WBC23 Collaborators

Nucleus Coffee Tools, embraced the opportunity to join forces with Boram Um (Brazil), Isaiah Sheese (United States) and Stevo Kuhn (South Africa). Three talented baristas, each representing a different country and each bringing their unique skills to the table. Besides incredible results with Boram placing 1st and Isaiah placing 4th, we had a great time getting to know these coffee professionals, hearing their values and witnessing their love for coffee.

1st Place - Boram Um (Brazil)

Boram, representing the rich coffee heritage of Brazil cares deeply for community and teamwork. A centre-piece message of his performance Boram encourages teamwork and his love for people is obvious.

“I think the best memory I have of Barista competition is my second nationals in 2022, which happened in Sao Paulo Coffee Festival. We had such a huge crowd of people who came to watch and cheer, the energy was incredible and winning in my home city was electric”.

Besides teamwork, Boram’s performance was filled with innovation in every detail down to his water choice. He not only used Paragon and Extract Chilling for his espresso’s but also his milk and signature course.

“Paragon was crucial in every single drink of my routine this year. For the espressos, Paragon brought flavour clarity and amped up flavour notes that were very low intensity. Along with that, our tactile was incredible. Extremely creamy and coating espressos, which awarded us 5.5 on tactile experience in some rounds. 

For the milk course, we used Paragon to chill our freshly steamed milk. Not only it bring better texture to the milk, brought sort of a stickiness to our milk course that was incredible in tactile. And finally for Sig course, we chilled our drinks with Paragon making them refreshing!”

Boram’s relentless efforts towards teamwork clearly paid off. By finals day the 1 hour tasting time, which often feels not long enough for the competitor felt easy for Boram and his team.

“We tasted probably 2 shots of espresso and it was done, I knew it was at its peak. I remember looking at our team members around 15 minutes into our practice time and saying: so what do we do now? 

I felt happy with the consistent results of the coffee, and even happier with the level of precision Paragon brought me.”

4th Place - Isaiah Sheesh (USA)

Nucleus was also lucky enough to work with the highly experienced Isaiah Sheese from Archetype Coffee. The moment you meet Isaiah you can feel his love for people. His first competition was back in 2009 and his humble nature has created a crowd favourite. This year, Isaiah proved that hard work pays off.

Isaiah cares about giving credit where credits due and showcasing the hard work of producers.

“Both Lucy and Diego’s coffees are fantastic. Lucy could have said NO to allowing Diego to process her coffee. And Diego could have easily said NO to agreeing to process Lucy’s coffee. It truly was selfless acts on both of their part to make this special collaboration come to fruition. Their kindness and willingness to work with us was what made this year truly special.”

For Isaiah, Paragon allowed him to further showcase the unique qualities of his coffee.

“It absolutely increased the already incredible aromatics of Lucy’s coffee. Upon doing lots of side by side blind taste tests, extract chilling won out more times than not. The ability it has to transform certain coffees is really hard to believe unless you experience it for yourself first hand. The way it enhances sweetness, texture, and aromatics are what I love the most.“

Stevo Kuhn (South Africa)

We also had the pleasure of working with Stevo Kuhn, South African Champion from Urban Brew Barista Academy. Although not quite reaching the result in WBC he hoped, Stevo shows there are many ways outside of competition you can positively impact the coffee industry.

Hosting multiple workshops on barista techniques and Extract Chilling, Stevo continues to add value to his South African coffee community through sharing knowledge and helping others.

It’s clear that Stevo gets energy from not only helping others, but also pushing himself.

A coffee -lover with a sharp palate, Stevo has been exploring a lot of coffees with extract chilling.

“Two words – game changing! Once you do the comparison it’s a no-brainer. By using the paragon for me espresso course I could clean up the finish of the espresso and highlight the quality of the acidity to something tropical. Beyond the flavour, the body of the espresso was also very coating by using the paragon.”

Witnessing these professionals succeed with different coffee choice, roasting and extracting approaches and different values is one of the positive impacts of competition platforms. For us at Nuclues, this also allowed an opportunity to taste these champions unique coffees. For us, a fascinating observation was seeing different Extract-Chilling approaches suit different coffees. Boram ran the entire duration of his espressos over the Chilling Rocks, whereas Stevo and Isaiah found the best taste when removing the rock at certain moments during the extraction. Different tastes occur at different durations of Extract-Chilling which encourages exploration and finding a tailored recipe to suit your coffee.

All of us are at the early frontier of Extract-Chilling and we love that there is so much ‘un-known’, so much ahead of us to discover. Collaborating with coffee professionals allows us see how coffees with different DNA, different roast and extraction behave. Seeing Paragon making its contribution to the many key aspects of a baristas approach makes us feel super proud.

We highly recommend you checkout each of their WBC performances. Stevo, Isaiah and Boram (as well as the other competitors) each offer unique insight into the possibilities of coffee.

Cheers,
Nucleus Coffee Tools

Photo Credit: World Coffee Championships and Specialty Coffee Association