Only a week until the Northwest Regional Barista Competition, and then we’re off and running through this year’s six regionals up to the United States Barista Championship, held this year, right here in Portland, Oregon at the SCAA event in April.
This year’s Northwest Regional will be held in Tacoma, Washington at the Tacoma Convention Center. Hopefully the snow and ice misers are getting all their winter fury out of the way right now (most of Western Washington is under a blanket of snow and ice today – I just read that our friends at Espresso Parts are out of power today as are some 120,000 people in Washington.)
The regional will run from Friday, Jan. 27 through Sunday, Jan. 29. Besides the barista competition, there will also be the regional round of the US Brewers Cup. Dillanos Coffee Roasters are the host for this year’s event. The Northwest Region includes the states of Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.
You can find out more about the regional at the SCAA’s website.
Also even sooner than the Northwest Regional, this weekend, as 2011 Italian champion Francesco Sanapo has just reminded us, is the finals of the Italian National Barista Championship. The winner there will have their ticket punched to the World Barista Championship in Vienna, Austria in June.
