The German Brewers Cup 2022 took place this year on 3 and 4 June in Nuremberg at the Rösttrommel. Our Head of Coffee Anthony participated and made a super 3rd place with our coffee La Esperanza from Colombia.
The Brewers Cup is an SCA competition that focuses on the preparation of filter coffee. The Coffee Professional competes in two disciplines: Compulsory Service and Open Service. In the Compulsory Service, all competitors brew under exactly the same conditions. Water and coffee are provided, while they are free to choose the brewing method. The brewers have 7 minutes in which to present a cup of filter coffee to the jury.
In the Open Service (the freestyle), the brewers present a coffee of their choice, prepared with the water and equipment of their choice. In this round, the coffee is not only brewed, but also presented to the jury. Besides the background information and the host qualities, aroma, finish, body and texture, acidity, sweetness and bitterness, balance and the overall impression of the brewed coffee are evaluated.
The Brewers Cup 2022 was won by Nicole Battefeld-Montgomery - our Anthony made a super 3rd place with La Esperanza Geisha coffee.
Here we give you more insights into Anthony's Open Service presentation and give you the recipe Anthony used to brew the coffee.
"Today I’d like to share with you a coffee, just how it tasted on the cupping table in Colombia. If any of you have been to origin - or heard of anyone who's been to origin - you’ll know how the story goes: You cup something on the table that pops and is so juicy wild and vibrant, and you just have to have it. It then arrives in the roastery 4 months later after a daunting trip at sea, and the coffee is no longer the same. It’s lost its magic, it is still probably (hopefully) a very decent coffee, but it’s not that vivid coffee you have in your imagination.
Well, that is because a lot of coffees first cupped at origin are served at around 16% moisture content fresh off the plants. Whereas the coffee landed in the roastery would be dried to a much more shelf stable moisture of around 10% and in that 6% hides the magic.
I wanted to bring back the experience of those coffees and share it with you today: So, I went about recreating that magic by adding water back into the beans and stirring them in a cement mixer overnight. That way they were fully homogenised and back to that moisture content of 16% just like those vibrant coffees I once tried on the cupping table back in Colombia.To do so, you need just some simple maths and the original moisture content of the green beans. This coffee was about 10% moisture. We roasted a 7.5kg batch. So we took 7kg of green coffee and added 500g of water to bring the beans back to 16% overnight before roasting. If you leave the coffee too long, you run the risk of mould, and it is too short the water won’t be absorbed into the beans. We found that about 16 hours is the sweet spot.
In the cup, this will intensify the juicy body and tropical flavour of the coffee, while adding complexity to the overall balance of the brew. It will also give you a sneak peek to why I wanted to buy this coffee in the first place and allow the coffee to live on, beyond that moment in time on the cupping table in Colombia.
Brew This coffee was grown by Jairo Lopez in Pijao, Colombia under the shade of oak and citrus trees and is a 72h anaerobic natural processed geisha varietal grown at 1.800MASL. The anaerobic process gives the coffee an interesting malic acidity like crisp apple cider, while the geisha varietal shines through with florals and tropical fruits. The coffee is slowly dried for 20 days to increase sweetness and stability.
Today I’m Brewing 16g of coffee to 250g water at a 1:15.5 ratio with magnesium enriched water that is 94 °C. The magnesium enhances the sweetness in the cup and highlights floral aromas of the geisha varietal, while 94 °C strikes a balance of sweetness and brightness I'm looking for. The total brew time is just around 3:00 minutes. This extended brew helps improve the delicate body and adds balance to the brew by controlling some of that passion fruit brightness."
Happy Brewing!