Open as usual.

Just in case the lovely people of Oslo wanted to pop down for some coffee goodness…

Norwegian Barista Competition Finalists

Firstly, a massive congratulations to our Thomas Holme, placing 5th in the Norwegian Barista Championships over the weekend. Thomas has worked incredibly hard over the past few months, and intensified his training over the last few weeks. After winning the Oslo regionals, he worked on various coffees, various roasts, various signature drink components during which we fine tuned his presentation. It is a fantastic achievement, having only worked with coffee for around a year.

Thomas Holme

The young gun, Oda Misje Haug, achieved back to back victories with a confident and refined performance. She showed great composure in the semi finals after spilling an espresso, and being forced to re-do a shot for her signature drink. A chemex brew and 16 shots of espresso seemed a breeze in her 15 minutes. We are very proud and happy she used our roast of the wonderful San Antonio CoE from Guatemala. Look out London!

Oda Misje Haug

More congratulations for Rasmus from Kaffemisjonen in Bergen, who after finishing 21 seconds over time in the semis, pulled together a speedier, yet more concise presentation in the finals and finished in 3rd place. Steinar Svenning from Cuba Life, a wholesale customer of ours, placed 2nd, he roasted his own coffee and gave the judges a fantastic presentation, brimming with charm and refined confidence. Maria Andersson from United Bakeries, who worked with Tim in the run up to the regionals, didn’t show any nerves and delivered a smooth presentation with a delicious passionfruit inspired signature drink. She placed 6th. Taking 4th place was the 3rd of the Kaffemisjonen crew, Magnus Iversen. I missed both his presentations, as i was helping in Thomas’ preparations. What i do know is that he does a killer Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation.

Maria Andersson

We have roasted the wonderful San Antonio from Guatemala as espresso, to replace the Finca La Milagrosa as our single origin espresso. The San Antonio is currently a small percentage of the Tim Wendelboe Espresso blend, but is now available all by itself.

As an espresso, it has deep flavours of forrest berries, orange zest and cocoa. Firm, red wine acidity with cocoa sweetness. A rich mouthfeel and delicate tannins in the finish. More information on the coffee can be found here. And it can be purchased from our webshop.

Oda from Kaffemisjonen in Bergen, used it for her 2010 back to back Norwegian Barista Championship win over the weekend.

I just started working on a coffee map over all the great coffee shops and espresso bars we have visited around the world that we can recommend to all our travelling readers. There might  be a couple of great food places that we recommend on the map as well, but this map is mainly for coffee places. We only recommend places we have been to, and also some places we haven’t been to yet but where we know that the owners or people who work there really knows their stuff. This map will be a constant work in progress, so hopefully it will be a nice guide for the coffee thirsty traveller.

Go here to see the map of recommendations.