The Pattern Behind the Trophies
Competition recipes look intimidating from the outside: exotic lots, dual kettles, pour schedules timed to the second. But when you line up the 23 competition recipes published in the CUP-TIMER catalog and read only the numbers, the theatre falls away and a very consistent brew emerges. It is smaller, stronger and faster than what most people make at home.
What Counts as a Competition Recipe Here
The 23 recipes in the catalog's champion category are not all from the same stage. Thirteen carry a World Brewers Cup routine — from Stefanos Domatiotis in 2014 through to George Peng in 2025. Two come from the Korea Brewers Cup, one from the JHDC, three from the MUGEN Switch competition, three from the April Cup, and one is Tetsu Kasuya's 4:6 method, the routine that came out of his 2016 World Brewers Cup win and never left the home brewing conversation since.
That mix matters. If a habit shows up across a Greek V60 routine from 2014, an Orea brew from 2022 and a hybrid-switch competition entry, it is not one person's signature. It is what the format rewards.
Small Dose, Strong Ratio
This is the clearest signal in the data, and it runs in the opposite direction from most home brewing.
The median competition dose is 15g of coffee to 240g of water. Twelve of the 23 recipes use 15g or less, and 22 of the 23 stay at or under 20g. Only one — James McCarthy's Kalita Wave brew at 24g to 380g — makes anything close to a large carafe. Compare that with the 195 hot recipes in the wider catalog, where the median dose is 18g.
The ratio moves the same way. The median competition ratio is 1:15, against 1:16 across the rest of the catalog, and 14 of the 23 sit between 1:14 and 1:16. George Peng's 2025 routine is the tightest of the modern entries at 1:14, 15g to 210g. There are outliers in the other direction — a Korea Brewers Cup brew at 1:20.8, 12g to 250g — but they are the exception, not the trend.
The logic is not mysterious. Competitors are brewing three small servings for judges who taste them at the peak of a narrow window, not filling a travel mug. A small dose in a full-size cone means a shallow bed, faster drainage and less room for the bed to compact — and a slightly stronger ratio keeps a delicate, expensive coffee from tasting thin in a small pour.
Takeaway #1: If a light, floral coffee tastes hollow at your usual 18g to 290g, do not grind finer first. Drop to 15g and 225g at the same grind, and taste again.
Light Roast, Almost Without Exception
Of the competition recipes with a roast level recorded, 17 of 18 are light. The single exception is Kasuya's 4:6, which is written for a medium roast precisely because it was designed to travel beyond the competition table. Across the wider hot catalog, light roasts are a strong majority but nothing like unanimous: 62 of the 89 recipes with a recorded roast level, about 70%.
Every other number in this article follows from that one. Light roasts are denser and less soluble, so they tolerate — and often need — the hotter water, the stronger ratio and the more deliberate agitation you see in these routines. Read a competition recipe as a light-roast recipe first and a competition recipe second, and it stops looking exotic.
Temperature: A Narrow Band and Two Deliberate Exceptions
Nineteen of the recipes record a brew temperature, and the median is 93°C — the same median as the rest of the catalog. Thirteen of those 19 fall between 92°C and 94°C. Competition does not, on this evidence, mean brewing hotter.
What competition does mean is that temperature is sometimes treated as a variable within a single brew rather than a setting. Matt Winton's 2021 routine blooms 60g at 93°C, then makes four further 60g pours at 88°C, dropping the temperature deliberately as extraction accumulates. Peng's 2025 brew does the reverse split: a 30g bloom and a 90g first pour at 96°C, then a 90g second pour at 80°C through a Melodrip. And Emi Fukahori's 2018 brew sits right outside the band at 80°C on a Gina.
Takeaway #2: Copying a single number from a champion's recipe is safe. Copying a two-temperature schedule without a second kettle is not — brew it at the bloom temperature and accept it will taste a little more extracted than the original.
Time: Faster Than You Expect
The median total brew time is 2:50, slightly quicker than the 3:00 median of the non-competition recipes in the catalog, and several of the best-known routines are dramatically shorter than that.
Chad Wang's 2017 brew is the cleanest example of the philosophy: 15g, a 40g bloom for 30 seconds, then one single continuous centre pour lasting 45 seconds to 250g total, no spiralling at all, with drawdown complete at 2:00 to 2:15. Martin Wölfl's 2024 routine is only a little busier — 60g bloom, then 60g, 50g and 100g pours on a 40-second cadence, finishing at 2:20 for 17g to 270g. Peng's finishes at 1:45.
Then there is Winton at 6:50 total, including a 3:30 drawdown on a coarse grind. The spread from 1:40 to 6:50 is the widest of any variable here, which is worth remembering: brew time is an outcome of grind and pour structure, not a target you hit directly.
Where They Disagree: Gear and Grind
It would be tidy to say champions all use one dripper. They do not. Ten of the 23 brew on a V60 — 43%, actually a lower share than the 54% the V60 holds across the catalog's hot recipes. The rest are spread across Origami, April, Orea, Hario Switch, Gina, Kalita Wave and a flower dripper.
Grind is the same story. Eight recipes call for medium, six medium-fine, three coarse, three medium-coarse and two fine — a distribution almost identical to the catalog as a whole. Kasuya's 4:6 is coarse; Matt Perger's 2012 brew is fine, 12g to 200g at 97°C. Both won.
So the honest conclusion is that competition brewing agrees on the coffee and the concentration, and disagrees about almost everything else. The dripper on the table is the competitor's preference. The 15g at 1:15 is the format talking.
Building a Competition-Style Brew at Home
Take the agreements and ignore the signatures:
- Dose 15g, water 225–240g (1:15 to 1:16), in whatever cone you already own.
- Buy a light roast and expect to grind a touch finer than you would for a medium.
- Set the kettle to 93°C and leave it there until the rest is dialled in.
- Use fewer, larger pours. A 40g bloom for 30 seconds and one continuous pour, Wang-style, is a real competition structure and the easiest to repeat.
- Aim to finish between 2:30 and 3:00, and adjust grind — not pour count — to get there.
Then change one thing at a time. Every routine above is the end of a long dialling-in process, not the start of one.
Brew These Recipes
Load any of them into the timer and follow the pours as written:
- Chad Wang WBrC 2017 — V60, 1:16.7, 15g → 250g at 92°C
- Martin Wölfl WBrC 2024 — Orea, 1:15.9, 17g → 270g at 93°C
- George Peng WBrC 2025 — V60, 1:14, 15g → 210g at 96°C
- Matt Winton WBrC 2021 — V60, 1:15, 20g → 300g, two temperatures
- Carlos Medina WBrC 2023 — Origami, 1:16.1, 16g → 250g at 91°C
- Tetsu Kasuya 4:6 Method — the one competition routine written for everyday brewing