BeanScene Magazine

Ideas and developments in the coffee market are moving so quickly now that café owners and roasters will need to adapt or be left behind. This is the view of the outgoing World Barista Champion, Gwilym Davies.

“The market has been static for many years with roasters, machine manufacturers and café owners not having to develop their product - ideas are now moving quickly. Baristas will be key in facilitating this change, but if they are not supported or paid as professionals they will leave and either work with someone who will treat them as professionals or start their own places,” Gwilym says.

“That troublesome barista pushing for a better product will not go away.”

Baristas, he says, are driven by taste and flavour and coffee is not about theatre, barista egos or slavishly following unquestioned tradition. “Engaging with the customer is key to education and accessibility. Without customer interaction the barista might as well be a vending machine.”

It’s what Gwilym calls the rise of the professional barista. “Not the rockstar barista posturing behind a machine, but a professional who knows how to brew coffee using a variety of methods and understanding how the variables of grind, time, dose and agitation interplay and how to achieve desirable extraction yields. They know how to identify under and over extraction through taste and how to make the correct adjustments.”

As World Barista Champion, Gwilym has spent the past year travelling extensively. He has connected with small pockets of baristas in many countries who are working hard to bring delicious coffee to the public. “They are a small but growing and influential percentage of the coffee industry who, despite cultural differences, have many unifying ideas. They want to know how variety, processing method and individual origins affect flavour and they are giving this information to the customer using lighter roasts to show these intrinsic flavours.”

It may sound simple, but Gwilym says the acceptance that coffee is a fruit - subject to changes like any other fresh agricultural product - is a coup in itself. “By reducing the number of components in a blend, by roasting seasonal blends – most recently harvested coffees, changing maybe up to four times a year, every time a new harvest comes in - it really ensures we get the most out of every single bean.”

The increasing quality of green beans is fuelling these trends and along with smaller cup sizes, customer education and expectations as well as a better quality product in each and every cup, there is a resultant focus on detail and attention to quality.”

Until the recent crowning in London, of Michael Phillips of the USA, as the 2010 World Barista Champion, Gwilym was globally regarded as the best barista.

This unassuming Yorkshireman was born in Cheltenham, England and grew up in Leeds. He took the World Barista Championship crown in Atlanta in April 2009. During his recent visit to Australia, he offered his insights into what the title means and what changes he sees coming in the future of coffee.

“I know I am a Barista, not a manager, blogger, consultant or rockstar so I will concentrate on what I enjoy – making coffee for the public and pushing the boundaries forward.”

Gwilym is not a new comer to coffee. His first job in the industry was in Auckland, New Zealand while on a working visa 13 years ago. He was given a job by Chris Priestley at Atomic Coffee. “He not only patiently put up with my questions, but actively encouraged my obsession and always managed to find me shifts. He also introduced me to NZ wine and guided me through an amazing music collection which left me with an enduring love of Bessie Smith,” Gwilym says.

When he returned to the UK, such was his attachment to coffee, he abandoned his previous office-bound career path. His family, he says, thought the travelling he’d undertaken would have “got all of the nonsense” out of his system. Instead, he moved to London to try and learn more about coffee and the café scene.

“London was at the start of the growth of the US-inspired coffee chains with their 16oz cups and cookie cutter stores. The only person who could see an alternative to this was Jorge Fernandez who got me through my first disillusioned year there and went on to create the much copied Fernandez and Welles in Soho.

“Jorge and I discovered and then hung around a small Dickensian looking coffee house which roasted single origin beans in its basement on Monmouth Street in Covent Garden until the owner Anita LeRoy gave us a job and became our task master and mentor for the next five years.

“At Monmouth Coffee I learnt about taste and how varieties, processing methods, and origins affected this. I met farmers, who put a face behind the product, but the most important thing I learnt was customer service and the importance of making coffee accessible.”

By now, Gwilym was living on a canal boat and took the opportunity for a break by taking the boat down the Thames and getting involved in some Grassroots community projects. He found himself returning to visit London once a week to make coffee as he missed it. On one of these trips he went to a new coffee shop in East London run by an Australian named Tim Styles (now running the Penny University) and had a coffee that altered his whole frame of mind.

“I thought I knew how to steam milk, but this coffee blew me away. I had never tasted such sweetness and texture. For a brief moment I was going to give up making coffee, as I could never hope to achieve what I tasted in that cup. I later found out the guy who made it was head barista, Alex Anderson, at Seven Seeds in Melbourne and managed to meet him recently during my trip.”

Gwilym says he swallowed his pride and started to learn to make coffee all over again. The vehicle for this was a coffee cart on Whitecross Street Market that he took over from a woman named Jenny who had to return to NZ. “Here, I purposely did not brand the cart or try to encourage custom other than producing great drinks with a smile. I needed time to learn how to make coffee again.”

The purchase of a naked portafilter confirmed to Gwilym that he had a lot to relearn. This simple piece of equipment really exposed his weaknesses and indicated that he still had a long way to go.

“My carefully constructed tamping technique developed over three years was clearly flawed. With the development of the internet, information was a lot easier to find than when I first started to make coffee 10 years earlier. I found a very accessible and inclusive community more open and willing to share information.”

But this was still not enough. “I needed to talk things through with real people. Luckily James Hoffmann, Stephen Morrissey and Anette Moldvaer were about to open a roastery in East London. Here I found a transparent roaster who would accept feedback, give me roast dates, invite me to cuppings, expose me to roasters from around the world and give me access to training and information,” Gwilym says.

Gwilym was in amazing company here, naming some of the best known operators in the global coffee community. James Hoffman the 2007 World Barista champion; Stephen Morrissey the 2008 World Barista champion and; last but certainly not least, Norwegian, Anette Moldvaer who is regarded globally as one of the best cuppers and palates anywhere in the world and won the 2007 World Cup Tasting Championship. She and James Hoffman are also the co-founders of Monmouth Coffee.

Since winning the title last year, Gwilym recently cut all financial ties with the coffee carts he was previously involved with. He says he has made this decision “because my strength is as a barista, not a manager or entrepreneur.” “The carts proved good coffee can be made accessible outside on a street market, provide a decent wage for a barista and involve very little initial investment,” he says.

The next project was inside a male clothing outlet called Present. It was developed with the help of Jeremy Challender a barista and musician from Melbourne and Mattias Bjorkland, the 2009 Swedish Barista Champion. It is called Prufrock, and the idea was to bring the cart concept inside another business and learn how to operate a lever machine in a commercial environment.

“Recently I have been lucky enough to be involved with the Square Mile retail outlet ‘Penny University’ under the guidance of Tim Styles. This outlet seeks to make coffee accessible without relying on traditional equipment and processes like an espresso machine, sugar, milk or takeaway – quite a learning experience both for baristas as well as consumers.

But for now, Gwilym is going to sit still for a while and reflect on what he calls “a year of madness and circumnavigating the globe in a caffeine-fuelled maelstrom.” Having been exposed to many new perspectives, he says he needs time to absorb and play with new ideas. 

One conclusion he has come to though is that “I know I am a Barista, not a manager, blogger, consultant or rockstar so I will concentrate on what I enjoy – making coffee for the public and pushing the boundaries forward.”

One thing he would love to do is to create a space that can develop baristas, provide opportunity for education, exploration, employment and showcase what a professional Barista is and to help them to become all that they can be.