With an aura of kindness and calm, you might think of Matt Winton as an unlikely contender. In fact, he thrives with a new challenge at his fingertips and has the Big Match Temperament to go all the way.
And just like that, the World of Coffee in Greece in June of 2023, was over! Three world champions determined, an Awards ceremony that went way over schedule and thousands of over-caffeinated and exhausted coffee humans now waiting outside an Exhibition Centre for a taxi.
We’re chatting about Australia beating England in the first match of the Ashes as there are obviously a lot of memes going around about two of South Africa’s fiercest sporting rivals in a double World Cup year. And we all know how that turned out, for better and for worse!
And then we hear fighting talk in an Aussie accent, come from behind us. Introductions are made in-between banter. Through sport, and of course coffee, a new connection is formed.
But Matt Winton, bearer of said Aussie accent, is no ordinary sports fan. He’s also a competitor, and a Champion. The World Brewers Cup Champion 2021 to be precise. But not for Australia, for Switzerland where he has planted roots that include family and a coffee roastery. But, as is the case with many a coffee professional, a career in coffee was never really part of the plan.
“Well, what is the World Brewers Cup?”, we can hear you wonder. There are in fact seven competitive disciplines in the Specialty Coffee Association’s World Coffee Championships stable. The most popular of which is the Barista Championship. But in recent years the other disciplines have been gaining steady traction with competitors. Chief among them, the Brewers Cup. As the name suggests, the task of the coffee professional is to brew coffee. Not using an espresso machine, but rather their choice of manual, filter brewing device.
Every competitor is required to complete two coffee services: a compulsory service and an open service. For the compulsory service, competitors have a set amount of time to prepare three coffee beverages (one for each judge) using the same whole bean coffee provided to them by the organisers. This part of the competition is a very cool aspect in our opinion, because it really shows the competitors skill in approaching a new coffee and it levels a playing the field that has has increasingly become about who can find and showcase the rarest, most unique and most exquisite coffees. In fact Matt had trained with four different brewing methods so that he could use the one that best suited the coffee on the day!
For the open service, competitors may use any whole bean coffee of their choosing (those rare, unique and exquisite ones) and must accompany their beverage preparation with a 10-minute presentation. The competitor typically explains the origin of the coffee, the brewing method, and tasting notes while brewing at least three beverages, one for each of the three sensory judges. Matt was the first to present a blend in his Worlds set, a first across all the disciplines where single origins have reigned supreme. By blending an extremely sweet coffee and an extremely acidic coffee, he created a sublime and balanced coffee, that starts with aromas and flavours of rose and strawberry, but travels through many other flavours. Pretty wild.
We were lucky enough to have the opportunity to pick his brain...
How did an Aussie end up in Switzerland and what has made it home through the years?
I originally moved to Europe in 2016 with my old job, which was Aircraft Engineering. I used to carry out maintenance and upgrades on all sorts of airplanes and helicopters across Europe before a contract landed me in Zurich over summer. I got such a nice feeling from it that I decided to stay for a bit and went to find a job in a café to work with coffee – the rest is history!
I didn’t plan on going into coffee – I just enjoyed making it, and I loved the idea of “being of service” and working as a barista was a way that I could fulfil that more than working on Aircraft. I could give someone a coffee and see that it made their day better – and I loved that. While I was still learning a lot at the beginning, I saw lots of people doing Barista Competitions, so I thought that was a good way of learning and pushing myself to be better – so I did my first Barista Competition in Sweden in 2018.
Winning the World Brewers Cup in 2021, as the world came out of hiding, must have been an incredible feeling? What is that drew you to this discipline in the competition world after a very successful 7th place in WBC?
In January 2020 I decided to take a year off from the Barista Championship, but instead thought I’d take part in the Swiss Brewers Cup competition as a way to keep on learning. I really didn’t think I was a very good brewer back then. So I started to learn more about brewing, and then really fell head first into that world. I was lucky enough to win the Swiss Brewers Cup that year, just by a hair. I knew that I would need to step it up for the world competition, whenever that would be (due to covid). All through the lockdowns I was training a lot on all the fundamentals for the World Brewers Cup, and in the end the final routine and brewing ended up coming together just 7 days before the competition were held in October 2021, in Milan!
You’ve since had the opportunity to travel extensively through the coffee brewing and growing world. We know it’s a tough question, but can you tell us a few highlight locations and people through these travels?
I think the trips to Producing Countries, like Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia and Panama have been the highlights. I’ve made life long friends there, and had incredible experiences that I can’t begin to describe well enough to do them justice. To be honest, just meeting people at events, expos, and café’s are a definite highlight. I love seeing that I can make a positive impact in someone’s life.
You’ve now coached 2 Champions to the Swiss Brewers Cup title, what do you like about the role of ‘coach’?
That’s an interesting question! I think coaching has been a way that I can help other people with the knowledge I have, but while trying to get them to live their own experience too. It’s a tough line to tread, because people are so unique and individual, and helping other people see the potential that I see in them is an art that I think takes a lot of time and energy to perfect. Suki (aka Ma Siu Yeung) - is now the current Swiss Brewers Champion and we’re excited to travel to Chicago in 2024 for the Worlds!
How did Rose Coffee Roasters come to life?
Rose Coffee Roasters started as an idea between my business partner, Freddo (aka Frédéric Louis Brunner), and myself in 2021 just after the World Championships. I’ve always loved the idea of having a roastery and getting great coffee into people’s hands, and at the same time supporting and representing farmers who I work with and know personally. It’s a great feeling to have some positive feedback get back to the producers about the coffees I bought and roasted from them and being able to represent them in a positive light!
We love to know how businesses come up with their names and look&feel, tell us the story of Rose Coffee Roasters from a brand&design perspective.
The story behind the name and the feel was kind of organic. Freddo and I were thinking of names for the roastery and we both liked this idea of a floral sort of name. Who doesn’t like florals in their coffee right? We put Rose in there as a placeholder name, and it just never really changed from that. We worked with a design agency in the UK, Blond, who have done some other work with us, and they came up with the feel and font and colours for the brand. The idea is to give a simple, clean and refined look with lots of space, especially on the front of our packaging!
How do you think sourcing high-end specialty coffee supports the producers and value chain in general?
The relationships and lines of communication and growth we have been able to forge with these producers is testament to the fact that everyone benefits from this style of sourcing. I wouldn’t say that we exclusively source extremely high end lots though. We do have ranges that are more reasonable, where we try to get as high quality as possible, but the lots would still be scoring in the 85-87 point range. These tend to be higher volume lots, so the sourcing needs to be taken even more seriously. In particular, we have our largest volume coffees with the most weight on sourcing – and chose to work with Daterra in Brazil. They were the most sustainable producers in these volumes and quantities that we could find – ecologically, sociologically, and agriculturally.
When it comes to equipment, it seems as though there has been a recent boom in very niche and technical products. For the average home brewer, what would you say are things a beginner to specialty coffee should invest in to make the biggest impact?
I think that investing in a course with a reputable café/roaster/coffee trainer to understand the variables in brewing. For me, I like to lock in as many variables as possible, and just modify one at a time, so people can’t go too wrong. This helped me at the start and is a great methodology for brewing better. As long as you have a decent grinder, and kettle, and basic brewing set up with scales, you can go a long way – and you can always buy more equipment as you need to later!
You’ve been involved in some R&D for the Sibarist Booster, how much testing goes into something like that and what has the resulting product been like?
It definitely takes a lot of testing! We worked on most of these products back and forth for almost a full year, testing different iterations, and doing some in depth testing. It's been many months in the works to nail down the right diameter holes, sizes, finishes and then organise production. Then we would get some feedback from outside of just us, from other coffee professionals, to see if we were crazy or not these were good products! It’s been a very interesting process! But I can safely say that the results have been verified!
<ED’s NOTE> The Sibarist Booster is small invention with reportedly big results. Sitting between your filter paper and the brewer, it is designed to increase contact points under the bed, right where coffee professionals want to have most of the coffee flow through the filter, in a very even way, which increases drawdown speeds, and the potential for higher extractions without channeling.
The results are brews without bitterness or dryness, even at very high extraction yields allowing you to grind finer, to get sweeter, richer and better cups without changing your brewer, just by adding the booster under your paper.
<INCLUDE INSET PICTURE - SIBARIST>
The big question for a World Brewers Cup Champ, what is your current go-to brewing recipe and apparatus?!
I approach most coffees two different ways, either for Natural coffees, or Washed.
Natural I extract a little less, use a coarser grind, cooler temperature water, and a brewer like the Metal V60. It has become known as The 5 Pour Recipe:
WATCH THE VIDEO on Youtube - V60 Five-Pour Recipe - Matt Winton
For Washed coffees I like to extract a little more. I go to a low bypass brewer with a flat bed, an Orea V3 for example, and push the temperature higher, and the grind finer. I’ve talked through this recipe with my Sibarist B3 papers, and Booster on my Instagram reels recently!
GO FOLLOW MATT FOR MORE BREWING TIPS: @matt_winton
What are your Top 3 spots in Zurich/Switzerland for a coffee experience?
Collective Bakery is still my go-to, as it’s right outside of the roastery, and we’ve worked together since the first day it opened – amazing pastries and bread, and Rose Coffee on bar.
Around the corner from my house is a little café called COFFEE. It’s from a local roaster and they do an awesome job with options for espresso and filter, well roasted, and always tasty.
When I want to try some international coffees, I head to Bean Bank, near the main station. The guys there get a huge range, constantly changing, of international roasters from all over the world. I’ll always get something new there!
We know most Aussies love competing and love their sport - what sports codes do you follow? Cricket, rugby (league or union)?
Ahhh Rugby Union, and Touch Rugby are my sports! There’s a few of us deep in the nerdy end of coffee who are big rugby fans and we sometimes get together to watch games when they’re on at the same time as the big trade shows! I also play Touch Rugby (a modified version of rugby – really big in Australia and NZ) internationally, most recently at the European Championships, and next year at the World Cup!
