On a sunny Saturday afternoon, 3rd June, the coffee community of Vienna gathered at the spacious cafe of Coffee Pirates Vienna where the 2017 Austrian AeroPress Championship was held.
The AeroPress events enjoy quite the attention as those that invite everyone to take part in a fun format competition. It was to nobody’s surprise then that 36 competitors were brewing in 13 rounds. Out of three brewers in each round, only the best went to the next one, eventually coming to the last round of two best brewers. The list of competitors welcomed, for example, the champions from the previous years, apart from others.
The judges were represented by John Stubberud who you may have seen at one of the many barista competitions that he attends as a head judge, or at his Kaffe Alchimie in Salzburg. He was joined by Matt Sealby of Falcon Coffees, green bean buyers that source and trade coffee from 18 producing countries. Together with John and Matt, European Coffee Trip’s co-founder Ales Pospisil took on the role of a judge too and the three of them went through a countless number of blind tastings.
By the end of the competition Werner Savernik, the roastmaster at Coffee Pirates and the host of the event happily announced the winner Matthias Zechner of BUNA Kaffee, Graz who was followed by Boris Ortner of Kaffeemodul, Vienna. Matthias will be going to Seoul, South Korea in early November 2017 to represent Austria at the World AeroPress stage!
A winning AeroPress recipe by Matthias Zechner
Coffee: a Kenyan roasted by Coffee Pirates Vienna
Dose: 30g of coffee
picked, fines below 400μm sifted out,
grind size: 25 clicks on a Comandante grinder
Water: BWT of 85ÆC [anion exchange capacity] 2 paper filters in the lid, rinsed with hot water, pushed-out air pockets
Method: Inverted AeroPress, not preheated
0:00–0:10 add 120g of water
0:10–0:25 stir gently and evenly
0:25–0:30 put the lid on, turn the AeroPress upside down
0:30–1:00 plunge slowly and evenly, stop at the first hissing sound
You should have 75g–80g in the cup
Add water to around 200g total amount, taste it, potentially dilute with more hot water according to taste, and enjoy!
