Congratulations to Nic Rapp, our AeroPress NZ Brewers Cup 2014 Champion, who competed at the World Brewers Cup Championship 10-12 June 2014 in Rimini, Italy. Ranking 15th!
The World Brewers Cup competition highlights the craft of filter coffee brewing by hand, promoting manual coffee brewing and service excellence.
In this Championship, competitors prepare and serve three individual beverages for a panel of judges. The Championship consists of two rounds: a first round and a finals round. During the first round competitors complete two coffee services – a compulsory service and an open service. For the compulsory service, competitors prepare three beverages utilizing whole bean coffee provided to them by the competition. For the open service, competitors may utilize any whole bean coffee of their choosing and must also accompany their beverage preparation with a presentation. The six competitors with the highest score from the first round will go on to compete in the finals round consisting exclusively of an open service. One competitor from the final round is named the World Brewers Cup Champion
View a full list on rankings here>
Chatting to Nic after the event, he loved his time in Italy and learnt a lot from the experience. He’s keen to defend his title again next year to compete in Sweden.
HERE’S A QUICK Q&A WITH THE CHAMP
Did you enjoy your time in Rimini?
I had a great time! It was my first time travelling overseas so not only was competing pretty much totally new to me, the experience as a whole was totally mind blowing.
Did you feel prepared for what the competition would be like at the Worlds?
I was prepared for my routine and competing, but there was no way I was going to be prepared for the scale of the event as a whole. It was full on, especially when considering the size of the national competing in New Zealand.
What was the most memorable thing that happened?
That’s a tricky one, there are so many to choose from. One of the most memorably experiences I had was when I caught up a good friend of mine, Steven Hall, who I used to work with at The Hangar, before he took off to London to roast for Caravan.
What was the best thing to come out of your experience in terms of professional development?
I think just talking to other coffee professionals and people passionate about the industry helped to expand my coffee vocab and change the way I think about the industry and coffee.
What would you do differently next time?
Win. Hopefully anyway. Also take the opportunity to do a bit of travel around the area the competition is being held in.
Has the experienced encouraged you to compete again?
Definitely! Hopefully you guys will see me in Sweden next year. I’m pumped!
The World Brewers Cup is in Sweden next year, do you have any feedback on how we might work towards getting a kiwi World Champion?
Help the NZ champ (hopefully me) to have access to as much advice from coffee professionals as possible: on competing, on how to source amazing coffee, even on travelling. Everything helps.
So ‘word is’ you also had the opportunity to compete in the World AeroPress Championship in Rimini also, how was that?
Word is correct. It was definitely the weirdest coffee competition I’ve competed in, and I’ve competed in 3! It was on the beach for starters, and there was a massive party afterwards. I was competing in the Brewer’s Cup the next day though so I had to have a bit of an early one. Great vibes all around.
There was also a World Drunken Brewers Cup! Can you give us a brief ‘non X rated’ report on this?
I didn’t actually end up going to this one, (I think I was at another party instead), but I did hear and see photos of a competitor getting naked… I won’t say anymore than that though.
You had a little bit of personal time around Rimini what was the coolest thing you did?
Apart from hanging out with team NZ and catching up with people, which was great, on the final day I rented out a bike and just went all over the city and got lost a couple of times by myself, before catching up with everyone else. It was super chilled and a great way to wind down after everything.