WBrC 2026: Brew like a champion with Nas Jaafars World Championship-winning LINK profile

When Nas Jaafar stepped onto the World Brewers Cup stage in Brussels this June, he made history.

Not only did he become the first Malaysian to win the World Brewers Cup, but he did so with a routine that challenged conventional thinking around coffee extraction, using Darcy’s Law—the physics of how liquid moves through porous materials—to demonstrate a new approach to brewing.

Behind that routine was a roast profile developed by LINK Product Manager, Jerome Rosler. Now, as part of the Addis 4.2 firmware update, that same championship-winning profile is available for every LINK user to explore.

We spoke with Jerome about the thinking behind the roast, the challenges of preparing coffee for the world’s biggest brewing stage, and what LINK users can learn from the profile.

Only 500 grams

For Jerome, the biggest challenge wasn’t designing the roast – it was having almost no coffee to work with.

“We only had 500 grams of Finca Nuguo Geisha,” he explains. “Yisin from Glyph Coffee was kind enough to help source it for us, but with such a limited allocation, every roast had to teach us something.”

The coffee itself gave them confidence. Grown at around 1,700 metres and processed as an anaerobic natural by Pocho Gallardo and his team at Finca Nuguo, it already possessed remarkable complexity.

“When we cupped the green, it was already incredibly expressive,” Jerome says. “Beautiful florals, ripe stone fruit and sweetness. I didn’t think the roast needed to add anything. The job was simply to preserve those characteristics while making the coffee easy for Nas to extract consistently on stage.”

That philosophy also complemented Nas’ competition routine, which explored the idea of understanding resistance rather than fighting it.

“The roast became another layer of that story,” Jerome says. “It needed to create enough solubility for the first percolation phase to highlight clarity and acidity, while leaving enough structure for the immersion phase to build sweetness and body.”

Building a roast

For highly expressive coffees like anaerobic Panamanian Geisha, Jerome believes the greatest danger isn’t underdevelopment — it’s doing too much.

“It influences almost every decision,” he says. “With coffees like this, it’s very easy to overcomplicate things.”

Rather than imposing roast character onto the coffee, the goal was to showcase the work already completed at origin.

“Nas speaks in his routine about how resistance at origin shapes the coffee, whether that’s elevation or controlled anaerobic fermentation. I saw roasting the same way.”

“Those decisions had already been made by the producer. We didn’t want to overwrite them with roast character. Instead, the goal was transparency — building enough structure to support extraction while allowing the hibiscus, apricot and sugarcane sweetness to remain recognisably from the coffee itself.”

The resulting profile follows an unusual structure: a high-energy start, an extended Maillard phase, and an exceptionally short finish.

Looking at the roast profile alone, it might appear unconventional. Jerome insists every decision came from tasting, and that the final roasts – performed by Nas’ coach, Jhon Richard Christhoper – were led by flavour alone.

“We establish momentum very early before spending more than half of the roast in the Maillard phase,” he says. “That wasn’t built around percentages. It was built around the cup.”

The early energy allowed the coffee to move cleanly through drying without stalling, while the extended Maillard phase developed sweetness and internal structure before first crack.

“By the time we reached first crack, most of the work had already been done,” he said.

“That allowed us to finish with only around 40 seconds of development, preserving the floral aromatics and vibrant acidity that Nas wanted to highlight during the first percolation stage of his UFO V3 recipe.”

Why the LINK made the difference

One of the profile’s most striking features is its development time — around 40 seconds, with a development rise of just 4.4°C.

Those numbers weren’t predetermined. Across two mornings, Jerome and Nas roasted six batches before cupping every roast side by side, and eventually settled on roughly 10% development.

“They came from tasting,” Jerome says. “Not by chasing numbers.”

“We kept seeing the same pattern. Every time we extended development, the coffee became sweeter, but it also became broader and lost some of the separation that made the Geisha so exciting.”

Both Nas’ Open Service coffee and the Finals coffee were served just three days after they were roasted; an extremely short window of time, that most competitors wouldn’t consider working with. However, Jerome, Nas and Nas’ coach, Jhon, let the flavour of the coffee lead their decision making – rather than pre-conceived notions about how old the coffee ought to be.

With so little coffee available and such a short window of time, consistency became everything. The LINK’s repeatability meant every roast could be compared with confidence, allowing Jerome, Nas and the team to refine even the smallest variables.

Environmental conditions mattered too – a heat wave during the competition week added another variable to consider, and shifted the approach when roasting Nas’ coffee.

“I only roasted early in the morning when the ambient temperature was around 24°C,” said Jerome. “Once the roasting room climbed above 30°C in Brussels, I wasn’t getting as consistent results.”

Individually, these changes were subtle. Together, they produced a roast Nas could trust completely.

“That allowed him to spend his preparation refining brewing rather than compensating for roasting inconsistencies,” said Jerome.

Now available on every LINK

With the latest LINK firmware update, Addis 4.2, roasters also gain access to something that would have been unthinkable not long ago: the exact profiles used to win a world championship.

In 2024, Martin Wölfl took the title in Chicago, again roasting on the LINK — a win that led directly to the WBrC 2024 profile pack, which replicates the filter profiles Jerome built around Martin’s coffee and is already available to every LINK user.

With Addis 4.2, home roasters gain access to the WBrC 2026 profile pack — the exact profiles used by Nas for the coffee he used on the competition stage.

For Jerome, making this profile style available through Addis 4.2 is about far more than sharing championship settings.

“It’s about sharing the thinking, not just the profile,” he says.

Behind the seven-minute roast are six competition batches, countless cuppings, fan-speed experiments, tightly controlled roasting conditions, carefully selected blend components, serving the coffee just three days off roast, and even a final mineral adjustment moments before Nas stepped onto the World Brewers Cup stage.

“People will see a seven-minute roast with around 10% development, but that’s only one part of the story.”

His hope isn’t that LINK users simply copy the profile. Instead, he hopes it encourages them to ask the same questions that shaped it.

“Great roasting comes from understanding your coffee deeply, questioning assumptions and refining dozens of small decisions until everything works together,” he says.

“That’s ultimately what this World Championship profile represents.”

The profile is built around the expressive character of high-quality anaerobically processed Panamanian Geisha — the coffee Nas used at competition — combining a high-energy start with a Maillard-dominant structure and a short, controlled development window.

First crack arrives at 6:20, followed by a measured 40-second development close that preserves the processing-derived aromatics accumulated through the extended pre-crack phase, rather than overriding them. The result is a cup that leads with aromatic lift, layered sweetness, and distinct fruit presence — exactly the qualities that defined Nas’s winning entry on the competition stage.

The WBrC 2026 profile responds equally well to other anaerobic and natural-processed coffees beyond Panamanian Geisha — Ethiopian naturals, Colombian anaerobic lots, and other fermentation-forward coffees all suit this approach.

It is particularly effective when brewed on hybrid immersion drippers such as the Orea, Tricolate, or Pulsar, where the full sweetness and complexity of the cup can develop without dilution.

To use the WBrC 2026 profile pack:

• Ensure that the new LINK firmware (Addis 4,2) and new profile packs are installed
• In the LINK App, select Profile Selector > Manual Profile Selection > Filter > WBrC 2026
• Enter your coffee’s details in the LINK App to receive a custom solution in the WBrC style
• Select the recommended Power Curve/Profile on the LINK roaster, or via LINK Studio if connected.

Learn more via nucleuscoffeetools.com/link