Day 2

After a really cosy evening, where all attendees discovered that the huts were equipped with out-door hot tubs ideal for drinking beer and talking for hours, we got up early to hear the first challenge of the day: Assemble your own roasters and grinders without instructions. The attendees were divided to help out each of the teams and one of the engineers would be at hand to avoid gas burners mishaps.

This was a cool challenge for the teams – both in terms of Getting Back To Basics of coffee and in terms of team work. And for the attendees is was great to help out and do something practical. I loved seeing Enrico Wurm from La Marzocco trying to figure out the grinder assemble. It used sand paper on two disks to grind the coffee, so it took a lot of sieving to get something consistent.

It was also tough for the teams to get an even roast, though, and the roasters only applied contact heat (much like most sample roasters), but in the end most teams got something palatable down.

After lunch there was a Coffee and Beer competition and another Aeropress competition, but I had to sneak off to the rehearsal of the Pool Party with Tim Wendelboe, Tim Varney, Tone Lievaag and Alexander Jensen from Norway. They were doing a Baywatch themed competition including synchronized swimming. I must have watch the four of them do their routine about 20 times! They really took it seriously even though you can’t tell from the pictures.

This is the NBC in a nut shell:

There were a bunch of competitions at the pool party, but none of them actually counted in the final score – only actual coffee competitions were added together, which I was happy to hear. The pool competitions didn’t have anything to do with coffee, but the NBC is just as much about Team Work and how we approach challenges.

It was hilarious to see the teams’ synchronised swimming shows, although none of them could really compete with the Baywatch team:

In the evening we had a barbecue with excellent Icelandic lamb and once again people disappeared into the hut tubs to chat about coffee and life in general.