Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/139019
Licata became the second American to win the WBC title in its 14-year history—and the first since Mike Phillips did it in 2010. Rounding out the top three at the 2013 WBC were hometown competitor Matt Perger of Australia—he works at Melbourne's St. Ali Coffee Roasters—and William Hernandez of El Salvador. Hernandez's tale is noteworthy in part because the 22-year-old has been a barista for less than a year. "He got into our in-house competition and beat all the experienced baristas," says his coach, Federico Bolanos, who owns the San Salvador-based retailerroaster Hernandez works for, Viva Espresso. But he almost didn't get the chance: Bolanos and Hernandez were initially denied visas by the Australian government. "We got a response letter from the Australian government stating that we failed to satisfy the government in believing our stay was going to be temporary," Bolanos says. Upon second application, however, both were approved, and Hernandez was able to give El Salvador its fifth-straight top-12 finish at the WBC. On the Brewers Cup side, McCarthy struck gold using a gesha variety coffee from the renowned Panama farm Hacienda La Esmeralda, which he brewed using a Kalita paper-filter pour-over. McCarthy says the main adjustment he made between his U.S.winning routine and the world stage was talking a bit more about varieties' ties to the future of coffee farming. "Being able to bring in heirloom varieties to figure out which ones not only resist disease but also taste really good is crucial to our future," he says. McCarthy's coffee career has included stops at Georgia's 1000 Faces Coffee and New York's Gimme Coffee, and he currently works as a machine technician at Counter Culture. He says his first thought after winning the country's first World Brewers Cup title was gratitude toward everyone who has helped him in his coffee career. "I can't stop thinking about the road that it took to get here," he says, "and how many people along the way have inspired me. I feel like we say this a lot in coffee, but the people who inspire you and push you to do better mean everything." Rounding out the top three at the World Brewers Cup were Jung Insung of South Korea in second and Canada's Josh Tarlo in third. —Chris Ryan LATEST INVESTOR-BACKED ROASTER DEFINED BY SECRET BLENDS, NOT SINGLE ORIGINS In early May, the blog TechCrunch reported that yet another independent roaster-retailer had grabbed major financial backing from an investment firm. The coffee company in question this time around is San Francisco-based Philz Coffee, which has 13 shops around the Bay Area, including one inside the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. The financial backer for Philz is a company called Summit Partners, and according to Philz CEO Jacob Jaber, the deal is worth more than $10 million. (TechCrunch indicated it could be as high as $25 million, but Jaber declined to confirm that.) While the Philz-Summit partnership seems to follow in the footsteps of deals made by other growing roasters in recent years—Portland's Stumptown and Oakland's Blue Bottle have also secured millions recently—the Philz backing actually shows that the investment community may be widening its focus when it comes to specialty coffee. PHIL JABER: The Philz founder started with a single shop in 2003. Stumptown and Blue Bottle are brands built on seemingly unending hipness, heavy transparency when it comes to sourcing and light-to-medium roasting styles that aim to showcase characteristics of coffee from different farms around the globe. Philz represents a slightly different segment of the industry: The company launched as a single shop in the Mission District in 2003, and darker roasts, "secret recipe" blends and mint-mojito iced coffees have fueled its success. The face of Philz is not a 20-something barista champ; instead, it's the fedora-sporting Phil Jaber, father of Jacob, who began his coffee career by experimenting on a roaster 25 years ago. "We have our own box," the 26-year-old Jacob Jaber says. "We don't like to get distracted by what others are doing." This is not to say that Philz ignores quality. The company is known for the fact that all the brewed coffee in its stores is made via pour-over, and one of the company's top blends (called Jacob's Wonderbar) scored an impressive 88 on the Coffee Review Web site in 2011. But the company's lack of sourcing details and marketing efforts such as a recent partnership with Virgin America airlines clearly position the brand as more mainstream than Stumptown and the pack of boutique roasters it helped inspire. "The best coffee in the world is not necessarily [focused on] the continued on page 20 CAN'T MAKE A BUCK: As C-market prices for coffee dropped below $1.25 per pound in mid-June, The Wall Street Journal pointed out that for farmers in Colombia, Brazil and elsewhere, the returns on coffee were no longer covering the costs to grow it. Prices have fallen 54 percent in the last two years due in large part to strong harvests in Brazil. | freshcup.com July 2013 19