Ep 05: "Turn It On" | World Coffee Championships Podcast
This week, we’re excited to release the fifth episode of the World Coffee Championships Podcast.
“Turn It On” tells the stories of the World Coffee Roasting Championship and the Cezve/Ibrik Championships, two competitions with incredibly close-knit communities at their heart. Along the way, co-hosts Anna Oleksak and Sara Al-Ali lead us through stories about navigating subjectivity, all kinds of development, and the lengths we go to for coffee (and love) through interviews with Trish Rothgeb, Sylvia Gutierrez, Lee Yiming, Yuan Jingyi, Sergey Blinnikov, and Turgay Yildizli.
Special Thanks to Our Series Sponsor, Victoria Arduino
This series of the WCC Podcast is brought to you by Victoria Arduino. Born in the early twentieth century amid social and cultural transformation, Victoria Arduino broke with tradition and focused on progress, a mission it carries forward today. Victoria Arduino advances coffee knowledge and innovates across design, technology, and performance to produce machines that nurture coffee professionals' passion for espresso excellence. For more information, visit victoriaarduino.com. Victoria Arduino: Inspired by your passion.
Special Thanks to Our Episode Sponsor, Loumidis Papagalos
This episode of the WCC podcast is made possible with support from Loumidis Papagalos. For over a century, Loumidis Papagalos has been evolving ibrik coffee tradition in Greece, offering unique moments to true coffee lovers. In 2020 Loumidis Papagalos celebrates its first 100 years, always nourishing passion around ibrik coffee and supporting its way forward. To learn more visit nestlenoiazomai.gr/loumidis. Loumidis Papagalos, the true expert in coffee!
We’d like to thank Anna Oleksak and Sara Al-Ali, our co-hosts for this episode, and our interviewees for their time in sharing their stories about the evolution of the World Coffee Roasters Championship and the Cezve/Ibrik Championship, in order of appearance: Trish Rothgeb, Sylvia Gutierrez, Lee Yiming, Yuan Jingyi, Sergey Blinnikov, and Turgay Yildizli. Thanks also to our roaster participants in James’ “How would you roast…?” game—Valentina Moksunova, David Rosali, Chad Goddard, Ariel Bravo, and Marian Aguilar—and to Lobotryasi and Specialty Turkish Coffee for audio permissions.
For a full list of those who helped across the entire series, a year-long effort, click here. Series 01 of the World Coffee Championships Podcast is a coffee documentary series produced by James Harper of Filter Productions for the Specialty Coffee Association.
Full Episode Transcript
James Harper: And here we are with the World Coffee Championships Podcast. Today, we are talking about two competitions in one, but first we're going to start with roasting, and I'm joined by a new co-host. Who are you?
Anna Oleksak: Hey, hello. My name is Anna Oleksak. Super happy and excited to be part of this.
James Harper: So, Anna you're here at co-hosting the roasters segment of the podcast, but what's your connection to roasting?
Anna Oleksak: 2010, I co-opened a specialty coffee micro-roastery in Warsaw, Poland, and was running the business for five years. Mainly, ah, I was involved in green coffee, buying quality control, and of course marketing. And last year I was happy to join the Word Roasting Championship, and I was responsible for the, uh, judges’ operations there.
James Harper: Fantastic. And where are you recording from?
Anna Oleksak: Warsaw, Poland is hot, absolutely hot here. And I don't need the coffee now, I just need a beer!
James Harper: And Anna, before we dive into the episode, I want to quickly say thanks to our sponsors.
Anna Oleksak: Yeah, let's do it!
James Harper: So, the World Coffee Championship podcast series is supported by Victoria Arduino. Victoria Arduino advances coffee knowledge and innovates across design, technology, and performance to produce machines that nurture coffee professionals’ passion for espresso excellence. You can learn more at victoriaarduino.com or get them a follow at @victoriaarduino1905.
And today's episode on the Cezve/Ibrik Championships and the World Coffee Roasting Championships is supported by Loumidis Papagalos. For over a century, Loumidis Papagalos has been evolving Ibrik coffee tradition in Greece. If you want to learn more visit, nestlenoiazomai.gr/loumidis.
[Audio of coffee moving around the inside of a coffee roaster]
Anna Oleksak: Yeah, of course. I know that sound very well.
James Harper: Okay. I know here's a question for you. How would you roast an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe?
Anna Oleksak: Depends on the purpose. If it's for filter, probably something like 11 minutes, uh, roast, with a first crack at 10 minutes. Why do you ask me about that?
James Harper: I played a game the other day, with a few friends of mine across the coffee roasting space. Okay. Here's a fresh-cropped washed Yirgacheffe, and I want to roast it for espresso. What would you want to bring out? And what would that roast curve look like in terms of first crack and the development ratio? And I gave a bunch of technical information around like the moisture, 11%, you know, water activity, density, screen sizes, and I got back some responses. Shall we take a listen?
Anna Oleksak: Yeah, sure.
Valentina Moksunova: So technically it is possible to enhance either acidity or sweetness.
David Rosali: I will look for a 55 agtron tones, like a medium roast.
Chad Goddard: I would highlight floral automatic, like bergamot.
Ariel Bravo: Probably moving away from the harsh citric acidity.
Marian Aguilar: I always look for the sweetness.
Valentina Moksunova: And the decision-making points, I usually… the charge, the turnaround, around the yellow-point and the development phase.
Ariel Bravo: Will start in 160 Celsius degrees.
David Rosali: Charged at 200.
Marian Aguilar: 175 degrees.
Chad Goddard: 205 to 212, centigrade.
Ariel Bravo: And the first crack in 12 minutes.
David Rosali: Okay, nine minutes.
Chad Goddard: 8:45.
Ariel Bravo: A development ratio of 18-19%?
Marian Aguilar: 12.5 or 12.8%.
Chad Goddard: Between 18-20%.
David Rosali: So, 15% development after crack.
Anna Oleksak: Wow. Yeah. You see, it's so subjective. I never met two roasters saying exactly the same approach, how to roast any specific coffee.
James Harper: And so, I was wondering, how do you build a competition with so much subjectivity?
Anna Oleksak: No, it's not simple at all. I think it's the most exhausting competition for both organizers, judges, but also, uh, for the competitors.
James Harper: So, Anna, I'd love to know what the coffee roasting landscape look like back around the time the competition was introduced. When did you start roasting?
Anna Oleksak: It was year 2010. And at that time, it was really so difficult to find the information about the roasting, to find someone that will teach you how to roast.
James Harper: But why weren't people communicating?
Anna Oleksak: I think it was still this approach of kind of secrecy, like not sharing your profiles, not sharing your knowledge. Like still a lot of roasters would tend to say, like, “it's an art, it's a magic.” Think about roaster, how it is different than being a barista. Barista is like on his or her daily basis, they're communicating with other people. They're sharing what they know about coffee. This is their job as well. But when you're a roaster, you're just closed with your roaster. And this is what you do from the very morning, till the end. You just roast your coffee and you try to be so focused as you can to provide a very consistent roasting. So, you don't, do not, uh, let's say, uh, really chat with other people or get in contact.
James Harper: Interesting. So, I spoke with Trish Rothgeb, who was one of the people who put a lot of effort into creating the first roasting competition.
Anna Oleksak: Yeah, she did.
James Harper: She told me about what she wants to do with this competition to break down this problem of roasters not communicating with each other.
Anna Oleksak: Yeah. I'm looking forward!
Trish Rothgeb: My name is Trish Rothgeb and I am a co-owner, co-founder at Wrecking Ball Coffee in San Francisco, California. I learned how to roast in 1990. And the guy that taught me how to roast was like, "I'd rather golf in the morning, so like, here's how you turn it on. And I need it to look like this when you're done, make it brown. And here's your stopwatch." So, I had to decide what I liked in the cup. I had to decide how I liked coffee for myself.
In Brazil on a buying trip years ago, I had made friends with a guy named Philip Åkerblom, who's from Sweden. He was kind of like a counterpart to me in the roasting space in Europe, where he was really involved in giving classes and teaching for the specialty community. And we spoke a lot about training for roasters and about how we wished it could be in the future. For the longest time in roasting, especially specialty coffee roasting, there's a big sort of veil of secrecy in a way? Not really secrecy, but just like, "need to know" information. If you're not a roaster, it doesn't get disseminated to anyone really in a very efficient way. Philip kept bugging me about this idea. One of the ways to learn is to develop a competition where competitors would actually stretch themselves and stretch the industry and move the needle in that way, by competing against each other.
One thing that we wanted to do, or at least I really wanted to do, was have this idea that anybody could just, once they've registered, all they needed to do was show up with themselves and their brain. So, you didn't have to bring any apparatus equipment cups, saucers, speech. It was purely what you could do.
How large are your beans? Are they a screen size 15 or a screen size 20? So, how does the roaster apply heat to that bean? It’s very different, and you should know that. Is it a heavy bean for its size or very lightweight? Is this a natural process coffee or a wash coffee? A hard bean? And then you had a sample roast of that coffee, so, you know what the potential was. Now, sample roast is not supposed to be the best roast that coffee is ever going to experience, but a roaster should be able to sample roast their coffee and figure out how they're going to push the things they want to push.
So, you would show up and there were three kinds of coffee. You did your analysis of the three that were offered and deciding which coffee you were going to use. You also had to write a plan for that roast. In other words, I know this coffee is an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, it's a bright coffee. It's washed. I want to accentuate the florals and the lemon in this coffee, but I also want to balance it with a nice honey sweetness. So, I'm going to roast this coffee to this level. And at the end, the cup will taste like this.
We had the first dry run in Vienna, 2012. From my perspective, I think it went really great. I think that the thing we were wondering about was where are we going to get spectators? People were very interested, and we sort of started taking Q&A from the audience like, "well, what do you mean by moisture density?" And then Phillip and I could tell them what that was. And so, it was an education for the audience as well, and the roasters just sort of like got stuck in. And in my mind, it reminded me of the Bocuse D’Or that happens in culinary world, where these teams just work and the audiences watch them work.
And it seems like something that wouldn't be a spectator sport, but it turned out to be. And then on the production roaster day, we had three roasters hooked up with big screens that showed the curves happening in real time. And that was so interesting for spectators to watch. So somewhere between 20 and 50 at a time would be watching.
And then the judges, three judges that would cup using a cupping form. And we know if you're taking a beautiful, high-grown, nuanced and balanced and amazing Colombian, and you burn it to a crisp that you should not get points for that, that's not the best expression of that coffee. So, it's not a matter of just hitting the notes you said you were going to hit.
I think for the, a lot of the time I've been in coffee, I've been volunteering because I believe that coffee's in a very interesting stage where we're finding out so much about coffee, but essentially, we're learning from each other. And I've learned a lot myself, because when you get involved in these kinds of things, you may come in thinking you're an expert, but if you stay in that space of, "I'm the one that knows everything and I'm the expert," you will miss out because people are teaching you stuff. If you can listen, you're someone who's going to learn so much from everybody around you.
Anna Oleksak: Yeah. Actually, Philip Åkerblom was one of the first teachers to our roaster. And when he checked the roasts we were proposing to our customers at that time, he said like, "you are going to a very bad direction."
James Harper: Oh, right. What were you doing?
Anna Oleksak: So yes, yeah. That time we wanted that our coffees will taste really bright and acidic and we wanted to express the fruitiness of course, but when you miss the sweet spot, when you are not developing your coffee enough, then the coffee really didn't taste, eh, great.
James Harper: And how have you seen the popularity of this competition change since 2013 when it first launched?
Anna Oleksak: Like there were like 11, 10, 9 competitors until the year 2017. When it almost doubled last year, we had 23 competitors, that around doubled since 2016.
James Harper: Why?
Anna Oleksak: I think it's because, um, more and more, uh, specialty coffee micro-roasteries are opening. Baristas, this is their dream to become a roaster.
James Harper: So, let's compare the numbers: at the barista competitions you might have, I don't know, on and off up to 60, 70 countries that compete?
Anna Oleksak: Correct.
James Harper: But roasters? What, you'd be lucky to push 24? Why?
Anna Oleksak: Yeah, it is a very difficult to competition to be organized. Uh, basically you are setting up a whole facility with roasters, with sampling roasters, with a lab, with warehouse, and all those safety procedures. So, uh, I think this is very logistically challenging competition.
James Harper: Hmm. What does it cost to put on? I'm going to put a number out there. I'm going to say US$10,000.
Anna Oleksak: US$10,000? I think it could be sometimes not enough. It depends on the country and your relationship with the sponsors or the equipment suppliers. Also think about, you need to send your champion to the World Championship. And sometimes it's a, for instance, I don't know, you have a competition in, let's say in Mexico, and then you have to send your winner to China. US$10,000 might be not even enough.
James Harper: Wow. Well, you mentioned Mexico and I can give you some very specific information about Mexico because I spoke with the organizer of Mexico's roasting competition, Sylvia Gutierrez, and she told me what it takes to put it on.
Anna Oleksak: Great.
Sylvia Gutierrez: My name is Sylvia Gutierrez, I work for Association Mexicana de Cafés y Cafeterías de Especialidad. So, we are the national body or competition body now, uh, for the World Coffee Events.
James Harper: What's really interesting about her story: she showed what value the roasting competition brings to coffee producing countries, specifically.
Sylvia Gutierrez: We started the roasting competition in Mexico around six years ago. The competition helped to the roaster is seen in Mexico, to learn more about the potential that our beans, the Mexican beans can provide to the market. Before, and now, still, now, that consumers are used to drink burned coffee or baked coffee, not good quality coffee, aged coffee. And with the roasting competition, this is beginning to change.
And there is a lot of learning about new techniques, about the software that is needed to roasting, but also they understand the importance of the work before roasting. Like moisture measuring, how the density impacts in the roasting process. In a Mexican roasting championship, the last year we have 30 people that applied for a spot, but we only can have a spot for 12, maximum. I know that there are other countries that have like 50 or 60 competitors. We cannot, we cannot do that.
It's challenging because you have to set up a whole roastery with the coffee lab, with a small warehouse, with all the security items, not like gas or electricity. So, you have to build in two days, all the facilities. Once I helped one country to organize their first competition. And no matter how much planning you have before, that is always happening in something. So, our challenge there was, there were three large roasters and three small roasters, sample roasters. The schedule was for all the six roasters to work simultaneously, but it didn't work at all. There was a lot of smoke there because the suction of the smoke was not efficient. So, when you turn one, the other three had to stop. So how can you stop the roasting process? It was not possible. So, we needed to change the schedule and to work extra hours, but it worked because the competitors understood and also the sponsor and also the organizers, we all work together. So that for the first competition.
When you're in a poor country or in a developing country, you have to eat instead of learn. Growers are not that wealthy. You know, it's been like almost 50 years or more that we've been in crisis, like coffee prices. So, I think with the roasting and also with better prices, growers can have better opportunities to jump up to the value stream. So that's why I think roasting is like the way to communicate and to share knowledge to other side of the coffee chain that are not as wealthy as a roaster.
The first time Mexico went to the World Roasting Championship, we went the last position with a lot of learning, I'm very happy for participating. And last year was amazing because Eduardo Juárez has reached the fifth place, which was very emotional moment for us and very important because you feel the rewards of all the work of the community.
I would like to say that every country should have its own roasting competition, no matter how developed they are, it tells a lot to understand their specialty coffee, especially the producing countries to have a roasting competition. It will help a lot to grow their coffee consumption and also the specialty coffee market. And also, more women. We need to see more women competing! We have the same skills as the men.
Anna Oleksak: Yeah. I totally understand how she felt during organizing a championships.
James Harper: Yeah. So how do you see the competition changing in the future?
Anna Oleksak: Hmm. More challenges will come the more competitors will come. So, on one hand, we really want more competitors and more countries, but on the other hand, it's a really complicated and long the championship because you don't compete for 15 minutes. You compete for at least three hours.
James Harper: Over many days, too, right?
Anna Oleksak: Absolutely. I will share with you maybe something controversial because when you judge other competitions, like for instance, barista or brewers, this is for you also an opportunity to shine on stage when you are a judge, because you go on stage, you greet the barista, you are there, you are served with beautiful coffees. You enjoy the performance. While here is like, you are... [Anna laughs] No one greets you, you just do your job, like in the—imagine your busiest day in the roastery. And then you cup the coffees one by one, and it's really exhausting, and there is a lot of tension, a lot of stress. You need to be really fast, accurate. And, uh, it happens that coffees are not tasting that great because maybe some of them have some roasting defects. So, it's not really this amazing experience that you have when you judging other competitions, when you are served as a customer, here is you are more like an ordinary worker in the factory.
Of course, it's a huge opportunity to learn. If you really want to learn about roasting, about what you can do with different profiles, with the same coffee, that's a place for you. One Sonja Bjork Grant, she said, when I started to judge, she told me, "Listen, when you compete, you have a team of judges, like let's say when its barista, like seven judges that are judging you, but when you're judging, the whole community is judging you." So, this is, and I really, I still remember this, this quotation, because this is how, this is exactly how it is. This is when you really learn fast. So, I strongly encourage everybody to try himself or herself judging this competition.
James Harper: Yeah, right, right. What do volunteers get out of it?
Anna Oleksak: Yeah. Yeah, the volunteers are really, we need a lot of them. So, if you hear me now, please, and the role for roasting competition is really a place to learn. I would say it's really like, being a volunteer, you can test if you really like to work in a roastery. This would be a perfect test for you, because if you can survive those four days or sometimes even more than then, yes. go for it.
James Harper: Amazing. And I'm going to argue that volunteering for roasting competition can bring you more things than a bit of roaster experience.
Anna Oleksak: Okay... tell me.
James Harper: I have a story for you.
Mickey (Lee Yiming): Yeah. Hello. Hey!
James Harper: So, I spoke with a woman from China who volunteered at the World Coffee Roasting Championship.
Gilly (Yuan Jingyi): My name is Gilly. That's pronounced like a Chinese "Jingyi." I'm a barista in Yunnan.
James Harper: I also spoke to a man from Taiwan who also volunteered at the same competition.
Mickey (Lee Yiming): Uh, you can call me Mickey, Mickey mouse, Mickey. Yeah. And I'm from Taiwan. I roast by myself. In Taiwan, many shops roast and the serve the coffee in the same shop.
James Harper: And in 2017, both of them decided to go to Guangzhou, China to volunteer.
Mickey (Lee Yiming): The teacher who would teach me, uh, roasting coffee, he said uh, "there is a competition. And, uh, do you want to come? It's just, uh, Guangzhou, nearby Taiwan." And I was saying, "Oh, very good. I should go there." And then you can see the All-Stars in the same place. I roast by myself, so I also want to see how these champion, how they make their coffee.
James Harper: Gilly was on one side, she was helping deliver the green beans to the right competitor. And Mickey was on the other side. He had a stopwatch, timing the competitors.
Mickey (Lee Yiming): When I, uh, first saw her, I think, "wow." Because she's very concentrated, so I'm being attracted. So, I go to talk to her first. "You want some coffee?" [Mickey laughs]
Gilly (Yuan Jingyi): But after the competition, we exchanged our WeChat.
Mickey (Lee Yiming): She's not interested on me. She's not crush on me.
Gilly (Yuan Jingyi): Like a friend!
Mickey (Lee Yiming): Relationships wont, won’t go there so easily. Sometimes she just don't answer my question, yeah. I feel a little sad? Next year, 2018, there's a green bean competition of Yunnan. I fly to there and, uh, she also work in Yunnan, too, right?
Gilly (Yuan Jingyi): As a friend, I have to welcome him! Yeah. So, I plan some schedule, including my, my workshop’s second floor, has a balcony. I'm watching the view, but—
Mickey (Lee Yiming): My, my view is only focused on her.
Gilly (Yuan Jingyi): —and my colleague said, "he must be love you."
Mickey (Lee Yiming): After that we used the video chat and we began to, you know, face to face and, uh, the romance begin...
James Harper: But there’s a problem! I mean, you're in Taiwan and you're in China. I've tried long distance. It's really not easy.
Gilly (Yuan Jingyi): We have WeChat video, every day. After we finished our work, when I’m in the bed, we can take two hours video. Every day! He very gentle and very humor.
Mickey (Lee Yiming): We are in a long-distance, right? And the one days we decide to have the, my, our first date. But not in Taiwan, but not in China. With our first date is in Japan. Osaka! We all love travel and travel around and drink every, the coffees in there, you know?
Gilly (Yuan Jingyi): Yeah. When we come into the coffee shop, we will order one Americano or drink drip coffee and the one latte.
Mickey (Lee Yiming): Uh, then that stay in Japan, we, we'd talk about—
Gilly (Yuan Jingyi): The next steps!
Mickey (Lee Yiming): Uh, how we do in the future, you know, the next step. So, so we'd talk about the marriage, then she say, okay, "well, let's go married."
Gilly (Yuan Jingyi): Let’s do it!
Mickey (Lee Yiming): Let’s do it! Let's get married. Yeah, we, we worked together. I, I'm the Roaster, she she'd do the most boring stuff.
Gilly (Yuan Jingyi): I'm sales. [Laughs]
Mickey (Lee Yiming): She'd be more like the salesman.
Anna Oleksak: Yeah. I think, uh, this is happening a lot to coffee people. They fall in love all the time. I remember once there was a new year’s party, like it was only for coffee business, and there was only one guy who brought his new girlfriend, and she was completely outside the industry. But we promise we not going to talk about coffee! It's a New Year's Eve party. Of course, it's going to, it's going to be fine. It's gonna be fun. But after half an hour, everybody started to talk about coffee and even brew some coffee. And eventually she went away. So, this romance failed—
James Harper: Coffee killed the romance!
Anna Oleksak: —but I see a lot of really great couples around and there is only one rule you can't break when you are judging. You can't be in a romantic relationship with a person that you are judging with a competitor. It's even written in code of conduct and called a conflict of interest, but all other are ah, ok, and they are happening.
James Harper: So, Anna, thank you so much for helping me cohost a story about the roasting championships.
Anna Oleksak: Thank you so much for having me for this podcast!
James Harper: But Anna, before we leave, I have one question for you. So, I'm going to play you a sound of coffee brewing. The question is what type of coffee brewing method is it?
Anna Oleksak: Oh, I know this sound. Is Ibrik, no?
James Harper: Indeed it is! Now, how would you roast coffee for Cezve/Ibrik?
Anna Oleksak: Ah, no. This is a—cezve/ibrik is really, um, a mystery, still a mystery for me. So, I think it would be next step for me to learn how to assess it and what kind of coffees will work well and roast profiles.
James Harper: Well, Anna, the good news is we're now we're going to talk about cevze/ibrik with a new cohost.
Anna Oleksak: Thank you, James was really a pleasure and, um, see you next year at the competitions.
James Harper: I'll see you there. Bye. And now I'm going to introduce a new cohost.
Sara Al-Ali: Hello, James. My name is Sarah, I'm from Saudi Arabia. So, I'm the first Saudi to represent, uh, my country in the Cezve/Ibrik Championship on the world stage.
James Harper: Interesting. So, this is a quarantine recording set up. So where are you right now?
Sara Al-Ali: I’m at home, in the storage room!
James Harper: Oh really?
Sara Al-Ali: I have all the boxes I use for coffee, with the tools and cups and everything around me. I have a big sheet of paper on the door that says I'm in a live session. So, everyone is on alert.
James Harper: Oh, that's so cool. So, Sarah, I'd love to start with a really simple question. Why do you love cezve/ibrik coffee?
Sara Al-Ali: Because I have emotional connection to it.
James Harper: Oh yeah? What's that story?
Sara Al-Ali: My mother is originally from Syria, and in Syria usually what happens that the family will sit around an indoor fountain inside the house, and then they would enjoy this type of coffee together. And usually it's females who are drinking this type of coffee. It would be like when the father is away at work, the mother and her daughter, or her neighbor, would sit around the fountain and start drinking this type of coffee. So, my mother always like, she wanted me to enjoy it with her and I tried, but I can't, you know, I never understood why.
And then it's not until I started reading about the cezve/ibrik method and I competed that I said, "Oh my God, like we can do this coffee and enjoy it together in a better way." And I started making her coffee with the specialty beans. And then at first, she was like, “no, this is not my coffee.” And then little by little, she started enjoying it and she will have it without sugar, without adding any cardamom—because she used to have cardamom in it. And this is how people knew me in Saudi Arabia. It's funny because I started with espresso and I enjoy v60, but people knew that Sarah is the champion of Saudi Arabia for the cezve/ibrik. So, it's very close to my heart because it's where people knew Sarah and how I knew myself and started get closer to my family as well.
James Harper: Wow. That's a really beautiful story. Now, Sarah, I know that cezve/ibrik coffee is drank by hundreds of millions of people. So, where can you find it being drank every day?
Sara Al-Ali: You can find that, uh, in a lot of places in the middle East, like Lebanon, Syria, and North Africa, such as Egypt, and also in many parts in Eastern Europe.
James Harper: Now the competition is called Cezve/Ibrik. What is cezve? What is ibrik?
Sara Al-Ali: We have many names for the same pot! In Greece, they would call it "ibrik," in, um, Turkey, they would call it, "cezve," and Syria, "dallah," and parts of Saudi Arabia, they call it "jadhwa." In Egypt, hey call it, "kanaka."
James Harper: Huh! Now, Sarah, you mentioned you can find cezve/ibrik in Eastern Europe...
Announcer: Welcome back to the final rounds of the 2019 Cezve/Ibrik Competition… is from Russia!
And I spoke with a Cezve/Ibirk World Champion. Sarah for you, you said you love cezve/ibrik because it connected you more closely with your mother, but for Sergey, the flavors of one particular cezve/ibrik coffee changed his life.
Sergey Blinnikov: Time. Hello there, judges. Welcome.
Sergey Blinnikov: So, my name is Sergey Blinnikov, I've been working with the coffee for more than six years now.
James Harper: Tell me about that first time you had a cezve coffee, what did you experience?
Sergey Blinnikov: I went to one of the cezve coffee, coffee shops, uh, in Moscow and try just classic cezve without any additive and it was mind-blowing. It was classic, very sweet Costa Rican coffee with apple notes, really sweet, like red apple, a lot of caramel flavors. And actually most of the flavor was sweet brown sugar caramel, it was very sweet. One of the most sweet cups of coffee I've ever tried. And it was the moment I realized that I need to learn more about this. I want to be part of this, to be able to create this flavor of myself.
James Harper: So Sarah, Sergey’s on this journey, trying to discover flavors, he works at that café where he first tried that coffee and then he participates and wins the Russian Cezve/Ibrik Championship. And he told me about his signature beverage and the flavor combinations he discovered.
Sergey Blinnikov: So, I found this wonderful lot from 90+, called Perci experimental natural lot. And, uh, one day we have a little conversation with coffee trader here from Russia. She asked me, had I ever considered using silver skin from coffee? These parts most usually ends up in the trash actually. I tried to brew it and I was simply amazed how sweet it is and can remind some honeys, some very good pu’er tea.
Sergey Blinnikov: 10mL of cascara syrup. 50mL of silver-skin essence.
So, I haven't decided to rebuild the coffee cherry in the signature beverages for the judges using a silver skin, cascara, and, uh, one of my great friends, they brought the unique liberica coffea flowers. Not arabica, but liberica. And they are very different from arabica kinds, uh, because, um, have much stronger aroma and, uh, just amazing mouthfeel. It was just like glass of Sauvingon Blanc.
Sergey Blinnikov: Thank you, time!
Sara Al-Ali: Amazing.
James Harper: So those flavors, have you ever tasted a coffee like Sergey’s describing?
Sara Al-Ali: Of course, I believe that in cezve/ibrik coffee, you get the more deeper notes of whatever is in that coffee. I get more like the dried fruits and even like, you can get the hazelnut and nuts that accentuated in the beverage. And also, I get the sweetness. And this is very surprising to many people who tried cezve/ibrik. In Saudi Arabia, we usually add cardamom and we add a lot of sugar to it because the coffee we use is normally lower quality and it's dark roasted. And I have a pop-up coffee shop and I serve cezve/ibrik coffee on sand. And when people come, I always invite them to try it without sugar. Like I beg them sometimes it's like, please just enjoy the coffee. And if you don't like it, I will add the sugar! And then when I see the surprise on their face, most of them, they're commenting how sweet the cup is and they don't need to add any sugar.
James Harper: Interesting. So, what is the goal of the cezve/ibrik competition?
Sara Al-Ali: The whole idea is like any other competition to celebrate the barista, to celebrate the people behind this product. It's a connection between the farmer, because you are telling the farmer's story, and the roaster, the barista. It's all in that small, like a 60 or 90 mL of beverage.
James Harper: So, I spoke to a guy called Turgay, who is a Cezve/Ibrik World Champion.
Sara Al-Ali: Oh my God, Turgay is my coach! Everyone would love to know his story.
James Harper: Oh yes. And Turgay told me the lengths he goes to put on a great performance.
Turgay Yildizli: There are seven steps we need to follow to have a great experience.
Turgay Yildizli: My name is Turgay Yildizli. I'm the founder of a specialty Turkish coffee company based in United States and previous Cezve/Ibirk World Champion 2013.
Turgay Yildizli: I'm going to talk about my coffee.
I was born in France, Paris. But when I was five years old, my family moved back to Turkey. So, I grew up in Turkey, Istanbul.
Turgay Yildizli: Good quality water brings out potential of our coffee.
2011, it was my first competition. So, I just want to try to compete because I thought I can learn more. And I can connect with coffee scene in Turkey. So, in the rules you had to demonstrate your folkloric, you know, cultural things during your competition. For example, competitor from Greece, they played traditional Greek music during the competition. So, in 2013, I search the traditional Ottoman history books about coffee. I found a tailor who makes costume for theater. So, I definitely brought a picture, a painting, to him, a coffee, traditional Ottoman coffee maker, very big pants, old-style shoes, a vest. Took some time, two, three months, maybe. He didn't make the hat, but everything from scratch, I prepared this one for national championship, or of course I use for the world championship, the same presentation, same costume.
James Harper: Turgay then told me more about the science of brewing a cezve/ibrik coffee.
Turgay Yildizli: Cezve/ibrik Turkish coffee, this is a very primitive brew method. The technical term is decoction, which is a brew heating or boiling a substance in a solvent, which is extracting coffee bean into the water. So, the biggest difference between the other brew method is filtration. This creates some disadvantages and advantages. So, it's difficult to control the extraction because when you brew your coffee and then pour into the cup, the coffee grounds still in the cup and extraction is continuing. So, the flavor, if you create a good-tasting coffee, the flavor is changing in your cup. So maybe at the beginning it has less acidity or maybe you can get little bitterness or body is getting more smoother. If you wait longer, it's getting more balanced.
James Harper: And then he has an argument for why we should all be trying to compete at the Cezve/Ibrik Competition.
Turgay Yildizli: You know, it's difficult to compete at barista competitions against well-funded competitors. It's not easy to compete at that level, but this competition is a chance for competitors to experience World Stage. National championships, it's not easy, but less competitors attends. So, they have more chance at the national level. And then they can go compete at the world stage.
Turgay Yildizli: As a host competitor, it was a pleasure to serve you today. Time.
Sara Al-Ali: Oh, amazing. Would love to meet one day.
James Harper: But you never met Turgay?!
Sara Al-Ali: I never met him. We only met at Skype.
James Harper: What?! But how does he coach you if you only met him on Skype?
Sara Al-Ali: What we did, we started sharing the same coffee, so I would send him the coffee and we will brew it together. I would tell him my way of brewing and he will try it and then he will give me the feedback. And then, yeah, exactly--
James Harper: This is crazy to me. I mean, how do you, how do you know you're making the same coffee? What if he gets different water? What have you ground it slightly differently to you?
Sara Al-Ali: It will be different, but it's not going to be like way different. If there's a big difference, then I know that there's something wrong.
James Harper: There we go. Calling all aspiring baristas: you don't need to be in a café, side-by-side to a coach to learn how to make great coffee and can just have a Skype conversation. So, I live in Berlin, so my neighborhood is called Neukölln, and it is a historically Turkish neighborhood. And I can buy the cezve coffee maker in my local supermarket. So, what I'm gonna do, I'm going to buy one and I'm going to try it out on my stove, but I have a question: how fine does the coffee have to be?
Sara Al-Ali: The finest setting on your grinder?
James Harper: Okay. Hold the phone. I'll be right back. Okay. Here's my grinder. So, you're saying the finest sitting on this grinder.
Sara Al-Ali: So as long as you can grind, like,
James Harper: All right, I'm gonna try doing this. Ug, God. I'm going to stand up for this.
Sara Al-Ali: You have to practice.
James Harper: This is really intense!!
Sara Al-Ali: It’s your morning workout.
James Harper: So how fine is this, this, it needs to be really, really, really clumpy?
Sara Al-Ali: It has to be very, very soft and very it's very delicate, fluffy.
James Harper: Cool. Okay. I'm going to go out and buy my cezve/ibrik brewer, and I'll tell you how it goes. And before we wrap up, Turgay mentioned how he thinks cezve/ibrik is a great competition to start with because there aren't as many competitors for it compared to other competitions. So mathematically your odds are better in terms of having that world championship experience.
Sara Al-Ali: I actually, I agree with Turgay. Maybe it's not as big as the community in espresso or other brewing methods, but it is a strong community because we, most of us, we know each other.
James Harper: So, imagine, you know, I'm a barista, how do I get involved with this?
Sara Al-Ali: Like, if everything is in the website, the Specialty Coffee Association website, you can, uh, read more and more about the competitions and you can reach out also to people who competed before you.
James Harper: Cool. And what if my country doesn't have a cezve/ibrik competition?
Sara Al-Ali: There are like regional chapters and you can compete under these chapters. Like for example, when I competed the first time, it was under the Middle East and North Africa. So, uh, you will always find a way. And I believe it's getting even more popular in many areas in Europe as well. Like I've seen people from Germany and Italy are competing and now I have coffee friends from Ukraine and from Greece and, uh, it's really cool!
James Harper: Well, Sara, it looks like we've come to the end.
Sara Al-Ali: Okay, James, how about doing the credits?
James Harper: Let's do it. So, for this episode, I'd like to thank Trish Rothgeb, Anna Oleksak, Sergey Blinnikov, Sylvia Gutierrez, Yuan Jingyi and Lee Yiming, and Turgay Yildizli. But there are many other people too, who we haven't got time to thank, but we've listed all their names on the SCA website.
Sara Al-Ali: And now let's give a shout out to the sponsors!
James Harper: Yes. So, the World Coffee Championships Podcast series is supported by Victoria Arduino. Victoria Arduino advances coffee knowledge and innovate across design, technology, and performance to produce machines that nurture coffee professionals’ passion for espresso excellence. You can learn more at victoriaarduino.com or get them a follow @VictoriaArduino 905.
And today's episode on the Cezve/Ibrik Championships and the World Coffee Roasting Championships is supported by Loumidis Papagalos. For over a century, Loumidis Papagalos has been evolving ibrik coffee tradition in Greece. You can learn more by visiting nestlenoiazomai.gr/loumidis.
Sara Al-Ali: And now we should thank you, James, for putting this all together.
James Harper: Thank you! Yeah, this podcast series was produced by me, James Harper of Filter Productions for the Specialty Coffee Association.
Sara Al-Ali: Now tell me what's happening in the next episode.
James Harper: Yes! In the next episode, we are covering the World Coffee in Good Spirits and Brewers Championships. We're going to be looking at stories of kitchens being set on fire, the genesis behind the brewers competition, and we're going to be asking: how accessible are these competitions in the first place?
Sara Al-Ali: Wow. Excited to hear it!
James Harper: I can't wait to share it with you! And, Sara, thank you so much for helping me navigate this story. And I heard you had something exciting happening on the horizon?
Sara Al-Ali: We are opening our café by the end of the year. And it's that café in the capital city of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.
James Harper: Sara, tell me how good will the cezve/ibrik coffee be if I make it to Riyadh?
Sara Al-Ali: It's worth the trip for sure.
James Harper: Well, thanks again. And I'll see you next year!
Sara Al-Ali: Okay. Bye bye, James.
James Harper: See ya. Bye!