The U.S. AeroPress Championship was one of the hottest and surely best attended parties of the night yesterday, as hundreds of coffee pros showed up at Stumptown’s Seattle roastery for the annual showdown.
The packed house at Stumptown. The competition took place in Stumptown’s beautiful cupping room, which was packed to the gills with spectators. Still more attendees stood on the other side of the cupping room’s glass wall to watch the action all night.
The competition/party ”which was hosted by Aerobie, Stumptown, Barista Magazine, and Baratza ”was deftly carried out by Stumptown’s awesome Seattle staff. Mark Pfaff led the competition itself, for which Aerobie founder Alan Adler showed up to preside.
At the end of the night, a new United States AeroPress Champion had been announced: Jeremy Moore of Bonlife Coffee in Cleveland, Tenn., will fly to Rimini, Italy, in June to represent the United States at the World AeroPress Championship.
Twenty competitors from around the country competed in a series of heats, preparing an organic Peru Cecovasa roasted by Stumptown. Brendon Glidden of Onyx Coffee Lab in Springdale, Arizona, took second place and Andrew Bettis of Velo Coffee in Chattanooga, Tenn., took third place.
The World AeroPress Championship, now in its seventh year, is a grass roots event which has grown to two dozen regional and national competitions worldwide. Past World Championships have taken place in Melbourne, Portland (OR), London, Milan, and Oslo (twice). The Championship was founded in 2008 by world-famous coffee experts Tim Wendelboe and Tim Varney in Oslo, Norway.
Onyx coffee lab is in springdale Arkansas, not Arizona. 🙂