenting and tasting the versatility of the coffee. At the end with the www.baristamagazine.com 49