2. The Sixth Bulgarian AeroPress Championship: The Place, the People, the Coffee

I went to the sixth national AeroPress Championship of Bulgaria with the attitude I bring to most public events: that I would stand in the corner, hold a cup, and hope nobody asked my opinion. Half of that came true. The other half is this article.

The room

The championship took place in Sofia and was hosted for the first time by Coffee Association Bulgaria (KAB). That detail carries more weight than it appears to. When an association takes over the event, it begins to reflect the whole coffee community rather than the identity of a single café or roastery. Nobody is hosting in their own home. The room is shared, which for me personally means nobody can ask me to leave.

Sofia's coffee scene moves through neighbourhood habits: an espresso on a weekday morning, a slower filter on Saturday, a familiar place where the barista remembers how you take your coffee, and I remember that I still owe him from last time. The championship is an amplified version of the same conversations people already have at the bar: Was that sweeter? Did the lower temperature help? Why did that cup open up after a minute, when I haven't opened up in years?

The atmosphere is not quiet. Grinders starting and stopping in short bursts, like nervous people beginning a sentence. Kettles clicking off. Cheers when a favourite brewer advances. It smells of hot paper filters, freshly ground coffee, and that brief sweet steam when water first touches the grounds. Everything happens fast enough to stay exciting and clearly enough that even someone who has never seen an AeroPress, or has seen one and pretended otherwise, can follow it.

The people

The winner is Velimir Kutsarov. Dimitar Dimitrov came second, Stoyan Vanchurov third. All three received prizes from VARIA. I received two cups of filter and the feeling that life had passed me by, but that one is mine and I am not including it in the standings.

Kutsarov's win says something about the format.

It was his first entry. In most competitions that is a diagnosis. Here the judges never know whose cup they are tasting, so the newcomer is not behind before he starts. What remains is the cup. The cup does not know whether it is first or sixth and, unlike me, does not worry about it.

Behind the event stand people who shaped the result without touching the final vote. KAB made the decision to host, and in doing so gave the event an address that belongs to no single brand. DABOV Specialty Coffee selected the competition coffee: Ethiopia Karamo Washed from the Sidama region. That choice set the stage for everyone in the room, before any competitor had switched on a grinder, and before I had worked out where the exit was.

Coffee as the most important human decision

Washed process means the fruit is removed from the bean before drying. It usually gives a cleaner, brighter cup, with less weight from fermentation and more transparency. This is a coffee that cannot hide behind itself. I have spent my whole life hiding behind myself, so I respect it from a distance.

In practice, differences in recipe become easier to taste. Competitors get room to pull the coffee in different directions through brewing, instead of relying on a heavy, loud profile to do the work for them. Sidama is known for floral and citrus character. But what actually reaches the cup depends on the hands. The same bean can sound like bright citrus with hotter water and short contact, or like soft tea with cooler water and slower brewing. Same bean, two personalities. I know people who are less complicated.

What I took home from the room

Once the coffee is fixed, the bean stops being an advantage. Only the process remains. And twenty-five different opinions about it, gathered in one room, without a fight breaking out. In Sofia, that is already an achievement.

I left with the conclusion that the most important decisions of the evening were made by people who brewed nothing: who would host, which coffee would go on the table. The rest was in the hands of the competitors and the mouths of the judges. My role was to stand in the corner, and I performed it flawlessly.