3. One Coffee, 25 Recipes: What Is Actually Competing at the AeroPress Championship
There is a thought that has haunted me since the championship and that I cannot chase away even with a pill: everyone had the same coffee. Ethiopia Karamo Washed from Sidama, selected by DABOV Specialty Coffee. Not one of the twenty-five could say "my bean was better." They could only say "my decisions were better," which is a sentence I have never managed to say about myself.
The six things that remain
When the bean is the same for everyone, what remains is the process:
- water temperature
- grind size
- coffee-to-water ratio
- brew time
- agitation, meaning how much the brewer stirs or swirls
- standard or inverted method
The last one needs translating. The inverted method means loading the AeroPress upside down, plunger at the bottom, so the coffee steeps before the device is flipped onto the cup and pressed. It gives control over timing and stops early drip-through. The standard method is simpler, but water starts passing through the coffee from the first second, like life.
Think of the coffee as the script of a play and the recipe as the interpretation. Twenty-five people worked from the same text and produced different cups. Nobody got the lines wrong. Everyone said them in their own way, as any director would say to justify the production.
Small actions, large consequences
A few degrees move the result. A finer grind slows the press and builds body, but it can over-extract: pull too much from the grounds and leave the cup dry or bitter, like a conversation with an accountant. A coarser grind gives a lighter, cleaner cup, but push it too far and it goes thin and watery. More stirring raises extraction. Less preserves delicacy. Even the force of the press in the final seconds matters: a fast press pushes through more fine particles, a slow press leaves the cup cleaner.
None of these actions looks dramatic from the outside.
One spoon, one swirl, one pause. But on the judges' table they add up to a cup that is either better or not. There is no third category, however much I would like one, since that is where I live.
Why one coffee says more than a hundred
In everyday drinking we compare cups that differ in too many ways at once: origin, roast, freshness, method. In the end you don't know whether you liked the coffee, or just the fresher one, or just the day. I usually don't know why I walked into the café either.
At the championship, that noise disappears. All 25 people worked with the same coffee from Sidama. The region is known for floral and citrus character, but what reaches the cup depends on the brewing. One goes for brightness with hotter water and short contact. Another goes cooler and slower to bring out soft, tea-like qualities. A third tries to balance the two and loses both, a method I know intimately.
You are not watching who can follow a recipe. You are watching who can read a coffee and make decisions that suit it. That skill is not written on the label, and if it were, I would be reading the label instead of brewing.
The experiment in my kitchen
Brew the same coffee on two consecutive mornings with different water temperatures. Say 92 degrees on one and 85 on the other. Keep everything else the same: same grind, same dose, same time. The difference is easier to taste than you expect.
I tried it. The first morning was lovely. The second morning I changed the temperature, the grind, and the cup, because the previous one was in the sink, and then stood over the result like a detective without clues. The competitors do this under pressure, with an audience, and still change one thing at a time. I do it alone, in silence, and change three. That is the whole difference between me and Velimir Kutsarov, and it turns out to be enough.