41 filter coffee professionals from all over the world competed in the World Brewers Cup at the Specialty Coffee Expo in Chicago. Among them was Martin Wölfl from Wildkaffee Austria, who competed for Austria. Our man from Vienna was able to secure 7th place in the preliminary round with 324 points and thus advanced to the semi-finals. As did eleven other semi-finalists. Among them were Charity Cheung for France, Alex Niculae for Romania and Kim Dongmin for South Korea. Participants from Indonesia, Japan, Australia, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Taiwan, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates also made it to the semi-finals.
World Brewers Cup – 3rd place in the semi-finals
A trend was already apparent for Martin Wölfl in the semi-finals. After finishing 7th in the preliminary round, he secured 3rd place in the semi-finals; in this round, the challenge was to prepare an unknown coffee perfectly in the shortest possible time. The managing director of Wildkaffee Austria made it to the finals with Wataru Iidaka, Ryan Wibawa, Charity Cheung, Tom Hutchins and Jackie Trang. There, he completely convinced the jury with his filter coffee recipe and won the title of world champion with 481 points.
World Brewers Cup – The World Champion Coffee
The cherries for the world champion coffee come from Mario and Margot Guillen's Finca Maya in Alto Jaramillo. These beans then go to the processors, Lost Origin Coffee Lab Panama , who transport the cherries overnight to Panama City, disinfect them, cool them and then subject them to a two-stage fermentation. First they are fermented with wine yeast and then with lactobacilli. The cherries are then dried at low temperatures in filtered air for 33 days.
World Brewers Cup – The World Champion Recipe
Martin brewed 17 grams of these coffee beans with 270 milliliters of water to win. He freshly roasted the beans on a link roaster from Nucleus Coffee Tools just 7 days before the competition. This and five other innovations helped him bring a "completely new taste experience" to the stage. These six innovations were:
- The coffee used, which was processed by Lost Origins Coffee Labs
- The specially mixed water with minerals fromApax
- The beans roasted by Nucleus Coffee Tools on the Link Roaster
- The new Dripper V4 from Orea
- The filter paper used by Sibarist
- The cups used by 2-WayCup
The newly crowned world champion also stressed that grinding the coffee beans on stage contributed to his victory. "As baristas, we always grind the coffee fresh, but we don't usually do that on stage. Something is lost, because freshly ground coffee always tastes better," stressed Martin Wölfl.
World Brewers Cup – Aftermath
There's no question about it: Martin Wölfl is now a sought-after man in the industry. And rightly so. After three victories at the Brewers Cup at national level and participation in the 2022 World Championship in Australia and 2023 in Greece, he has improved his technique even further, revised his schedules and, of course, selected an excellent coffee plus an ingenious recipe. World champion material, in fact. "I may be alone on stage, but the whole thing is the result of the best teamwork. Be it my trainer, Janine de Laar, who accompanied me the whole time, or the support of Hardi Wild and Wildkaffee as well as the Nucleus Coffee Tools premises, which I was allowed to use. I couldn't have done it alone, it was teamwork. Thanks to everyone who helped me achieve this goal," says Martin Wölfl.
He has now received hundreds of messages from all over the world: many of them are well-wishers, but also many who want to work with Martin or interview him. Even the ORF has already made inquiries.
World Brewers Cup – Wild coffee around the world
Of course, we as a wild coffee roastery are also happy about this. Martin Wölfl and we have a long friendship. This also led to a collaboration in 2023. The new Brewers Cup Champion has been managing director of Wildkaffee Austria for some time now. We want to advise customers in Austria more quickly, more closely and more personally. Courses, consultations and other events take place in the showroom in Vienna. The coffees will continue to be roasted by hand and gently in Bavaria and also shipped worldwide.
