Well the cup taster's championship first round is over. There were some amazing people up there today: Pat Russel of 2nd Cup Coffee blazed through his first round, getting 7 right in 3:48, and Steve from Social Coffee Company also scored 7 out of 8 (the two highest scores) but in around 7 minutes.

There was some drama. In my round, one of the competitors had two of his cups removed before they could be checked. Peter Burbrdge got 4 out of 6, and could have had 6 out of 8 - we'll never know; in the last round, Matthew Lee of Manic got an amazing 6 out of 7 right, and one of his cups was also removed before it could be counted. Just CRAZY. Very enthusiastic runners happening there.

Because of this, Matthew, with a potential for 7 out of 8, advances to the finals (and now they're going with five in the finals, not four).

Barrett Jones, last year's winner, is out of the finals, scoring 5 out of 8. Sammy Piccolo took 7:55 to get 4 out of 8 right. Amber Fox did very well, as did Laura Perry and several other favourites.

Yours truly did pretty dismal - 4 out of 8, but I did it in 4:02 (I think - it was a bit of a rushed scene). I have no one to blame but myself. I went with first, gut instinct on the first four cups and after a quick cuppers slurp, picked the coffees I thought were different - I only got one of them right. One the next four on the table, I didn't know cups 5, cups 6, and cups 8, so I deferred those; Cups 7 I went with gut again on first slurp - and got that wrong.

I went back to cups 5, 6 and 8, and my second pass I drank the coffees more than just slurping. That drinking action, washing the coffee on the roof of my mouth, resulted in getting all three right (at least thats what I remember). And the bad thing is this - in practice, I found I was most accurate with the slurp + drink combo. Why I didn't do it for the majority of the cups today I don't know, but gut instinct let me down. What was really interesting was how I got nervous after the fourth cup - I was calm and cool for the first four. And I got 3 out of the last four correct. Weird.

I am not sure of my finished place, but I believe I'm 8 or 9th. My only saving grace is I finished pretty quick - I think I was the third or fourth fastest. Several people scored 4, and a few scored 3. There were surprisingly few 5s, a couple of 6s, and two 7s. No eights. Finals go tomorrow.

Here's more photos of the event.

Pat Russell Pat was the highest scorer of the day, getting 7 right in 3:48. Crazy time and quite impressive.

Lisa Rotenburg Lisa, from RocketFuelCoffee.com was very happy with her 6 out of 8 score in 5:28.

Amber Fox Amber Fox of Ecco Caffe during her round.

Steve Soupanthong Steve was the only other competitor to score 7 out of 8 correctly. Quite impressive!

Laura Perry Laura from Bridgehead during her round.

Matt Lee Matt Lee got 6 out of 7 correct. The runners accidentally picked up his 8th cup choice before it could be checked. Matt got a pass into the finals because of this.