Aside from all of the coffee and the steer butchery, there were many other things to enjoy at Eat Real Festival 2013.
A refreshing gimlet:
A bourbon tasting by Four Roses: 
Demonstrations by Oakland Chefs: Here is Preeti Mistry of Juhu Beach Club:
She did a cooking demo and hosted a Q&A with audience members:
The Oaklandish van was there:
And I rounded out the evening with some bread pudding from the Old World Food Truck.
Danny Johnson of Taylor’s Market in Sacramento along with Paul Carras and Mitch Lind defeated Dave the Butcher’s Marina Meats team and won the 2013 Flying Knives Steer Butchery Competition at Oakland’s 2013 Eat Real Festival.
Before the competition, the emcee (Anya Fernald), judges and participants shared some Four Roses bourbon to get warmed up.
The cow quarters were hung on meat hooks prior to the countdown to the start:
Dave the Butcher, a crowd favorite, offered his commentary as he prepared some cuts.
The Taylor’s Market team quietly worked together.
Danny Johnson on the hacksaw:
Dave the Butcher cheeses for the camera. “I’ve done this before.”
A young fan inspects the cuts of beef in front of him:
Anya talks things over with a judge:
Trimmings.
Rump roast:
Anya did an excellent job of explaining to the crowd what was happening on the butcher tables in front of them.
You may have noticed that the perennial winners, the Yedra Brothers, were not competing this year. They agreed to come back as judges and let another team take the prize.
Prizes. Trophies and Four Roses Small Batch.
The Yedra brothers take a look at what’s on the table:
Hacksaw to the femur:
Miguel Yedra, judging:
Last year, the Yedra brothers set the precedent of labeling and garnishing the final cuts.
Dave explains to the judges what his team did.
Danny explains his side of the story.
Handshake at the end of competition:
And the announcement…
Team Taylor’s Market wins! See you next year.
The organizers of this year’s Eat Real Festival decided to group all of the coffee folks together into a “Coffee Pavilion”, which included Blue Bottle Coffee, Ritual Coffee Roasters, The Bicycle Coffee Company, Bloom (a new coffee delivery service), Barefoot Coffee Roasters, Roast Co, and Mr. Espresso. Sweet Maria’s also joined in with some home roasting demonstrations. All of the good stuff in one place – Jack London Square, Oakland, California.
Blue Bottle was offering tours of their roastery, which is only 2 blocks away from Jack London Square. After going over the history of the company, Bennett served samples of their 3 Africans blend to the audience, brewed in a Chemex:
Bennett described how coffee cherries are processed and showed a few examples of beans that had been wet and dry-processed.
The tour continued with a description of the roasting process (2 giant Probat roasters in this case) and then a visit to the barista training lab, where Bennett described the training process and explained some of the training equipment.
Back at the festival, Chris from Ritual Coffee Roasters gave an Aeropress demonstration in the coffee pavilion, which had been decorated with coffee-themed posters by Bloom.
Chris showed off his favorite Aeropress recipe. 16 grams of beans (I believe he was using their El Angel from Costa Rica):
with a grind somewhere between a drip and espresso. He put 2 paper filters in the Aeropress for more back-pressure and then poured water that had been off of a boil for a few minutes.
He sealed the Aeropress by just barely putting the plunger in, then let it rest for 60 seconds. After 60 seconds, he agitated the bloom with a spoon, and then waited another 60 seconds (I think?) before finally plunging: 
It was a great cup. Fairly fruit-forward with sweet tart notes that got stronger as the coffee cooled.
Ritual’s Sputnik is usually a fixture at the festival, but they were not allowed to bring the trailer to this year’s festival due to some Alameda County restrictions. But the baristas were cool with it:
I wanted to have some of Bicycle Coffee’s nitro brew and something from Barefoot, but I was already too wound up on caffeine to have any more..
