How do you make coffee from coffee powder like a WBC champion?
Anthony Douglas of Australia won the 2022 World Barista Championship with a creative coffee routine built on 80-hour anaerobic natural Sidra beans from El Diviso Estate in Colombia's Huila region. He pulled three espressos, then mixed two with date syrup, dehydrated milk powder, and hibiscus tea, heated the blend in a water bath inside a nitrogen bottle, and infused nitrogen for a nectar-like texture.
The techniques, including vacuum slow-cooking dates at 60°C, magnetic stirring, and freeze-vacuum-dehydrated milk powder, are lab methods rather than café routines. Morgan Eckroth of the United States placed second and Claire Wallace of the United Kingdom third. The article weighs how far such preparation sits from what most drinkers get after coffee is served.
The 2022 WBC World Barista Championship has come to a close, with Australian competitor Anthony Douglas taking the crown thanks to his unique creative coffee and milk coffee-making techniques. His performance not only showcased the charm of 80-hour anaerobic natural Sidra coffee beans from El Diviso Estate in Colombia's Huila region, but also brought laboratory-grade processing methods onto the competition stage: date syrup vacuum slow-cooked, nitrogen infusion, magnetic stirring, freeze-vacuum-dehydrated milk powder... How do these techniques affect coffee flavor? This article breaks down Anthony's recipe and operational details one by one, and explores the distance between barista competitions and everyday café culture. Meanwhile, Front Street Coffee continues to provide you with professional coffee knowledge exchange and specialty bean recommendations.
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The 2022 WBC World Barista Championship came to a successful conclusion a few days ago! Let's first take a quick look at this year's winners list:
1. Anthony Douglas, Australia
2. Morgan Eckroth, United States
3. Claire Wallace, United Kingdom
4. Takayuki Ishitani, Japan
5. Benjamin Put, Canada
6. Patrik Rolf, Sweden
In recent years, whenever this writer watches this type of competition, a certain meme always pops into my head:
Last year's WBC champion Diego Campos used hearing and touch — having the judges wear headphones to watch videos and listen to music to enhance their perception of sweetness, and holding soft little balls (probably, since it wasn't detailed) to reinforce the smooth mouthfeel of the coffee.
This year, Australian competitor Anthony Douglas brought the laboratory onto the competition stage?!
For the creative coffee segment, he first extracted three espressos using 80-hour anaerobic natural Sidra coffee beans from El Diviso Estate in Colombia's Huila region.
Two espressos were mixed with date syrup (dates and water at a 1:1 ratio, vacuum slow-cooked at 60°C for 3 hours, then dehydrated), dehydrated milk, and hibiscus tea, placed into a nitrogen bottle for water bath heating, and then infused with nitrogen to give the coffee a nectar-like texture;
One espresso was mixed with a lactic-fermented passion fruit liquid and honey from El Diviso, using a magnetic stirrer to mix and heat, to highlight the drink's sweetness and honey notes. While the ingredients were being heated and mixed, Anthony first carried out the milk coffee segment.
Compared to other competitors who use frozen purified milk to enhance the coffee's sweetness, Anthony this time used milk of the same variety, applied freeze-vacuum dehydration technology to extract milk powder at 900% purity, then mixed it with milk at a 1:10 ratio, doubling the sugar, fat, and protein in the milk. He heated the milk to 55°C to activate its high sweetness.
At this point, some of you might start feeling confused! Actually, this is just a conventional milk powder production technique. Current milk powder production involves vacuum-concentrating milk to 1/4 of its volume to become concentrated milk, then spraying it in mist form into a drying chamber with hot air to dehydrate it into powder. The purity of the milk powder Anthony made is actually not as high as regular milk powder.
Regular milk powder added at 8 grams to 300-400ml of water gives you milk close to its original concentration, whereas Anthony needed to add 30g of milk powder to 300g of milk to double the milk's concentration. If using regular milk powder purity, only 3-4g would be needed.
The advantage of Anthony's approach is that, compared to directly purified milk, adding milk powder this way makes the milk's concentration controllable — you can adjust the milk's concentration based on the flavor performance after coffee extraction, achieving the effect of milk accommodating the coffee. If using directly purified milk, the coffee would need to accommodate the milk.
The espresso portion of the milk coffee also used 80-hour anaerobic natural Sidra coffee beans from El Diviso Estate in Colombia's Huila region. To ensure more even extraction, Anthony used the Weiss distribution technique. The needles on the distribution tool cover the entire surface of the portafilter with each rotation, breaking up clumps in all directions and distributing the coffee grounds evenly.
22.5g of coffee grounds extracted 38g of espresso in 28 seconds, with flavors of blackberry, cherry, red wine, a juicy texture, and a lingering red wine tannin finish (in plain terms, a pleasant astringency). After mixing with 55°C milk, the coffee showed flavors of red cherry, cream caramel, and chocolate mousse.
After mixing, it wasn't ready to drink directly — a aroma disc was placed on top first to make the flavors more vivid, and drinking began only when the drink's temperature dropped to 50°C.
After the milk coffee tasting was complete, Anthony returned to the creative coffee segment. He infused the water-bath-heated ingredients with nitrogen for rapid cooling and release into the cup, then added the magnetically heated ingredients and mixed evenly, portioned into cups and covered with aroma discs to concentrate the flavors in the cup.
Only after Anthony's signal could the judges open the discs and drink in three consecutive sips. Yes, how coffee is drunk at the competition is decided by the competitor, and the judges must follow along. This creative coffee ultimately showed flavors of plum, raisin, cranberry, and toffee.
Who knows when it started, but barista competitions have become increasingly complex... From the initial contest over coffee bean quality, to the contest over brewing water, to the contest over high-tech methods...
Even Ben Bicknell, WBC Head Judge and Melbourne coffee consultant, stated that competitions like this provide the industry with a unique form of expression, but they are far removed from "normal" café culture.
"They're not what you'd experience in an everyday café. But they provide a platform where people can truly explore and innovate, and then all of this starts to trickle into other parts of the industry. But these explorations and innovations — in a few years, you might see some of these techniques or these conversations starting to appear in everyday specialty cafés."
Anthony's competition theme this time was trust. At the beginning of his performance, he asked everyone a question: "When was the last time you had a coffee that matched exactly what the barista described? That was absolutely a wonderful experience." Whether a cup of coffee can achieve this depends on trust. When a barista makes each cup of coffee, it's like making a promise to the customer.
When a barista presents a coffee with the flavors they intended, that's fulfilling the promise. It's also this trust that maintains the bond between barista and customer. We all love specialty coffee, and only trust can keep the coffee industry alive forever. Trust also connects baristas with customers. And only through ceaseless learning can this trust be sustained.
A good experience needs to be built on the trust between customers and baristas, and between baristas and coffee bean suppliers. The "specialty" in specialty coffee is not just a reflection of the quality of coffee beans and coffee products, but also an important element of a series of quality services. Whether the coffee tastes good, whether it can score high, whether it can attract consumers' attention — all of these require professionalism and service to interpret.
Perhaps we need to look at future barista competitions from a different angle — not just at the production of products, but at these competitors' philosophies and propositions about coffee.
Image source: youtube (World Coffee Championships)
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
