The long and short blacks of my career

Andrew Mathieson
STANDING in a black waiter’s tee, arms conspicuously rippling out of the sleeves, a clean-cut Kurt Ivermee makes quite the first impression.
“Would you like a coffee?” are the first words he utters.
It’s a greeting the Point Lonsdale master barista just can’t resist saying.
But for Kurt, coffee is not just a conversation starter.
The beverage is what his day is all about rather than just a tipple that gets him through his day.
“It’s about the espresso, the barista, the machinery, the temperature, the milk,” Kurt advocates.
“It has to be the right roasts, right dosage, right temperatures, right pump pressure.”
The immediate realisation is that Kurt is pretty wired about coffee.
Ristretto, espresso, doppio, latte, cappuccino, flat white, long black – the endless lists of blends roll off the end of his sipping tongue.
Making them is also something of an exact craft.
“It’s dependent on how your espresso is pouring,” Kurt explains, “and it’s also about the quality of your ingredients.
“We, actually, let’s say it’s 25 per cent ingredients, 25 per cent machinery and 50 per cent barista to make up a coffee.
“If you have great ingredients and great machinery but the barista is not that good, then you’ve half lost it.”
Espresso and Coffee Solutions, a wholesale company that provides training, technical support and coffee machines to leading cafes, spotted Kurt’s sublime talent behind all the steam.
Pouring hundreds of quality coffees a day – sometimes nearly 1000 at a Point Lonsdale cafe – during the peak summer periods for Melbourne’s discerning drinkers proved the litmus test.
Now the master barista trains and nurtures espresso hopefuls and judges talented cafe staff in local competitions.
It was a spot of “latte art” that initially drew him into a career change just three years ago.
Kurt’s creative side can personalise the froth on a coffee for customers.
Rosettas, love hearts and happy birthday wishes are the most popular.
The toughest was a request to design the Eiffel Tower.
“There were some regular ladies down there who were just trying to push the boundaries of my coffee skills,” he grins.
Mesmerised by the tricks of the trade, the 28-year-old gave up a decade working on a supermarket floor after climbing to a cushy management job.
“I just loved coffee, the lattes, you know, the whole café scene,” Kurt says.
“I used to do a lot of my paperwork for Woolworths in the cafes.
“I’d take a break to get away and the cafes I visited were the ones I took up employment.”
Kurt has a signature drink: a good, old flat white with a perfect rosetta on top.
The subtle use of milk is the key and indicative of Australia’s coffee tastes, as Kurt found out during a recent holiday spent sipping mostly long and short blacks in Europe’s most famous coffee houses.
“Most people think flat whites don’t have any cream or milk at the top but they do,” Kurt points out.
“It’s about five millilitres and that’s to ferment the rest of the coffee.”
While a barista, borrowed from the wider Italian word for bartender, applies to most people pouring espressos in cafes, a master barista is a real technician.
Some baristas have their own favourite machine, coffee roasts and blends, even milk or the jugs they come in.
Baristas like Kurt have to perform under all circumstances.
“Most importantly, a master barista needs to know everything, whether it be a grinder or about a machine,” he adds.
“There is a lot of talented baristas out there but, if you take them away from their machine, they have a bit of trouble.”