You could say that Benjamin Put pours a great cup of coffee. It’s true but it’s not quite emphatic enough. He actually pours the third greatest cup of coffee in the entire world, and he credits a local cafe for starting him on this journey. You could say that he got his start with his first cup poured from the old school manual machines at the Second Cup at Tudor Glen.
“I actually got my start in coffee in St. Albert. In terms of an introduction to coffee, it was perfect. In my opinion, the best machines are still the manual ones. You can’t beat a well-trained barista with a really good machine,” he exclaimed, paying tribute to the equipment that helped him learn how to properly steam and tamp. “I taught myself how to pour a lattĂ© right there. That was the start of my interest in coffee at that location.”
“When I first started, there was almost nowhere to learn. Even research on the Internet didn’t really exist. To learn lattĂ© art, my boss at the time brought in this newspaper article. Nowadays, there are schools internationally that you can go to and there is more online learning but a lot of it is you have to find a cafĂ© that knows what they’re doing and start on as a barista. You basically learn by doing it.”
Put, the 30-year-old co-founder of Calgary’s Monogram Coffee, recently took third place at the World Barista Championship in Dublin, Ireland. This was his third time at the Worlds and the second year in a row that he garnered the bronze spot.
It’s been more than a decade since he first got into the grind at the Second Cup, working part-time even while he attended post-secondary schooling. After he moved to Calgary, he started working at a location of that city’s Phil and Sebastian Coffee Roasters chain of cafĂ©s. That’s where he really cut his teeth, he suggested, working variously as a trainer, a manager, and a roaster.
Once you get a taste of it, he suggested, there’s just no going back.
“Eventually, I wanted to do coffee for the rest of my life. I thought that the best way to do that would be to have a business.”
That’s when he started Monogram with two other partners about two years ago. The kid from Deer Ridge had become a bona fide figure on the java circuit but that wasn’t enough. Put (with his admittedly intense competitive side) had an itch to be the best in the biz.
As soon as he heard about barista competitions, it had his interest. He signed up several years ago and started winning some regionals. There was no going back.
“Lots of people – when they start competing – they become a little bit addicted. You learn so much when you’re actually competing. If you want to learn about coffee, it’s one of the best ways to do it. You’re always chasing making a better cup of coffee for the judges and getting that higher score. It becomes a little bit addictive.”
The caffeinated competition saw challengers from more than 60 countries, each tasked to make 12 different coffee-based drinks within a 15-minute time frame. Four “picky” judges each were there to scrutinize not only the tastes but also the methods and more.
The judges serve as the customers who must each be served an espresso drink, a milk-based drink (typically a cappuccino or a macchiato), and a signature drink that must contain espresso and any other ingredient except alcohol. There’s also a technical judge who oversees everything. It’s about half as many judges as one would face during Olympic figure skating competition but this is still a high anxiety moment for the baristas. There is no room for even a single mistake.
“During those 15 minutes, you basically have to serve them the best coffee of your life,” Put continued, “but it’s not even enough to do that.”
He said that you have to gauge your time so that it works out as closely to 15 minutes exactly without going over. That, and make everything taste good too.
“If you were my judge and I put an espresso in front of you, it’s not enough that the espresso tastes really good, I have to tell you before you drink it exactly what it’s going to taste like. I give you flavour descriptors. I tell you bitterness levels. I tell you mouth-feel descriptors. That’s not even enough. You have to be able to explain to the judge why it might have that particular flavour profile. You really have to show not only that you can make a good coffee but you have a mastery over the coffee in a way that you actually are responsible for the reason that it tastes the way it does.”
And then there’s also the signature drink that gets served. For Put, nothing would satisfy his competitive nature like something absolutely unique. In other words, it had to be something he concocted himself.
He developed an entirely new way to brew espresso that doesn’t actually involve an espresso machine. The resultant beverage has a slightly different flavour profile, he continuing, pointing out that he used passion fruit, apricot, and malic acid (a fruity acid to enhance the fruit flavours). Coffees with the chocolate/nut/caramel taste might be big in the local spots but they don’t show up in the big leagues for some reason.
It all went perfectly, Put esteeming his work as better than even his previous third place showing.
Now, you might think that a fruity coffee is a strange thing. That’s only because you’re not adventurous enough to have tried it already: it’s the coffee that you might fall in love with some day. Even Put said that they don’t sound very good “but they actually taste amazing.”
All of that is part of the growing movement to expand the artistic and scientific study of being a barista and making the various forms of coffee drinks. “It’s a very exciting time to be in coffee,” he said.
As Put returns to Canada, he’s already steadying his nerves to go back to the world stage for the 2017 competition. Until then, he finds himself in Calgary and Monogram Coffee where he feels right at home, just in time for the Stampede where he suggested he might share some of his glory with his friends in espresso.
“Maybe I can tack on to the Stampede parade,” he prompted.
