By Elizabeth Ladzinski
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
GREENWICH VILLAGE — The battle to crown the nation's best barista is on, and one Greenwich Village coffee artist was in the hunt.
Mike Jones, a 25-year-old barista at Third Rail Coffee at 240 Sullivan St., was one of more than 20 java-masters who competed this weekend in the Northeast Regional competition of the United States Barista Championship.
"I've been practicing my moves since January," Jones told DNAinfo last week.
But Jones ultimately lost out to Phillip Search, of Ozone Park's Dallis Bros. Coffee. It was not immediately clear where Jones places in the competition.
Jones, who's been a barista for four years, had 15 minutes to present three drinks: a single espresso, a single cappuccino, and a signature espresso-based drink. For that, Jones adds honey foam and a rhubarb infusion to a two-bean coffee by Stumptown, a custom blend he's worked on for two months with the roasters.
"You taste a lot of red fruit in the espresso and once you add the rhubarb, the taste becomes highlighted," Jones said.
The four judges graded him not only on the flavor and presentation of the drinks, but also on his grasp of other aspects of the coffee he's working with, including the acidity, origins, and who farmed the beans.
"The No. 1 thing is caring about the product," Jones said. "It's about having complete respect for all the work that goes into creating the coffee as well as serving it."
Search will go on to Houston later this month to face the winners of five other regions in the national championship. They'll all be flown to Brazil for a week to visit a coffee bean farm. Then, the champ will go on to the World Barista Championship in Bogota, Columbia, in June.
Jones didn't get into the business to become a top-gun barista.
"I started working at a coffee shop just to have a job, but then I had a lot of friends who were really into coffee so I got interested as well," Jones said.
And there's a seemingly unending amount to learn about coffee, from its origins, to processing, to brewing, to coffee house history, the local barista said.
"If I'm sick of drinking coffee, or I've spent too much time thinking about how to prepare espresso, I can read up on how it's grown, or processing methods in Costa Rica, or the history of coffee houses and customer service," Jones said. "It's endless, really."
