At age 31, Thiago, just like the vast majority, entered the universe of specialty coffees by chance. Get to know the story of this cool guy who went through a long journey to become one of the greatest baristas in the country.
The barista’s journey reiterates our thesis that art and specialty coffees form a great duo. Thiago lived in the midst of dance, juggling and music, he joined the Cirque Du Soleil troupe to be a merchandising supervisor. When the circus was about to end one of its many seasons in Brazil, and he needed to work, he was invited to work as a bartender at Octavio Café. He started working and remained in the position for six months, until they offered the barista position. “The biggest drawback was that I did not like coffee at the time”, he recalls.
Change of course under the tutelage of Sílvia Magalhães
To take the position, Thiago had the opportunity to attend one of the courses taught by Silvia Magalhães, who won the Brazilian Brazilian Championship three times, the only Brazilian that went to a final of an International Championship, and at the time was part of the Octávio Café staff. As Thiago pays homage: “Silvia is the maximum reference for Brazilian baristas”.
During the course classes, Silvia presented the world of specialty coffees to Thiago. “I am very grateful to her to this day, after all, she was the one who taught me to like coffee”, he says.
As a barista at Octávio Café, he prepared about 200 espressos and 50 cappuccinos a day, spending alone 3 kilos of coffee and 7 liters of milk per day. He began to learn more and more about the beverage, studying, reading and observing other professionals.
(Thiago doing what he likes the most: coffee!)
The first championship: a total surprise!
Working for only six months, he participated in the 4th. Barista Championship of São Paulo (4º Campeonato Paulista de Baristas). In order to train, he began to watch videos of presentations by international baristas. “I thought I was a barista when I saw the big international champions, I realized I knew nothing!” He tells.
Using Octavio’s own grain and still with little knowledge on the subject, Thiago was eliminated from his first championship for having exceeded the time of presentation. “I had problems with the presentation, the siphon was broken. When I was eliminated, I left crying, wanting to give up. That’s when the head judge turned to me and said: Thiago, never give up”. Since then, this phrase has become his personal motto.
(A calm Thiago at the 16º Brasilian Barista Championship, very different from his first competition!)
Pause in competitions and work at Italian Coffee
Soon after, Sílvia Magalhães left the Octavio Café to start the Italian Coffee. Thiago joined the team, to take care of the coffee quality assessment and to teach barista courses.
After a period of two years without competing, he decided it was time to return to the championship scenario. His first competition was the the 6th. Baristas Championship (6º Campeonato Paulista de Barismo).
With 20 days for preparation, he selected a coffee from Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza, the FAF. “I was one of the first national buyers of the FAF, and the first one to use their coffee for national competitions”, he says enthusiastically.
He was placed second in the competition, guaranteeing a place in his first national competition, where he won third place.
Return to Octavio Café, studies in Australia and titles
After third place in the 11th. Brazilian Barista Championship, Thiago received a proposal to return to the Octavio Café as manager of the coffee shops: Afterwards, he was invited to spend a period in Australia, doing an internship in a coffee shop and learning from the renowned roast master, Anne Cooper.
Returning from Australia, full of knowledge, he won the 7th Brazilian Championship of Coffee in Good Spirit in 2014. Then, he won his greatest title so far, the 14th Brazilian Barista Championship: “At that time, I was so focused on competing that once I won the Brazilian I could only think of the world championship that would happen in the United States. When I got there, I realized that the competitors were way ahead of me. Just imagine: the first place in the league brought his own water, this does not exist in Brazil! I ended up going badly, I was in 43th place”, he recalls.
(Thiago at the moment he found out he was the champion of the Brasilian Barista Championship)
The Third Place
Most recently, Thiago took over the management of Il Barista stores. This year he decided to return to the competition scenario. With the coffee shop support, he signed up for the Brazilian Barista Championship of 2017. But, a week later, a shock. He discovered that his mother had cancer. He thought about giving up, but his mother insisted. The training routine was heavy. In the morning, I worked at Il Barista, in the afternoon, I trained and spent the nights in the hospital, with the mother in treatment.
He could focus more on training only a week before the competition. As well as the choice of coffee, which was made at the last minute. He used two Yellow Catuaís from Fazenda California, from the Norte Pioneiro region of Paraná.
“The cool thing about my presentation in the Championship was to break paradigms, to end this idea that special coffee has to be grown over 800 meters. The special coffee I used was grown at 700 meters of altitude and has an extremely high quality”, he says.
For the obligatory cappuccino preparation series, Thiago used a coffee dried in a coffee drying table, peeled for 25 days, which was fermented in a tank without water for 48 hours and then remained in a tank for 24 hours with ice water. According to the barista, all this care resulted in a coffee with a very high acidity, citrus and a blistering floral aroma. A light-bodied café with a medium sweetness, buttery notes and a lemon acidity”, he describes.
(Thiago at the last Brasilian Barista Championship, when he was in third place)
For the espresso, Thiago chose a natural coffee, which fermented in a tank with ice water for 24 hours and stayed 25 days in a coffee drying table. “Here the coffee was sweeter, with notes of red fruit appearing from the beginning to the end of the drink. In addition to presenting a delicious jasmine aroma, with a sweetness and a body that resembled a syrup”, he recalls.
“It was the first time I was happy with third place, for all the circumstances that occurred. I did not think I was going to get to the final and I saw in the judges’ evaluation that I was not in second place. I had several setbacks. In the end, my coffee was over, I did not take enough because I did not think I would pass the first phase. Because of this, in the final stage, I had to put together a blend with a reserve coffee. After the competition, I refined the scores and found that if I did the presentation with the same coffee in the final and scored the same score the first day, I would have been a champion”, he says.
Thiago, with his motto of never giving up, really did deserve this third place!
