Ekameth ‘Tay’ Wipvasutti from Brave Roasters in Thailand has been crowned the winner of the 2023 World AeroPress Championship in Melbourne.
“It’s so exciting to win,” Ekameth says.
Germany’s Carlo Graf Bülow placed second, and China’s Lin Zhang finished third, who also took the opportunity to propose to his girlfriend after the results were announced.
The 15th edition of the competition saw baristas from around the world gather at FieldWork Coffee in Melbourne on 2 December in the battle to brew the best AeroPress coffee.
For Ekameth’s winning recipe, he used 16 grams of the washed Kenya AB coffee from Karindundu, Nyeri, ground on an IzPresso ZP6 at 65 clicks.
He poured 100 millilitres of 89 °C water onto the coffee, and used one chopstick to stir for five seconds at 30 seconds in.
He then added an additional two grams of coffee into the mixture at 0.45 seconds before stirring again for another five seconds. Ekameth pressed down on the AeroPress to bring the plunger up and remove any excess air. He closed the cap and used an inverted method, flipping the AeroPress carefully and pressing down again at 1:35 minutes in, for approximately 30 seconds. The final product was bypassed with room temperature water to 115 grams, before bypassing with hot water to 155 grams, and serving to the judges.
Ekameth says he settled on this recipe at 1am the morning of the competition, having spent the day before experimenting with new ideas.
“I had so much coffee [the night before] that my heart was beating all morning,” Ekameth says.
Despite the late selection, Ekameth says he was very confident as the final approached, knowing that his preparation was alongside business partner Nirodha Veratumpoonsawat.
“We believe we crafted the best recipe last night,” Nirodha says. “After that, we decided we needed to get some sleep.”
On the day, Ekameth’s efforts were enough to claim the top prize, proceeding through each round successfully until her held the golden AeroPress trophy in his hands.
“You’ll never have a perfect cup, so I just tried to make it better and better with each try,” he says.
As part of his prize, Ekameth will now get the opportunity to visit a coffee farm in Costa Rica.
It was also announced that the 2024 World AeroPress Championship will take place in Lisbon, Portugal.
