Jay rocked the house

Though he didn't make it into the semi finals, it was obvious that Jay Carragay was a serious fan favourite at this year's USBC. He went last out of all the first round competitors, and right after pressing his timer button to start his fifteen minutes, he started by pumping the crowd up - standing right at the edge of the barrier between performance area and the audience, and talking up what fun it is to make good coffee, how he runs off the crowd energy, and how everyone needs to help out by pumping up and setting him off through the starting gate.

All the while, Metallica's "Enter Sandman" was pumping through the sound system. And as soon as it hit its crescendo early on, Jay had the crowd cheering so loud, he was drowned out, so he headed to his espresso machine, and started his performance.

Jay's 'spro looked tight to my eyes, but his capps were pretty messy. Who cares - the guy's a killer barista, and I'd walk 10 miles just to get him to make me a shot. The entire performance was geared to entertaining and serving up coffee, and that's how it should be. Finishing off with a Snoop song was icing on the iced cake.

Click the link below to see some photos of Jay's performance.

www.flickr.com CoffeeGeek's Jay Carragay 2007 photoset