Winner of Australian Coffee championships 2023

Congratulations to Thomas Hutchins Australian Brewers Cups Champion 2023 and Jack Simpson Australian Barista Champion 2023 

It has been an action packed week for the coffee industry this last week with over 38 competitors going head to head in Brewers cup and 13 competitors battling it out for Australia Barista Champion title. On Thursday 11/5/2023 we had the finalists announced who competed in the finals on Friday 12/05/2023.

Australian Brewers Cup Champion 2023 Finalists:

Tom Hutchins

David Train

Devin Loong

Fran Lee

Hanny Ezzat

Simon Gautherin

Australian Barista Champion 2023 Finalists:

Danny Wilson 

Tony Xie

Jack Simpson

Gabrel Tan

Lena Richrath

Jae Kim

This year we saw some stand out routines, with numerous competitors using the Orea V3 Brewer, Sibarist papers and even Ben from Tin Man coffee Roasters using our Aji Filters! We saw some special coffees particularly Harry Ko using a very special new hybrid coffee varietal called Ombligon coffee, this coffee was a mixed fermentation (108hr+24hr mix) from El Diviso and was brewed on a custom made Hario switch with a Ceramic dripper.

For Ben's routine he used the Hario switch dripper with 2 of our Aji Reusable cotton Coffee filters, this double filter was intended to remove any fines and paired well with his blend comprised of Wilton Benitez Orange Bourbon from Far More coffee, an Ethiopian coffee Worka Sakaro and a Brazilian coffee from Minas hill.

Simon Gautherin from Zest coffee had a stand out routine and flawless performance, his stage presence was informative and presented an easy to digest run down of how ions and cations resulted in flavour change by using different water to brew coffee. Simon Gautherin is well known to be passionate about water for coffee and broke down the individual minerals used in his water to season his coffee. 

Water has a whole heaps of different minerals, each mineral will highlight or mask different flavours so by customising your water to highlight desirable flavour notes and mask undesirable flavour notes you can improve your coffee drastically! Learn more about water in coffee in this article. 

Nicholas Nordon *the head roaster at Maker coffee used the Hario Mugen dripper, traditionally this dripper is designed for a single pour but his recipe stretched this out and called for a closer to 3 minute brew time.

Darren Stinton from Zest coffee used the Ceramic Origami drippers paired with the Hario V60 Drip assist, this helped to lower the agitation and disperse his water over the bed of coffee.

Morgan Rafferty from Bench Coffee competed for his first time and chose to use the Orea V3 Basalt dripper paired with the Sibarist Fast Flat filters. Morgan's presentation was flawless with clear delivery however unfortunately he did not make it through to the compulsory round.

Moses Tham aka AcidityBrewingAddicted on instagram used the new and very sought after CT62 Dripper, this dripper features 12 long groves accompanied by 12 shorter grooves and 1 long horizontal groove. This is a dripper that is definitely on our wish list and hopefully is something that we will be stocking in the near future.