Emil Eriksson of Johan & Nyström, prepping for World Brewers Cup

This marks the first year of the World Brewers Cup, a coffee competition similar to the World Barista Championship, though instead of espresso it’s focused solely on brewing coffee. The goal seems to be to do for manual brewing what the Barista Championships have done for espresso, pushing the leading edge of knowledge, technique, and quality farther forward.

I had a chance to visit with Sweden’s entrant to the Brewers Cup, Emil Eriksson, who is also Sweden’s 2010 Barista Champion. He’s currently working with the country’s largest specialty coffee roaster, Johan & Nyström. Several of us, including Luis from Cafe 14, met up to watch Emil’s practice performance at J&N’s new, very cool workspace out in the industrial harbor area of Malmö. Click below to read on and check out the pictures!

The Brewers Cup is divided into two rounds, the first judged on taste alone with all competitors using the same coffee. The final round lets the competitor choose his or her own coffee, and perform a little while presenting the coffee to the judges, which counts for 30% of their overall score.

Emil is competing with quite nice and well known coffee from Kenya Gethumbwini, roasted by Johan & Nyström. He’s up-dosing slightly and brewing with a slightly lower water temperature to really bring out the blackcurrant and grapefruit acidity that he’s looking for. He also has a couple other tricks that you’ll have to keep an eye out for in the pictures or watch at the competition. Tasting the coffee, his parameters and techniques work well producing a nice juicy, balanced, and exceptionally clean cup. The Brewers Cup should be streamed online June 22-23, keep an eye out on Twitter for a link.

Best of luck to Emil in the competition, and I look forward to seeing how things go overall for this first annual Brewers Cup.