Chennai :
Complimenting what World Barista Champion Fritz Storm stands for, his hotel room almost seems perfumed with coffee. On the bed, while the rest of the suitcase sits unpacked, a giant packet of coffee powder sits neatly opened. “This coffee powder is from Guatemala, and freshly roasted. I wanted to de-gas it a bit before I can use it,” says the coffee expert and barista trainer, who was in the city for the launch of the new Magnum Ice Cream flavour that blends coffee with chocolate. Fritz, along with pastry chef Janice Wong, demonstrated creative ways of pairing the two ingredients for desserts and drinks, as part of the launch on Tuesday evening.
“I chose the coffee from Guatemala for the demo because it has a lot of chocolate flavour in it during the finish, besides the fruity taste. There is some acidity in the beginning, which leaves an interesting taste in the mouth,” says Fritz, who has travelled around the world, studying the coffee flavours of different countries. According to him, South African coffee tastes fruity and sweet, and in Brazil, which is the largest producer of coffee, the drink though doesn’t taste very special, has a wonderful base.
What about the local filter coffee? “I haven’t had the time to try it in Chennai, but I tried filter coffee from a street side shop in Hyderabad, and I found it nice. But it was extremely sweet, sweeter than ice cream,” he says with a laugh. “However, I don’t think there is anything like the best coffee in the world. It is a combination of the beverage — how it tastes and how it looks — and how the barista is serving it. He or she needs to have the personality, and say the right things while serving the drink,” he adds.
It’s likely those are the exact points that earned him the title of World Barista Champion in 2002. “It was all coincidence. I am an accountant by profession and I didn’t even drink coffee till my 20s. I guess as a young guy I just wanted to do something fun, so I started as a bartender. That’s when I drank Cappuccino for the first time in 1994,” recalls Fritz, who, today, cannot start his morning without a Cappuccino, or carry on with the rest of the day without his share of Expressos. “In a few years, I started hearing about various competitions of making coffee. In the first World Barista Championship held in 2000, my colleague competed, I tried in 2002 and won,” he adds with a smile.
Ever since then, Fritz has been training baristas for the Championship, and experimenting with coffee as an ingredient. He tells us about his invention — Almond Cappuccino, reminiscent of the lazy mornings he spent back home in Denmark dipping almond biscottis in coffee. “I thought, why not make a new flavour with it? So we soaked the biscuits for six to 12 hours and then made a Cappuccino,” says Fritz. Recently, he, along with Janice, made what they named Mocha Margarita. “We added chocolate, cinnamon, expresso, milk and caramel sauce with mocha to create something unique. And since we found only a Margarita glass to pour it, we named it Mocha Margarita!” he shares, with evident enthusiasm.
According to him, though the coffee industry is much older than wine industry, it is only now that we are slowly beginning to understand coffee. “People can differentiate the taste of different wines, and they know the basics, like white wine does not go with fish and so on. But it is only now that people are able to recognise the flavours of different coffees. Soon, they should be able to make a preference, in the sense of what brewing they like to have with a dessert, what would suit an ice cream, chocolate or cake. We haven’t reached there yet, but we are catching up really fast,” he says.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Chennai / by Naveena Vijayan / February 26th, 2015
