Slava Babych, 28, drinks coffee every day. However, it’s not a matter of lifestyle, but to do with his profession of barista. Having made coffee professionally for six years, Babych recently received international acclaim — in February he became the first ever Ukrainian barista to win an international championship.
Babych, who specializes in making coffee with a cezve, a small pot with a handle designed for preparing Turkish coffee, is now getting ready for the new contests and planning the future charity and commercial projects.
“It was such a shock to suddenly be the best coffee maker in the world,” Babych told the Kyiv Post.
Babych made his first cup of coffee back in 2012. At the time he lived in Sumy, a town in the north-east of Ukraine, and served tables in a cafe. He had no skills in making coffee when his friend asked him to cover his shift behind the bar.
The first ever order he received was a cappuccino, and by an unlucky chance it was a professional barista and the champion of Ukraine, Anastasia Solopihina, who ordered it. She could tell the drink was messed up.
“It was the worst cup of coffee in my life,” Babych said.
Solopihina, who later became his wife, didn’t like his first cappuccino either, so she went behind the counter and taught Babych how to make the beverage.
As his feelings to Solopihina developed, his desire to become a professional barista got stronger. In less than a year, Babych moved to Kyiv and dived into the world of coffee.
He gained a lot of his experience at Chashka Espresso Bar, a cafe where over 500 cups of coffee were served every day, Babych says.
Later on, his career developed in leaps and bounds. Babych worked as a chief barista at Dog Ate Dove restaurant and continued as a brand barista at Dmytro Borysov’s family restaurants.
Although at that moment his job was rather a supervisory one, Babych still appreciated good old-fashioned talks with customers at the bar. He says that communication in this profession means as much to him as the process of making coffee itself.
World champion
His debut at contests for baristas took place at the Ukrainian championship in 2013, where Babych came fourth.
Barista Slava Babych makes coffee with cezve, a pot designed for preparing Turkish coffee, at the Black by Nuare cafe on March 19. (Oleg Petrasiuk)
Since then he has occasionally participated in both local and international competitions. Being a full-time worker, Babych didn’t have much time for preparations, however, his talent and charisma usually covered up for technical imperfections.
But this time Babych decided to prepare well in advance.
“I said that I would participate only if everything was done with taste,” he said.
And so he did. Babych won the Ukrainian cezve coffee-making championship in July, impressing the jury with an unusual presentation of his drinks — he introduced them as if a father was explaining the craft of making coffee to his children.
The victory gave Babych the honor of representing Ukraine at the Cezve/Ibrik Championship, an international competition held in February in Dubai, where he took his creative presentations to a new level.
The contestants were supposed to make two drinks: a classic cezve coffee and a signature drink. Babych prepared a drink made with salted caramel, chocolate candy and cherries melting in espresso. He says he made it around 80 times beforehand to reach the perfect taste.
His presentation was an imitation of a museum of coffee. The drinks were put onto pedestals with lights and protective glass that resembled those used for exhibits. When the jury tried to open the glass dome, an alarm went off.
“The jury smiled all the time,” he said.
Although his technical score wasn’t the highest, Babych’s creative approach and the drinks’ delightful taste handed him victory.
The Ukrainian competed with six other baristas from Russia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Greece and Romania.
For his drinks, Babych used coffee by Ukrainian roasters. He says he will always opt for Ukrainian before any other roaster.
“We’re the coolest in this world, and we should use what we have.”
Plans, ambitions
Today Babych has numerous ideas and projects he hopes to implement soon.
He is currently working on a concept for his own future café, and looking for a suitable location.
Meanwhile, Babych is getting ready for the national Coffee in Good Spirits Championship, and hopes to win and represent Ukraine at the world competition this November in Brazil.
Apart from that, Babych is preparing a charity project he plans to realize at the Kyiv Coffee Festival in April.
In cooperation with Ukrainian roasters, the barista will sell coffee drinks, and all the proceeds will be transferred to families, whose children need costly medical treatment.
As a father of a three-year-old son, Babych said being the parent of a sick child seems to be one of the most frightening things to experience.
And he says that if the project manages to save at least one child, it will mean more to him than any world championship.
