Australia’s A-game
CRAIG SIMON – 2018 ASCA AUSTRALIAN BARISTA CHAMPION
Craig Simon has entered Australia’s history book. The Veneziano Coffee Roaster is a three-time Australian Barista Champion, and the longest competing barista on the Australian Specialty Coffee Association (ASCA) competition circuit.
When Craig started his campaign 10 years ago, he used the experience to improve his craft. Now, having been to the World Barista Championships (WBC) twice, he’s competing to win.
“I think I’ve developed and presented my strongest routine concept in years,” Craig says. “I would be absolutely over the moon to win the WBC.”
After placing fourth in the 2014 WBC finals, Craig stepped away from the competition limelight, content in his retirement – until he used his downtime to develop thought-provoking ideas.
“I was happy to call it a day. I wasn’t thinking of ever competing again, especially because it’s so draining, stressful and time-consuming. But, when I had time off, a few ideas popped into my head that were really innovative and I knew I needed to share them with the industry,” he says.
Those ideas included the concept of blind tasting and a deductive tasting matrix.
“It’s about tasting something and being able to identify what it is through taste,” Craig says. “The idea comes from the wine industry’s deductive tasting grid and the sommelier exam where they do a blind tasting and identify the wine in detail: the type of varietal, the country it’s from, the terroir, the climate, the processing, the age of the wine, the producer, etc. The level of detail they can taste is incredible, and I see the same correlations and commonality in flavours with coffee.”
Until this point, Craig says coffee quality is only evaluated via the Specialty Coffee
