Our hometown of Calgary, AB was host once again for the Canadian Aeropress Championship this past Saturday, May 28 — with the winner to compete in the upcoming World Aeropress Championship in Dublin, Ireland on June 23!

Local brewery Tool Shed Brewing graciously hosted this event, which was organized by the fine people at Prairie Coffee Collective with sponsors including Baratza, Eight Ounce Coffee, Fresh Cup Magazine, and more.

In recent years, the Aeropress has become an extremely popular brew method — there is no one “right” way to brew one, as we saw with all of the varying techniques amongst competitors! The basic philosophy remains the same: you use ground coffee, leave it in contact with hot water for a certain amount of time, and “plunge,” pressing down and straining the coffee through a paper or metal filter. Some choose to brew it “regular,” and some “inverted,” but the quest remains the same: to extract a delicious and clean cup.

The format of the competition is a multiple round, elimination tournament. Competitors have eight minutes to brew the best cup of Aeropress coffee that they can. Usually two or three people compete at a time, having to brew simultaneously before a panel of judges. The judges blindly evaluate the resulting coffee and choose the cup that they would enjoy the most — then, on the count of three, the judges must simultaneously select their preferred cup.

This year’s coffee was kindly provided by Transcend Coffee, a washed Colombian coffee from producer Raul Gutierrez.

Team Phil & Sebastian included: Phil Robertson, Michael Dueck, Matt Cooper, Karine Ng, David Kim, Javaid Shah, and Aimee Ferguson

Congrats to Javaid Shah for making it all the way to the semi-finals, facing some tough competition from Eldrich of Aubade Coffee (Vancouver, BC), who placed third. We loved having all of our awesome staff participate, with team members Aimee, Matt, and Karine also making it to the quarter finals! It’s also wonderful to be involved in such a passionate coffee community, and supporting those in the Canadian coffee community continues to be an important priority for us.

And, a big congratulations to Jill Hoff of Monogram Coffee for placing 1st (and Brandon O’Shea, also of Monogram Coffee for placing 2nd) — we look forward to cheering you on as you represent Canada on the world stage!