COMPETITION · WAC · SEOUL 2025
World AeroPress Championship: Némo Pop, an Ecuadorian Sidra, and the Most Fun Competition in Coffee
Three competitors. Three cups each. Eight minutes. Three judges who don't know who brewed what. Pick your favourite. That's it.
The World AeroPress Championship (WAC) started in Oslo in 2008 as a friendly evening among three roasters and grew, deliberately not corporately, into a worldwide tournament with hundreds of national qualifiers feeding a single world final each year. It is the only major coffee competition that is run independently of the SCA.
The format (one of the simplest in sport)
- Three baristas compete head-to-head per heat.
- Each has 8 minutes and a fresh AeroPress.
- Each brews three identical cups from the same supplied coffee.
- Cups go to three judges, fully blind, in random order.
- Each judge points to their favourite. Most points wins. Done.
No technical scoresheet, no signature beverage, no narration. Just a cup of coffee that a stranger likes more than the other two cups in front of them.
2025: Némo Pop, Australia — Seoul, Korea
The 2025 world final was held in Seoul, Korea.Némo Pop, representing Australia, won the title with a winning recipe published on the championship's official site:[1]
- Coffee: Ecuador, Finca la Carolina (Fausto Romo), Sidra variety, washed, 1,300 m — sourced by Café Imports, roasted by Stereoscope Coffee.
- Position: Upright (standard, not inverted)
- Dose: 18 g coffee
- Filter: Flow Control cap (Fellow Prismo)
Runners-up: Jan Ahrend (Switzerland) in 2nd, Dharun Vyas (India) in 3rd.[2]
Why it matters
The AeroPress championship is where weird ideas get tested in public. Inverted brewing entered the mainstream from WAC. High-dose / short-brew "tea-style" recipes did too. The flow-control cap that Pop used in 2025 is itself a piece of competition equipment that filtered down into home kits. The trophy for 2026 will be handed out in Mexico City in December.
References
- World AeroPress Championship, "Recipes" — Némo Pop 2025 winning recipe.
- World AeroPress Championship, "2025 World AeroPress Championship Recap" — Seoul, Korea.
- BeanScene Magazine, "Australian representative wins World AeroPress Championship" (2025).