Archive · competition recipes

World Brewers Cup champion recipes

The World Brewers Cup (WBrC) is the world championship for manual coffee brewing. This archive lists every champion from 2011, the first year in Wikipedia’s champions table, to Brussels in 2026, with the coffee and brewer they used and, where a published source gives them, the dose, water, temperature, grind and brew time.

Updated 2026-10-24 · sources listed at the end · ratios marked ≈ are our arithmetic from each source’s grams or milliliters · “not published” = none of the pages we opened gives the figure

How the competition works

The World Coffee Championships describe two services. In the compulsory service every competitor brews three beverages from the same whole-bean coffee supplied by the organizers, scored on aroma, flavor, body, balance and acidity. In the open service competitors brew their own coffee and give a ten-minute presentation on its origin, their method or its tasting notes. Each beverage is measured for total dissolved solids (TDS) and may not exceed 2%, or 20,000 ppm.

The 2026 rules add the detail:

Rounds. With up to 38 competitors: Round One (open service), Semi-Finals (compulsory service, top 12) and Finals (open service, top 6, with compulsory scores carried over). With more than 38: Round One, then a final in which the top 6 present both services. The 2026 rankings show only a Round One and a Final Round, with 45 competitors ranked plus one disqualification.
Time. Open service: 8 minutes of setup and 10 minutes of competition time. Compulsory: 8 and 7 minutes. Running over costs 0.5 points per second.
Cups. Three separate preparations, one for each of three sensory judges. Open-service beverages must be at least 120 ml, compulsory at least 180 ml. Bypass water is allowed; additives are not.
Coffee and water. For the compulsory service each semi-finalist gets one 350 g bag of a “medium to medium-light roasted fully washed” coffee, roasted no more than 7 days before. Hot water is supplied at 96.0–98.5 °C; in the open service competitors may bring their own water.
Equipment. Brewing devices must be manual and are supplied by the competitor; everyone uses the sponsored grinder in both services.
Scoring. The open service is worth up to 411 points and the compulsory service up to 213. The champion has the highest combined compulsory and final open-service score.

Wikipedia notes that recipes (ratios, temperatures and so on) are otherwise unrestricted. That is why the archive below swings from 11.8 g to 24 g of coffee and from cones to a hybrid immersion brewer.

Champions, coffees and brewers

Venues and coffees follow Wikipedia’s champions table unless another source is named; the 2025 and 2026 winners are from the World Coffee Championships’ own announcements.

Wide table — scroll sideways on a phone.

Year	Venue	Champion	Coffee	Brewer
2011	Maastricht	Keith O’Sullivan, Ireland	Has Bean’s Finca Bolinda, Bolivia	Chemex
2012	Vienna	Matt Perger, Australia	Washed Gesha, Finca Santa Teresa, Panama	HARIO V60 (glass, per Sprudge)
2013	Melbourne	James McCarthy, United States*	Hacienda Esmeralda Gesha, Panama	Kalita Wave
2014	Rimini	Stefanos Domatiotis, Greece	Ninety Plus Gesha, Panama	HARIO V60 (two kettles, per Perfect Daily Grind)
2015	Gothenburg	Odd-Steinar Tøllefsen, Norway	Ninety Plus, Ethiopia*	HARIO V60, ceramic
2016	Dublin	Tetsu Kasuya, Japan	Ninety Plus natural Gesha, Panama	HARIO V60, ceramic
2017	Budapest	Chad Wang, Taiwan	Ninety Plus natural Gesha, Panama	HARIO V60, ceramic
2018	Belo Horizonte	Emi Fukahori, Switzerland	Daterra Laurina, Brazil; anaerobic maceration	GINA (valve: immersion and pour-over)
2019	Boston	Du Jianing, China	Ninety Plus Gesha*	Origami
2020	No championship listed in Wikipedia’s table.
2021	Milan	Matt Winton, Switzerland	Natural Coffea eugenioides, Finca Inmaculada, Colombia + washed Catuai, Ecuador	HARIO V60, metal
2022	Melbourne	Shih Yuan (Sherry) Hsu, Taiwan	Carbonic-maceration natural Geisha, Micava*	Orea V3 + Kalita 185
2023	Athens	Carlos Medina, Chile	Natural Sidra, Granja La Esperanza, Colombia	Origami (Air, per Kaffelogic)
2024	Chicago	Martin Wölfl, Austria	Geisha, Finca Maya, Panama; natural anaerobic	Orea V4, fast bottom, Sibarist filter
2025	Jakarta	George Jinyang Peng, China	Natural Geisha, Mount Totumas, Panama	SOLO dripper
2026	Brussels	Nas Jaafar, Malaysia	Anaerobic natural Geisha, Finca Nuguo, Panama (Barista Magazine)	UFO V3 dripper on a HARIO Switch base

* See “Where the sources disagree”. Countries are those the competitors represented.

Gesha (spelled Geisha by some sources) is named in ten of the fifteen winning coffees, and Ninety Plus supplied five winning coffees between 2014 and 2019. HARIO V60s won five of the six titles from 2012 to 2017 (a Kalita Wave won in 2013); since 2018 no brewer has won two years running.

Champion recipes: dose, water, temperature, grind

Only what a source states. Milliliters of water are treated as grams for the ratio (water is close to 1 g per ml).

Wide table — scroll sideways on a phone.

Year	Coffee : water	≈ Ratio	Temperature	Grind	Pours and time
2011	not published
2012	11.8 g : 200 ml	1:16.9	not published	fines removed with a 250-micron sieve	50 g every 30 s; 2:30–2:35; target 23% extraction at 1.4–1.45 TDS
2013	24 g : 380 ml	1:15.8	“just off boil”	coarse, fines sifted	high-flow kettle first, then two flow-restricted kettles; 45 s bloom; 3:30
2014	not published
2015	20 g : 300 ml	1:15	92 °C	not published	35 s bloom, 3:00 pouring, 3:30 total (European Coffee Trip)
2016	20 g : 300 ml	1:15	92 °C	coarse (HARIO Europe)	4:6 method: 50, 70, 60, 60, 60 ml at 0:00, 0:45, 1:30, 2:10, 2:40; 3:00 or 3:30*
2017	15 g : 250 ml	1:16.7	92 °C*	not published*	30 s bloom, rest poured into the center; about 2:00; about 220 ml out (Sprudge)
2018	17 g : 220 g	1:12.9	80 °C and 95 °C	not published	valve closed 50 g at 80 °C for 45 s; open, 100 g at 95 °C to 1:45; closed, 70 g at 80 °C to 2:30; drain to 2:55
2019	16 g : 240 ml	1:15	94 °C	ground twice: coarse to remove chaff, then fine	pour rates of 6, 4 and 5 g/s (Sprudge); 1:40*
2021	20 g : 300 ml	1:15	93 °C and 88 °C	Kinu M47, coarse, about 3.6 (Barista Hustle)	5 pours: 50, 70, 60, 60, 60 g (Barista Hustle); 35 s bloom; 2:40
2022	14 g : 200 ml	1:14.3	70 °C first pour, 95 °C after	1Zpresso K-Pro; 75% at 1000 µm, 25% at 800 µm	4 pours of 50 g every 30 s
2023	15.5 g : 250 g	1:16.1	91 °C	1Zpresso ZP6 Special, 5.2	5 × 50 g every 30 s; 2:40; 65 ppm water (Slow Pour Supply)
2024	17 g : 270 g	1:15.9	93 °C	Mazzer ZM, 630 µm*	60 ml bloom, 60 ml at 0:40, 50 ml at 1:20, 100 ml at 2:00; 2:20–2:25 (European Coffee Trip)
2025	15 g : 210 g	1:14	96 °C, last pour 80 °C	FM grinder, 11 clicks	30 g at 0:00, 90 g at 0:30, 90 g at 1:10 through a Melodrip; about 1:45 (Sprudge)
2026	not published: the sources describe a combined percolation and immersion brew, with no numbers

Rows without a named source follow Wikipedia’s table; 2012, 2013 and 2018 follow the Sprudge and European Coffee Trip reports listed. * See “Where the sources disagree”.

Dots: each champion’s water ÷ coffee, from the recipe table above (milliliters read as grams).
Labels: the dose in grams of coffee.
Dashed line: 1:15, where four champions landed exactly (2015, 2016, 2019, 2021).
Hollow dot: 2018 (17 g), the only immersion-hybrid brewer (GINA), and the strongest ratio at ≈1:12.9.
Gaps: 2011, 2014 and 2026 have no published dose and water in the sources we opened; 2020 has no championship in Wikipedia’s table.

Drawn by pourxlab.com for this page from the doses and water weights in the recipe table (Wikipedia, Sprudge, European Coffee Trip; sources 6, 12, 13, 18). Ratios are our arithmetic. Horizontal scale to scale; rows evenly spaced by year.

What the archive shows

Ratios cluster around 1:15. Eleven of the twelve published recipes fall between 1:14 and 1:17, stronger than the SCA’s 55 g per liter reference (about 1:18; see the coffee-to-water ratio guide). The outlier is 2018’s hybrid immersion brew at ≈1:12.9.
Doses got smaller. Apart from 2021’s 20 g, every published dose since 2017 is 14–17 g, against 20–24 g in 2013–2016; Perger’s 11.8 g in 2012 is the smallest. The 2026 rules ask for at least 120 ml per open-service cup, one cup per judge.
Temperature became a variable. Four recipes since 2018 use two temperatures: 80/95 °C (2018), 93/88 °C (2021), 70/95 °C (2022), 96/80 °C (2025), against a single 92 °C in 2015–2017.
Pours are timed. The 2016, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 recipes give fixed pour weights at fixed times, 30 to 45 seconds apart. Our pour schedule generator builds that kind of table for any dose.

Where the sources disagree

Item	What the sources say
2013 champion’s first name	“James McCarthy” in Wikipedia and Sprudge’s May 2013 profile (Counter Culture Coffee); “Erin McCarthy” in Perfect Daily Grind’s 2016 round-up.
2015 coffee	Wikipedia and Perfect Daily Grind: Ninety Plus Nekisse, Ethiopia. European Coffee Trip (2016): a naturally processed Ethiopian coffee from Ninety Plus’s Semeon Abay Maker Series.
2016 brew time	Wikipedia lists Kasuya’s competition time as 3:00; HARIO Europe’s published 4:6 recipe removes the dripper at 3:30.
2017 temperature and grind	Wikipedia and Sprudge (2017): 92 °C, no grind given. Barista Magazine’s home recreation: 200 °F (93 °C) and a very fine grind, sifted to about 400 µm.
2019 origin and time	Wikipedia: Ninety Plus Gesha, Panama, 1:40. Sprudge (2019): a Ninety Plus Gesha Estates coffee grown at 1,600 MASL, with the country not stated on stage (the report mentions Ethiopia); Barista Magazine: Ninety Plus Founder’s Selection. ORIGAMI: an extraction of 1 minute 30–40 seconds.
2022 producer	Wikipedia: Finca Micava, carbonic-maceration natural Geisha. BeanScene: natural geisha from Mikava Coffee, Colombia.
2023 farm	Wikipedia and Slow Pour Supply: Café Granja La Esperanza. Kaffelogic: Finca Potosí, produced by Granja La Esperanza in Valle del Cauca.
2024 grind and time	Wikipedia: 630 µm on a Mazzer ZM. European Coffee Trip: 490 µm, 21–25 clicks on a Comandante C40, total 2:20–2:25.
2025 temperatures	Sprudge gives 205º and 176º without a unit; read as Fahrenheit these are ≈96 °C and 80 °C (our conversion), matching Wikipedia. Sprudge’s grind (11 clicks, FM grinder) is a suggestion “to closely replicate” the brew.
Format	Wikipedia describes a first round with both services for everyone and a final of six in the open service only. The 2026 rules put the compulsory service in the semi-finals or the final, depending on field size.

Brewing a champion recipe at home

Pick a row with full numbers. 2016, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 give dose, water, temperature and pour times.
Scale to your dose. Keep the ratio and the pour proportions; the pour-over ratio calculator turns them into scale targets.
Treat the grind as a starting point. Champions used specific grinders, and the 2026 rules require the sponsored grinder; adjust to your own drawdown time (see the grind chart).
Expect a different coffee. Most winning coffees were rare natural or experimentally processed Geshas; the same recipe tastes different with another coffee.
Log it. Write dose, water, temperature, pours and total time, then change one thing at a time.

Lab note: the competition caps TDS at 2% but does not fix the ratio, temperature or grind. The V60 recipes in this archive are explained step by step in the V60 guide; the AeroPress counterpart of this page is the World AeroPress Championship table in the AeroPress guide.