Soft brews, rad crews, new moves

A home-brewer with something to prove

I yelled “It’s just coffee!” across the stage to the MC at the 2024 NZ V60 Championship. He just laughed and said “yeah, you’re right.”

Brewing coffee is a wholesome experience, a mindful moment in time where water and a ground roasted seed become something magic. It should be delicious. It better be fun. It’s not brain surgery. It’s just coffee.

That’s the approach I took into a whirlwind seven days where I took at the stage at the 2024 Allbrews Throw down in Wellington, and the 2024 NZ V60 Championship in Auckland.

Coffee up

As a home-brewer hack with all the gear and no idea, my goal was to have fun, learn something new and have some yarns with the amazing coffee community.

My goals seemed to be shared with the sprinkling of other home brewers that also came to throw down.

Home brewers have an advantage over professional baristas at these sorts of coffee competitions. Not working in coffee means we tend to stick with what we know, know what we like, and aim to achieve pretty good.

Professional baristas seem to get in to their own heads, over thinking the otherwise simple process, because they’re chasing perfection.

And fair enough, too. They know what perfection tastes like. They know how to achieve perfection. They serve perfection to everyone everyday. But this seems to lead in a mistrust of their own skills. They stop believing in their pallet and start obsessing over the small things, instead of aiming for pretty good.

Well, it has to be something like that. It’s the only thing that explains how I managed to get second in Allbrews, and make the quarter-finals at the V60 comps.

Brewing coffee and having the fun

What does it mean?

For over a decade, through The Magic Roast I have been sharing my opinions about coffee. I don’t have a background in coffee. In fact, I got into coffee after trying one at Starbucks.

I don’t have any coffee cred.

My journey through these comps has given me the confidence to back my coffee knowledge a bit more. I sort of know just enough to brew a cup that some people seem to enjoy. Maybe that gives The Magic Roast just a little bit of something behind it that it’s not just all bullshite.

Or I was just lucky.

My brew recipe

The coffee for these competitions always seem to be roasted a little on the funky side, or darker than you’d expect from specialty filter coffee. To be honest, I don’t really love this style of coffee, and I really struggled with the practice coffees we were sent out before hand.

I played with the grind size, ratios and agitation and I was not having a great time.

It was an off-hand DM from Emma at the NZSCA which lead me down a new, and tastier, road.

So thanks to Emma, Lillie, I started to play with temperature.

For the Allbrews comp, I brewed:

• Orea V4 - with the Open attachment.

• V60 filter paper.

• 18 grams of coffee to 250g of water at 65g.

• Medium-fine grind - shooting for a total brew time of around 3mins 30seconds.

• Water poured 50g; 50g; 50g; 100g (50g around the outside and 50g straight down the guts).

• Swirl the carafe for 30 seconds to continue to cool.

• Serve.

For the V60 comp. I brewed:

• As above - but with a V60.

• It’s just coffee.

A mad fun time

Such great events, hosted by such great people.

I reckon any home barista should give a throw down brewing comp a go. You’ll get to hang with some great people. You’ll learn something new that you can take into your home set up. And you’ll get to do something you really like doing - brewing coffee.

Until next year.