I’m a regional AeroPress 2nd place holder (losing against the three time current regional champion), and lost in the first round against our current national AeroPress champion in the national championship. When I’ve spoken about my experience it had some interest, so I thought it might be a good thing to write a little summary of my findings.

An AeroPress Championship is a competition in which you brew a coffee with an AeroPress, normally at the same time as two other competitors, which then normally three judges taste, without communicating with each other, and then choose the best-tasting one, by pointing to the winning cup. The name of the contestant is written under the cup, and switched places before the judges taste them, so there should be no way of knowing who’s cup is which.

There are three rules that must be observed:

You can’t use more than 18 grams of ground coffee. You must present a coffee of at least 150ml. You have to brew and present it within 5 minutes. You can grind and heat your water before the timer starts. The beans for the competition will normally be ones from the organizers or sponsors of the competitions. They are the same for everyone. They will be made available for the participants 10 days before the competition, either for pick-up or by sending them to you. You’ll get one bag of 250 grams of beans, and another bag of the same size the day of the competition.

In those 10 days, you can experiment with the beans all you want. Keep in mind that if you use 18 grams of beans each time, you can only brew 13 cups, so be mindful of how you use the beans.

For me, the best strategy was first picking up a well-renowned good water for coffee in my country. You can try different waters and do a cupping first if you really want to nail the water first, but it takes a lot of effort (you have to brew each water independently), and I don’t think you get much out of it in the beginning.

From there use a well-known to you recipe that you normally use for the AeroPress. For me, it was the James Hoffman Method:

12g beans 200ml water 100º C water 2:00 shake, 2:30-3:00 press. Now you have a baseline for what it tastes like, and you can experiment. The good thing is that all variables are defined and there is somewhat of a golden zone.

Water: You should look for a well-renowned water for being good for coffee in your country. Other than that, I know that Calcium, Magnesium, and alcalinity are important for coffee extraction, but not enough to tell you the exact proportions, sorry. You can go as deep on this as want. You can use a Britta or BWT Filter, you can buy water packets from specialty coffee vendors, or you can create your own with distilled water, and then calculate the quantities of sodium bicarbonate and magnesium sulfate you need to add to get the quality in the water that you want. This will give you very marginal gains in terms of taste, much much less than having a good recipe, so I’d say that unless you know what you are doing, at most buy a few easily available and well regarded waters, and with your recipe determined, try which one tastes best.

Temperature: Most recipes recommend brewing between 80º C to 100ºC, so try 3 brews changing only temperature, 90ºC, 80ºC, and 100ºC. I recommend trying with 90ºC first because it is more likely to being close to optimal, so you’ll have a decent reference to start from. The generally accepted wisdom is that darker roasted coffee is preferably brewed at a lower temperature, and lighter roasts at almost boiling temperatures. I’d say lately the lighter roasts being better at boiling points affirmation has been more in contention, especially with experimental fermentation coffee. In any case, taste is king.

Brew time: Most recipes start from at least 1 minute. Since you have a 5-minute time limit to make and serve the coffee, I would recommend not brewing more than for 4 minutes. Keep in mind that you’ll also have to prepare the AeroPress, pour the water, and cool down the coffee in that time. Technically the longer you brew it, the sweeter the coffee will be, but extraction can be sped up with stirring. Stirring is less likely to be consistent brew to brew so be wary of that, since you’ll be going round through round with the same recipe, and its a good thing to be consistent.

Grind size: Start with the grind size recommended for the AeroPress for your grinder, and go finer until you notice astringency (it dries out your mouth) and go one step coarser. That’ll be the perfect grind setting for you. They’ll most likely offer you a few different grinders during the competitions, but if you don’t know the perfect setting for your recipe on that grinder I would refrain from using them, even if they are much more sophisticated, because it’ll most likely produce different effects on your recipe. It has been said that grinding twice, first very coarse and then those ground beans to the final desired size may be beneficial, as it may be a way to reduce ultrafines and create a more even grind, and the current AeroPress World Champion has certainly done so, but I do not think that she won solely because of that.

Proportions of coffee and water: This is a difficult one. The AeroPress can hold at most about 300ml, and that would be pushing it. If you brew normally some of that will bypass the coffee without actually extracting much, which will the reduce the strength of the coffee compared to using the inverted method. This is not necessarily a bad thing just something to account for when trying recipes. Since you can use only 18g or less and the AeroPress can only hold about 300ml you have two upper limits here, which coincidentally makes for a somewhat golden zone ratio, as that would be 1 part of beans to 16 parts of water (also normally expressed as 1:16) You can manipulate it by using more water after brewing but it is a good reference to have. I’ve seen people go as low as 1:20 and as strong as 1:10. So that would be 10 grams and 20 grams of ground beans for 200ml of water, respectively. It has been said that bland coffees benefit from using stronger ratios, and flowery and experimentally processed coffees from milder concentrations to let the smells and taste develop, but I’d say it is very bean specific. Just determine it according to your own taste.

Filters: According to the official rules you can use any kind of filter as long as you use the normal filter cap from the AeroPress itself. You can use official paper filters from AeroPress itself, the fairly recently produced official metal Aeropress filter, or a cloth one if you want. I’ve also seen competitors using two paper filters at the same time, and Aesir filters, which are a premium type of filter said to provide more clarity.

Other considerations: Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that the judges will taste the coffee short after brewing it, so if it is still hot, it will not be judged favorably. I have an external thermometer so I’ve determined that the optimal serving temperature for me was 65ºC, which I managed to reach quickly by switching the coffee from mug to mug a few times to get it to cool down quickly, because the heat of the coffee will dissipate in the cold mug. Optimal drinking temperature has been said to be 60ºC, so I keep it a little higher because I don’t know how long the judges will take to cup the brewed coffee. Keep in mind that the judges will base their judgments of your coffee by sipping the coffee (loudly) from a spoon, much like cupping, so the whole brew won’t be judged as such, just those sips. Make sure you optimize taste for this, then.

While calibrating your recipe keep in mind to only change one variable at a time, and in order to do comparative tasting I would actually recommend using more than one AeroPress if you can to keep the brewed coffee temperatures similar at the same time.

On the day of the competition I’ve seen people spread out their beans to filter out defect beans which can improve flavor. I’ve also seen the Kruve and other sifters being used to filter out the ultrafines after grinding, as they have a tendency to overextract and taste bitter. If you have it and want to use it do so by all means, but otherwise I wouldn’t even entertain the thought.

Final thoughts: I would like to clearly state that I only wrote this out to put a method to my own process of optimizing a recipe for a specific bean as a learning process, and that the most important part of participating in an AeroPress competition is having fun, getting to know other people that have the same passion as you, make new friends and grow as a person. At the end of the day, you can think you have the best recipe ever, but if it is not according to the tastes of the judges there is nothing you can do, so relax and have fun. You are likely to see people who have been years in the industry with very expensive tools, but don’t let that intimidate you, because in my experience they are as likely to win as the newcomers if their recipe is more according to the tastes of the judges. Everybody there will share the same passion as you for the beverage, so take the opportunity to make some friends in the industry.

I hope this text gives you a little bit of direction in the search for the perfect AeroPress recipe! Also, feedback is extremely welcome!