Sunday 24 November 2024 at 10am - noon

CAFE TOUR : FORMATIVE COFFEE and World Rank 6th IAN KISSICK

Visit to Formative Coffee

50% funded

Originally from Ireland, Kissick moved to London to study computer science. Later, while working in corporate IT, he discovered the world of specialty coffee. His first “extraordinary coffee experience,” as he called it, was at Workshop Coffee in Fitzrovia. That’s when he realized that coffee could have very different tastes. Coffee quickly became an obsession and eventually Kissick left his job to train professionally at Taylor St Baristas. He launched a coffee subscription, Curated Brew, and that experience led to Formative coffee, considered by many to be among the very best coffee bars in London to open in the last half-decade.

The cafe is found on the ground floor of a refined, modern, corner building: 4 Butler Place, between St. James and Victoria. This is a busy (pre-pandemic, at least) commercial district consisting predominantly of offices and shops, and home to some of London’s most iconic attractions like Buckingham Palace and St. James’s Park. The diversity of the audience and the lack of quality coffee offer are what drew Kissick to this part of the city.

It’s clear that all the attention is on coffee. The drinks menu is simple: espresso, flat white, latte, and filter coffee (currently brewed on V60, as the sales don’t justify making batch brew as they did before the pandemic). There is no information about the roasters (which change about twice a month), the origin, or the processing; a deliberate choice made by Kissick to remove a level of complexity, especially for customers new to the concepts of terroir and seasonality.

Customers can choose between Coffee A and Coffee B. The first is medium to high bitterness and is the main choice for milky drinks; the latter tends more towards sweetness and acidity, ie. more natural process coffees, and is recommended for espresso and filter. Rest assured that Kissick always (and proudly) serves highly graded coffee. “We’re focused on brewing something that’s delicious and reflective of the hard work that’s gone in to bring us each coffee,” he tells me.

Ian Kissick (he/him), Formative Coffee, Ireland  at World Barista Championship

Stop me if you’ve heard this already today, but next up to the stage is Ian Kissick of Ireland. Due to a clerical error, Kissick was originally not included in the Semi-Finals, despite scoring well enough to move on. To rectify, he performed his Semi-Final routine this morning before the start of the Finals, where he once again scored well enough to move on, and here we are.

Kissick competes with two coffees today, a white honey processed Gesha variety grown at 2,000MASL at Finca El Placer in Quindio, Colombia and an anaerobic fermented Yellow Bourbon from Granja El Paraíso 92 in Colombia’s Cauca Valley, both roasted six weeks ago.

Melding tradition with innovation, Kissick uses a 50/50 blend of freeze-distilled Jersey cow milk and freeze-distilled oat milk, steamed to 55 deg C for an overall drinking temperature of 48 deg C, giving the milk beverage has notes of mango, peach, rum raisin, and cacao nib.