2022 WBC & WBrC About to Begin! Contestants Suggest World Barista Championship Needs Changes

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The World Coffee Championships: A Prestigious Stage for Coffee Excellence

As the Olympics of the coffee world, the annual World Coffee Championships (WCC), organized by World Coffee Events (WCE), consistently garners significant attention from coffee professionals and enthusiasts alike!

According to the latest news, the 2022 World Barista Championship (WBC) and World Brewers Cup (WBrC) will be held simultaneously in late September (September 27-30) in Melbourne, Australia.

World Barista Championship (WBC)

The World Barista Championship focuses on the preparation of both conventional and creative espresso-based beverages. Each competitor must prepare four servings of three different coffee drinks within 15 minutes: espresso, milk-based beverages (traditionally cappuccino), and creative signature drinks, which are scored by four sensory judges and one technical judge.

World Brewers Cup (WBrC)

The World Brewers Cup emphasizes the use of single-origin coffee beans prepared through manual brewing methods. The WBrC consists of two parts: compulsory service and open service. The former requires using competition-specified coffee beans, while the latter allows competitors to bring their own beans. Each segment requires brewing three servings for judges' sensory evaluation.

The Brewers Cup focuses more on the taster's experience, allowing baristas to present more authentic coffee flavors. Therefore, during the open service process, performance elements must be incorporated to enhance the coffee experience.

Evolution and Challenges in Coffee Competitions

As one of the world's most prestigious coffee competitions, every event since 2000 has aimed to improve coffee quality and promote the professionalization of baristas. In these two decades, the coffee industry has undergone tremendous changes.

Regarding certain aspects of the WBC competition, in recent years, many competitors and coffee professionals have suggested improvements in terms of competition acceptance, inclusivity, and transparency.

Media outlets have previously interviewed several WBC champions and competitors (Pete Licata from 2013, Agnieszka Rojewska from 2018, Jooyeon Jeon from 2019, and Maxwell, a British competitor who has participated in three WBCs) to understand their perspectives on the competition.

The Value and Professional Recognition of WBC

The WBC provides baristas with a stage to share ideas, enabling everyone to gain deeper understanding of the barista profession and coffee industry, as well as opportunities to promote specialty coffee.

Jooyeon Jeon expressed that this is a competition many in the coffee circle look forward to, as it gathers the world's most professional baristas. For many people, this is an opportunity to learn more coffee knowledge and brewing experiences, making this competition crucial for the development of the specialty coffee industry and enhancing the value of baristas.

In the past, few people considered barista as a profession, and even now, many believe that barista work is easy and can be handled by part-time staff. The WBC stage provides an opportunity for everyone to recognize baristas and makes people feel that baristas are doing professional and valuable work.

Pete Licata also expressed that in the past decade, the once small and immature specialty coffee industry has developed rapidly, and so has the barista profession. However, over these years, some intangible and unmeasurable expectations have gradually become part of the competition and scoring. But some important things have been gradually weakened.

Critiques and Calls for Reform

Pete pointed out that WBC should be a competition for baristas, testing their skills. However, today's competition focuses more on coffee procurement and knowledge that competitors know but others don't. Such competition has lost some acceptance and inclusivity. Although WBC rules and regulations have evolved over the years, the format and judging have largely remained unchanged, which is problematic for some competitors.

Maxwell, a British competitor who has reached three WBC finals, stated in an interview that he believes the competition needs to be more transparent. Maxwell initially thought that WBC would be more objective and fair than usual, but later discovered that the competition rules were not based on an understanding of scoring and objectivity... Simply put, scoring became more related to the emotional judgment of judges.

All four competitors stated during interviews that WBC is indeed a better platform for baristas to showcase themselves. Both competition organizers and judges work hard to ensure the value of this event. However, there hasn't been much development in the past decade, so some things must be redefined to make it more objective, transparent, and easier to understand.

Calls for Greater Transparency

Regarding scoring subjectivity, Maxwell believes that scoring remains too subjective and opaque, and that the competition hasn't explored these issues enough.

Reason: "The complexity of rules and lack of transparency control the regulations. Much scoring occurs behind closed doors, with no opportunity for accountability afterward, and no detailed explanation of the scoring process. At the same time, some more experienced and influential judges may unknowingly influence other judges' scoring."

Maxwell believes that perspectives are valuable, so it's normal for each judge to have different views on coffee and scoring. However, the final公布得分 doesn't fully reflect this. Therefore, he believes that having judges announce their scores on site would make the public more interested in the competition and be fairer to competitors.

Judge Selection Transparency

Pete and Maxwell stated that WBC judge selection is not public, so the selection process is not monitored, and many competitors complain about judges' qualifications.

Some competitors' hard work and dedication behind the scenes are sometimes judged by people without the same experience/background, which can be unfair. Although most judges have tried to make their scoring more rational, accurate, and fair over the years, there's still much room for improvement.

WBC Competition Theme Development

Nowadays, we can also notice that in both WBC and other coffee competitions, many themes and presentations chosen by competitors are things that ordinary coffee practitioners cannot learn from.

Although these competitions should encourage people to try more and better practices, plans, and strategies, they should not encourage things that baristas working in coffee shops daily cannot learn.

Pete mentioned that some competitors have research institutions conduct studies for them, so they can cite this data in their presentations to enhance credibility and gain extra points, but the weight of such information shouldn't be higher than everything else.

This is unfair to creative competitors who don't have the time or ability to visit origins to study cultivation and processing methods. Therefore, Pete believes that innovation and creativity should be separated.

WBC Inclusivity

Over the years, the WBC champion list highlights an inclusivity issue: the vast majority of winners are male and white.

In十几二十年的比赛中, it wasn't until 2018 that the World Barista Championship had its first female champion, Agnieszka Rojewska from Poland, followed by the second in 2019, Jooyeon Jeon from South Korea.

Agnieszka stated that very few women participate in WBC, so it seems logical that women's chances of winning appear small.

Every competitor who reaches the WBC stage represents their country or region after a selection process. However, in these competitions, very few women participate, and the competition itself doesn't prevent anyone from participating.

Winning the competition often requires significant investment/sponsorship, which allows for better coffee, better pre-competition preparation, and better training. The biggest obstacle to few women participating is resources. Therefore, more attention needs to be paid to opportunities for female competitors to access resources and training.

For baristas, WBC remains an excellent stage. This stage has driven the development of the specialty coffee industry and promoted the development of the barista profession, as it encourages baristas to innovate and research skills more, and encourages baristas to connect more with origins.

The ideas for change proposed by competitors are also hopes that such competitions can better demonstrate these values.

Image source: perfectdailygrind

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