CoffeeATL.com is now live!

The home of Atlanta’s Thursday Night Throwdown has moved! Check out it’s new home at CoffeeATL.com here!

Announcing…. The Dixie Cup!

We are very pleased to announce to you all the latest in Atlanta latte art throwdown action: the Dixie Cup! Inspired by our D.C. brethren, the Dixie Cup will be a latte art tournament that will span over the next fourth months. Four throwdowns will be held once a month with the final round being in May. Competitors will earn points based on how well they do over the next four months at the various TNTs. Whoever has the most points after the final TNT in May will receive a variety of extra,  awesome prizes.

We’re still ironing out some details, but we do have two pieces of information for you. Firstly, our February TNT and launch of the Dixie Cup will be held at the grand re-opening of Safehouse Coffee Roasters on Friday, February 15^th. We’re very excited that these beloved members of the southeast coffee community are going to be back up to full strength, and can’t wait to celebrate with them! Sign-ups for the throwdown will start at 7:30pm, and pouring will start around 8:30. In addition, our pouring will be done to the soundtrack of a live bluegrass band! It’s going to be awesome! Did I mention we’ll be steaming milk on a Slayer?

The other piece of information we need to share is scoring. TNTs will still be formatted in the World Cup style, that most of are used to at this point. For those new to the World Cup scoring system, it works like this. There are two main rounds: group stage and knock-out stage. The group stage is the first stage, and competitors will be broken up into groups of 4. Each competitor will pour head-to-head against the 3 other competitors in their group. Two judges will judge the pours against each other. The winner of each head-to-head will get 3 points, the loser gets zero points. If the judge’s decision is split, each competitor will get a point. After each competitor has poured against the other three competitors in their group, the points will be totaled and the two competitors with the most points will move on to the knock-out stage. A total of eight competitors will move to the knock-out stage. The knock-out stage is single, where there will be 3 judges, so no can be no ties. The top 8 will turn into 4, which will turn into 2, and then we’ll have a winner.

This format is nothing new, but here’s where it gets interesting. Competitors will get Cup points for various accomplishments in each throwdown.

• 1 point for making it to the knock out stage
• 2 points for 4^th place
• 3 points for 3^rd place
• 4 points for 2^nd place
• 5 points for 1^st place
• Bonus point for winning your group in the group stage

So just to clarify, if the winner of the whole throwdown also won their group, they would have 6 points in the Dixie Cup.

We’re very excited about these new events and can’t wait to get going! More details about prizes and sponsors will be coming soon…

November ATL TNT: SERBC Edition

In what has become something of a tradition around these parts, this month’s TNT will coincide with the Southeast coffee family descending on Atlanta once again for the Southeast Regional Barista Competition. Thursday the 29th, right as SERBC weekend kicks off, the ATL TNT will be happening at Condesa Coffee. Sign-ups are starting at 7:00 and we’ll be pouring by 7:30-8:00. Parking is available on John Wesley Dobbs or in the Tribute Lofts parking deck (also location on John Wesley Dobbs). Carpooling is recommended.

To assure that we’re not pouring latte art until 2 o’ clock in the morning, we’re capping off the number of competitors to 32, and doing backet style single elimination. So get there right at 7 to sign up so you’re guaranteed a spot! $5 to pour. Prizes for the winner include (but are not limited to) the pot of $5 entries ($160 if there’s 32 competitors), a tin of  Variety: Gesha (a.k.a. Esmeralda), and everyone’s favorite pouring kettle that’s just slightly out an average baristas budget – a Takahiro!

And of course what’s a throwdown with free beer! Monday Night Brewing, who has quickly become many ATL baristas favorite local beer dudes, are graciously providing us with the ever-so-delicious Fu ManBrew to share with you all! In addition, Condesa will have some other delicious beers on draft, along with some wine and liquor. There will be some light munchies around, but It’d probably be a good idea to grab some grub before you head over.

Details for ATL vs WDC Cup Tasters

For those that are new to the way cup tasters triangulations work, a triangulation is a set of three cups of brewed coffee. Out of these three cups of coffee, two are the exact same coffee and one is different. The goal is to figure out which coffee is different and move it forward across the table. For this competition there will be 4 triangulations of coffee.

During the actual competition, 3 competitors will go at a time across three different stations (each having their own coffees). Each competitor will have up to 4 minutes to make their choices as to which coffee is different in each of the 4 sets. After everyone is finished making their choices (or time runs out), the competitors will one at a time lift their cups to see if they made the correct choices. The first factor in determining top scores is how many were correct, the tie breaker is time. For example, if Competitor A got 4 correct in 3:30 and Competitor B got 3 correct in 1:30, then Competitor A wins, because he or she got more correct even though Competitor B finished faster. If Competitor B had gotten all 4 correct in 1:30, then Competitor B would have been the winner.

The buy in to compete is $5. A maximum of 24 competitors will be able to compete in each city (total of 48 across both cities). Sign-ups begin at 7, so be there on time to ensure you will be able to compete. The winner in each city will win the pot from their respective city and the top 5 overall competitors across both cities will receive awesome commemorative extremely-limited-edition engraved cupping spoons.

Now for the ATL vs. WDC part, this will be calculated by adding together the top 5 scores from each city. The city whose top 5 have the most correct (with total time of all 5 competitors as a tie breaker) will be declared champion! This city will receive a trophy to be circulated around the cafes of those top 5 competitors, not unlike the Stanley Cup.

Needless to say it’s going to be AWESOME. If you have any questions send them either to bhelfen [at] counterculturecoffee.com or bduggan [at] counterculturecoffee.com

ATL vs. DC Cup Tasters! More details coming soon…

And if you’re wondering, no i didn’t come up with this flyer idea on my own. I was “inspired” (a.k.a. poorly followed an online tutorial).

June TNT at Pocketbar!

This Thursday’s gonna get real fun, y’all.  TNT is being hosted by Octane Pocketbar, in the Bank of America plaza (tallest building in the Southland!) .  Make sure that you guys get there early, as there will be parking validation for the first 20 competitors if you use the BOA tower visitor’s lot.

We’re going to have some sweet prizes as well, as first place will win a dinner for two at Atlanta’s hottest resto right now, the Optimist!  I hear there will be some sweet  boozy coffee prizes for the runner-up as well.  Oh, and did I mention free beer?  You don’t have to be a barista to come hang out either, there’s plenty of room and beverage for spectators and friends.

Sign-ups start at 8PM, so carpool, bike, walk, MARTA, or do whatever’s necessary to get to the Pocketbar, cause It’s going to be a big city swinger!

March TNT at Condesa!

SERBC TNT 2012 Edition!

It’s that time of the year again!

The first official party for SERBC weekend will be Thursday Night Throwdown latte art competition, hosted by Octane Coffee.  The site will be Octane’s new shop in historic Grant Park, on 437 S. Memorial Drive in Atlanta.  This spot is rather close to the GWCC and downtown, so getting there should be relatively easy.  (Don’t show up at the original Westside spot!)

The party’s going to start a little earlier than our usual Atlanta TNT’s, with sign-ups starting around 7:30 PM, and pouring beginning at 8:00 PM.  This will allow us to get things going so that those of us with early Friday mornings can get our beauty rest.  There will be a fully stocked bar with cocktails and beer specials, food from the kitchen, coffee, and whatever else that gets your party going.

So get to the ATL in plenty of time to come hang out, especially you out-of-towners, we want to see your A-game!

January TNT at Aurora

This month’s TNT will be hostly by the cool kids at Aurora Coffee on January 12th, specifically the Little 5 Points location.  The usual deal applies: signups start at 8pm and pouring starts at 9.  Bring your best gameplan to L5P and we’ll kick this new year off right!

December TNT!