Eyeing the Win

Blueprint Coffee’s Nora Brady is taking on the U.S. Barista Competition for the sixth time following a seven-year break

Written by JESSICA ROGEN

The U.S. Barista Competition coffee isn’t regular coffee — it’s top level, out-of-this-world creative coffee.

Take, for example, 2015, when Blueprint co-founder Nora Brady took inspiration for her signature cocktail from the name of the Ecuadorian farm, La Nube, where she sourced her beans. In Spanish, la nube means the cloud.

So Brady made a coffee cloud.

She began by dehydrating dates in the oven. After a day, they were nice and crumbly, so she ground them up with a mortar and pestle and made a kind of sweet, spicy, carbon-y ash. Then, she aged some water infused with vetiver (a root thought to have medicinal properties) in an oak barrel, sprinkled the date ash atop it and used a vaporizer to create a cloud of this mix around each drink, encasing it in a bag.

“[The judges] had to cut open the bag and release this vapor,” Brady says. “It’s totally a full sensory experience. The thing that you’re tasting is the espresso, but it’s just enhanced, or altered.”

The idea of the signature cocktail, she explains, is to create a flavor experience around or based upon the espresso. It demands originality, precision, drive and a whole host of other traits, which Brady has in spades.

That’s a good thing because she’ll need them: After placing second at the preliminary Barista Competition in October, Brady is heading next month to the 2023 nationals in Denver. If she places there, she’ll head to the world championship in Athens in June, where she’d face 27 competitors.

“I’m feeling pretty excited,” she says. “Got some tricks up my sleeve.”

At 33, this is Brady’s sixth time competing, but she came to it young. Not that her entrance into the coffee world was ever a guaranteed thing, given her early role models.

“My mom drank the grossest coffee on planet Earth,” she recalls. “It was just like that kind of super, super dark roast that she would put milk and sugar in … like, tar type of coffee.”

Brady’s father, on the other hand, drank tea.

She and her sister started drinking coffee as students at Mizzou, picking up French vanilla creamer to flavor their Folgers.

But that changed when Brady interviewed for a job at Kaldi’s Coffee during college. During that process, she did a cupping — lining up different coffees side by side and tasting them.

“It was completely mind-blowing, just that coffee could taste so different from one region to another,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh, there’s something here.’ I got hooked.”

At Kaldi’s, Brady had a passionate trainer who was involved with the barista competition, so Brady got into it, too. That first year, she placed second. Maybe it was beginner’s luck, she wondered at the time.

Competitive by nature, Brady kept at it, continuing to place high, and pretty soon it was clear this wasn’t luck. Then she met her future Blueprint co-founders Kevin Reddy and Mike Marquard, and in 2013, the coffee bar and specialty roaster was born. The following year, Brady competed for Blueprint and went all the way to the world competition.

“That was super, super exciting for us as a company because it put us on the map immediately,” Brady says. “These conventions and competitions are the coffee events of the year, and so anybody who’s anybody in the coffee industry goes to these events.”

The event and the preparation for it are correspondingly intense. In competition, each barista makes everything fresh, on stage, live — and that includes grinding the beans. There are judges watching the whole process.

The competitors pick a theme, presenting it to the four judges, and then make their three courses: espresso, milk and signature. The judges score on taste, accuracy, overall presentation and professionalism, showmanship and cohesiveness.

Any waste, such as a spill, a drip, coffee grounds on the counter or other misstep is a ding. Going over your 15 allotted minutes is a ding.

“You can blink and wake up on the other side of your presentation,” Brady says. “It’s like an out-of-body experience. You practice it so many times that it’s just ingrained in your muscle memory.”

But Brady’s early entrance into competition wasn’t the only thing that stuck out about her at these events. She’d look around the room and often find herself one of the only women. Brady would constantly get asked about what it was like to be a woman in coffee, and she’d get invited to events as a representative of her gender. While having that cachet might sound good, it didn’t feel that way.

“I was really frustrated and just kind of defeated because this wasn’t the conversation that I wanted to be having,” Brady says. “I was like, ‘I just want to make coffee. I want to win.’”

She’d wonder about the coffee industry, where the clientele seemed so liberal and progressive. “Why is it that the top tier of this industry is white men?’” she adds. “I would be losing, you know, by 2 1/2 points or something to a man.”

Brady felt she had to be extra authentic, extra professional. It was exhausting. At a certain point, she couldn’t take it anymore, so in 2016, she stepped away from competing and from the daily work of Blueprint for a few years. She spent 5 1/2 months thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail and moved to California to work on a family farm, returning to St. Louis in mid-2020.

In that time, the industry changed. Looking around now, Brady sees a lot more inclusion of different perspectives and people. She says the Specialty Coffee Association of America has taken definitive steps that she’s happy about.

It’s a great thing to see now that she’s back, recharged and ready to compete at a higher level than ever before. And, frankly, she’s feeling good about her chances.

“You have to believe so fully that you are going to succeed for it to work,” Brady says. “You have to picture your movements so crisp and clear and know where you’re going, like, have a roadmap and follow it like a robot. I play the scenario of not only my run-through but succeeding winning in my head constantly, and I feel like that is the first key to success. Even if I’m feeling insecure, or rushed, or it wasn’t a good idea, [there’s no room for] all those negative thoughts.

“This is how I’ve always treated competition, and I’ve always done pretty well, [but] I’m still yet to secure that first place. So it is pushing me forward because I really want it, and I know that I can achieve it.”

Eating fish on Fridays during Lent was meant to be an act of sacrifice. That the church fish fry ritual has turned into a highly anticipated season fueled by margaritas, beer and so much of God’s cod you’d grow gills if you hit them all might be organized religion’s biggest irony, but sacrilege has never tasted so delicious.

St. Ferdinand Parish

So delicious it cannot be contained to just Lent, St. Ferdinand Parish’s Friday fish fries embody all that is pure. Cod or catfish are fried or baked, and shrimp and Cajun-dusted fish pieces are also available. A couple of sides and a plastic cup of beer — enjoyed under the gymnasium scoreboard — make this event the standard.

Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox

Known as “Fishfest,” the fish fries at Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox Church are for the refined who enjoy china and flatware. The plate’s heft is a plus, for it’s difficult not to pile it high with spicy catfish, fish tacos, baked cod with Creole sauce and shrimp. With beer included and a stocked bar, this fry is the dark horse favorite.

St. Cecilia Catholic

Ask anyone their favorite St. Louis area fish fry, and nearly all will say the Original Mexican Fish Fry at St. Cecilia Catholic Church. The beloved fry flips on its head the notion of Lenten deprivation thanks to its stunning chile rellenos, bean tostadas, margaritas and music that makes the long lines infinitely more tolerable.

St. Mary Magdalen Catholic

St. Mary Magdalen Catholic Church calls its fried-fish platter “The God’s Cod.” That whimsy hints at the fun feel of this extravaganza that offers one of the most varied menus around.

First

Granted, there is no fish at the First Unitarian Church of St. Louis Unfish Fry, but it is instead filled with Mediterranean-inflected delights that make it an essential visit.