You Oughta Know #24

In this week’s issue: 2023 NZAP Winner is Akio; Help our barista champ get worlds; Learn about the life cycle of coffee!

Nau mai hoki mai. Welcome back to The Magic Roast!

School holidays are over, the election is this Saturday, and summer is just around the corner. Happy days indeed.

Coffee highlights this week included getting up to Daily Daily in Auckland to pick up some treats. Check out this haul:

Excite!

In this week’s issue: 2023 NZAP Winner is Akio; Help our barista champ get worlds; Learn about the life cycle of coffee!

The 2023 NZ AeroPress winner has been crowned. Arise Akio!

The competition was fierce, with more past champions than you could shake a stick at, but one managed to press their way to the top.

Akio is now a two time winner and will travel to Melbourne to represent New Zealand in the World Champs. Awesome.

Here’s a few words he shared on Instagram:

Second time winning felt very different from the first. I was a lot more nervous because I knew the taste of winning.

It was a very tough competition for me as there were four past champions competing and I was up against two of them.

This was my goal since last time was during COVID and I couldn't go to the world.

From supporting Hanna's journey, I feel it's better to travel less distance for competition so Melbourne would be perfect for me.

Huge respect to all competitors last night. I don't belong to the coffee industry so it means a lot to make friends with all of you.

Thank you to @atomiccoffeeroasters for hosting this amazing event. I know there was a lot of planning and preparation for this big day. I couldn't say thank you to everyone but I know each of you were working so hard to make this event successful.

Thank you to all judges. This year's competition coffee was very challenging and I can tell not all my brews were perfect. Tasting many coffees is never easy, specially I think AeroPress competitors tend to make higher TDS, so thank you for your hard work. Hope you managed to sleep last night!

Congrats Akio!!

Help get Honoka to the World Barista Champs!

Honoka Kawashima won the Meadow Fresh NZ Barista Champs 2023 earlier in the year. With that, she gets to represent Aotearoa on the world stage in South Korea in May.

Getting a chance to compete with the world’s best is one thing. Actually getting there is another, and Honoka is looking for our help.

You can play a part in helping Honoka get to South Korea by contributing to her Give A Little, sharing it with everyone you know and following her journey on Instagram.

I met Honoka at the Allbrews throw down, and she is an absolute legend. She’ll be an excellent ambassador of the New Zealand coffee scene and deserves our support.

The life cycle of a cup of coffee

The team at TED Ed have done a pretty simplified version of the journey coffee takes to get inside your cup.

It has a North American bent, and doesn’t leave a lot of room for the nuance of what actually happens. But if you’re broadly interested in how coffee gets from the otherside of the world into your mouth, this is a good start.

Show us ya cans

Over the last week I’ve been trying all the Flight Coffee cold brew coffee cans. It’s been a bit of a wild ride!

On Thursday I’ll drop my definitive power rankings so you know which one to get inside you this summer.