Thanks to the talented staff (chefs and knowledgeable waiters included), last night’s festivities left a few (er, make that more than a few) a bit bleary-eyed this morning. The combination of superb cuisine and spectacular wines and beers, plus leisurely service and long, pleasant conversations and revelry, was a lot to digest after such a full day of activities. But at the Nordic Barista Cup, some sort of strange energy comes over everyone, giving us all the capability to reenergize almost magically.
Perhaps it is because we know that the activities to come will be just as good if not better than the ones before. Teams drifted through the doors to the event space around 8 a.m., ready for a lesson from Zander Nosler about the history of the Clover, which has been quite a focus of attention since the NBC began yesterday. Attendees were noticeably absent, most likely catching up on some sleep!
First things first: Barista teams were directed to a special informational session with the judges, where they were briefed on what would take place over the course of the day: Informative discussions and tastings of sugar from Mr. Lars Bo Jorgensen of Danisco to follow the Clover session.
Remember how we told you yesterday about the goodie bags all teams and competitors received upon registration at the beginning of the event? NBC Organizer Jens Norgaard relieved the barista teams’ curiosity about the jump rope included in the bag by asking team members to take it out and look at the counter (each rope is equipped with a counter to track the number of “skips” on each rope). Then he walked through the room and recorded the number of skips on each rope. As most of the baristas had yet to even take the ropes out of the packaging, the scores for number of skips were low (except for Icelandic team coach Ragga, who had been getting some exercise and thus earned victory for the Icelanders).
But the rope-skipping is not over yet! Tim instructed the baristas to “get skipping,” hinting that the counters on their jump ropes would be measured again at some point over the weekend. And so, weary baristas (and yes, Norwegian team, awake dancing until 2:30 in the morning at Noma, we mean you!) began the process of skipping rope in the event space before the first airpots of coffee were even brought out!
—Sarah Allen