Garage Barista Championships 2023 | WINNER REVEAL

This week we held our inaugural Garage Barista Championships in-house competition and had the greatest time celebrating the absolute stars within our team! 

Picture the scene: 5 coffee athletes from across our four shops and Bakery go head-to-head, laying their skills and souls on the line for the glory of being crowned Garage Barista Champion 2023 (and a host of sweet of prizes to boot- first place was a Sage Barista Express Impress home machine (& a stash of other goodies). 

Our winner was the ever fabulous Sophie Strotton, our Whitstable and Herne Bay Manager! Sophie chose to use our El Tucan Decaf for her bean throughout the comp. 

She had to make one espresso, one espresso and milk drink (she chose a flat white) and one speciality drink to serve up to our judges (who were pretty thankful for a round of decaf after four other rounds of full caff).  

Sophie’s speciality drink was a Peachy-Cream “Espressoda” using her own peach syrup and topping with an Oatly whipped cream. She chose this route for her speciality drink in order to bring out her favourite flavour note within the El Tucan- the sweet peach! 

Check out and purchase your El Tucan Mexican decaf here, you can expect the smoothness of butterscotch and a zing of grapefruit sharpness in the acidity, as well as the sweetness that the peach note brings.  

We want to say a huge congratulations to Sophie for her win, as well as massive props to our other 4 competitors for giving so much of themselves to the comp- we were seriously impressed with you all. More on them to come another time! 

Lastly, our event wouldn’t have been possible without the support of our sponsors Omwani Coffee, Sanremo UK, Oatly and Langdon Coffee Merchants who provided us with pizza, beer and swag for our champs and the rest of the team.